Culture

Dust Settles on China's Forsaken Straddling Bus

Briefly hyped as the future of transit, it now sits indefinitely in an open shed.
The straddling bus rolled into Hebei, China with much fanfare; now it's stuck there collecting dust.Stringer/Reuter

Remember that straddling bus that drew both excitement and criticism from urban enthusiasts, right before derailing into a possible full-on scam?

Well, what once looked like a treatment for China’s serious cases of pollution and traffic “is currently causing them,” as Shanghaiist puts it. A local reporter checked up on the 72-foot-long behemoth earlier this month and found it to be right where engineers left it back in August: on the 300-meter test track of a Hebei city road, blocking lanes and gathering a thick layer of dust in an open shed.