I saw that... I don't think it's a great idea personally. There are areas with overhanging, trees light poles, aren't wide enough, etc... you'd have to restructure a lot of the roadway. Many of the bridges in Chicago are limited to 12' ft.
There are just too many variables imo, to get this to work, unless you are starting from a blank slate. And if it's fixed to a certain route, why not just create a monorail then?
People are idiots. The amount of accidents would be immense.
yep, the number of ways this can go wrong is too many to count
All of the arguments I've heard so far that are against this concept are equally valid for urban light rail. Almost all of those problems are solved in light rail installations through the use of traffic controls and road design. The main problem that comes about is people mistaking the rail tracks for roads, and then getting stuck on them. Collisions between trams and other vehicles is extremely rare.
The biggest benefit to this over light rail is that it's narrower. A main road around my area (we had light rail introduced two years ago, with a four-year construction period) is four lanes, plus light rail, which itself is wide enough again for another four lanes. That overhead bus thing sits on top of the road lanes, so the road is four lanes, including light rail. It's still separated, but vertically instead of horizontally. All you need to do is not turn across its path when it's approaching, and that can be controlled via traffic signals. Easy peasy.
This things been a concept since 2010.
No ones built one.
Sure saw we discussed this many years ago.
And what do you need to build for stations, passengers might jump out, but only the most athletic could jump up and in!
If Elon Musk was working on it, he could make it work. And it would have rockets on it.
Obviously, they would need raised platforms, much like a monorail or other elevated train but without the raised rail everywhere.Originally Posted by Dicknose
There would also need to be barriers between the car and the stilt structure. Intersections would have to be very tightly controlled to avoid people turning into it as it's passing through.
The bigger problem I see is vehicles that are too tall to go under it. If you make it high enough for big trucks to go under, it's going to be very high. This could create problems with signs, lights, signals and power lines.
It might indeed be cheaper and/or require less real estate than comparable train/monorail systems. I think it's probably not though. I don't expect to see it actually happen. I just find it kind of interesting.
It happened:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-36961433
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