China's New Train Doesn't Need Rails, Isn't a Bus

"Chinese railcar-maker CRRC on Jun. 2 unveiled a new product called Autonomous Rail Transit (ART) in Zhuzhou, Hunan province, and the bus-rail combo rapid transit system is expected to speed up city’s public transportation," reports People's Daily Online.

There are reasons to be skeptical about the likelihood that the new technology is a game changer in urban transit. For instance, it wasn't long ago that a video showing a kind of elevated train passing over cars picked up viral steam on the Internet, only to be debunked as an expensive fraud. in 2014, the news was about a potential high-speed rail connection between China and the United States. In the case of ART, the new system is expected to begin operations in the city of Zhuzhou in 2018, so we'll know relatively soon about the viability of the technology.

There's also the point that the new track-less train is just a bus. According to the article, the virtual track enables a longer vehicle and, thus, more capacity than a bus.