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posted by janrinok on Saturday December 24 2016, @09:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the time-for-a-rethink dept.

China's once-celebrated Traffic Elevated Bus (TEB) (reported here) has been left abandoned in the middle of a Hebei city road, not having moved once in over two months. Originally touted as the futuristic solution to urban traffic jams, the "straddling bus" is currently causing them.

A local reporter recently checked up on "the future of public transportation" at its testing site in Qinhuangdao, only to find it forgotten in a rusted garage, covered in dust. The bus is currently being looked after by a pair of old security guards who reluctantly admit that they've been forgotten about as well.

http://shanghaiist.com/2016/12/05/straddling_bus_abandoned.php


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:21PM (#445790)

    This explains the p2p investment scam, it's widespread in China,
        https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-23/china-s-super-bus-exposes-dark-side-of-p2p-lending [bloomberg.com]

    Just as international excitement began to build, however, the TEB story went off the rails. According to China's state media organs, previously big boosters of the project, the TEB was little more than a publicity stunt -- one of the dozens of peer-to-peer lending scams that have duped retail Chinese investors in recent years by promising unreal annual returns.

    The bus bust has thus become a symbol of a different -- and far more damaging -- kind of Chinese ingenuity. The TEB's promoters promised investors 12 percent returns on their money, despite the fact that the prototype bus seemed likely to tip over, couldn't clear most urban bridges and wasn't tall enough to accommodate most vehicles underneath it. They could get away with it in part because those kinds of numbers are par for the course in China's P2P lending industry, which averaged returns of 13.3 percent in 2015.

    The "designer" or "engineer" of the tall bus was actually a property developer.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @04:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @04:37AM (#445964)

    Anyone with money in China is a 'property developer'. Not many other places to park you money over there.