Buses of the Future

Public Bus Transportation: Designs and Concepts

In 1999 Dublin Bus introduced the “Bendy Bus”, 18m long, with capacity for 140 passengers – twice as many as the traditional double-decker.

However the Chinese have gone one step further in terms of their public bus transportation.

This is the new public bus service planned for Beijing later this year. The bus was presented to the public as a finalised concept last year as a solution to reduce transportation congestion and improve CO2 emissions: the bus will run on a combination of solar panels and electricity. It will achieve a maximum speed of 60kph and can accomodate 1,200 passengers!  The vehicle itself can run on tracks on either side of the road or on a track suspended over the road. While the construction costs of the bus and the acompanying tracks is expensive it will still work out 10% cheaper than the equivalent costs for metro transportation along the same lenght of route.

However, for Ireland, the Chinese system might be more trouble than its worth. More likely is a re-design of the traditional double-decker. In England a competition to re-design the ubiquitous red-double-decker was won by the concept in the photo above. Maybe we’ll see an Irish equivalent!