So far, China gets the award for this summer’s most remarkable transit idea. In fact, thousands have remarked on it already! It’s a bus on stilts, straddling two lanes of traffic. The idea is an inventive solution to the expensive problem of building a subway or an elevated train, though it may not be entirely practical.
As a driver I would have some reservations about going underneath a massive moving vehicle, even if it were plodding along as slowly as the bus in this video. Take a look. It’s not all so strange and alien. You can see that it passes over yellow and black croquet wickets, the passengers appear to be New Yorkers, and just like the Central Corridor Light Rail simulation, this bus glides on a cloud of cheesy, generic music.
As I understand the idea, China’s Straddle Bus runs on a fixed guide way, so its movements are predictable, but asking me to deal with this in traffic is like challenging me to play Mr. Spock in a game of 3-D chess. Honestly, I have enough trouble with Right Turn On Red. What will I do with a bus overhead?
Some have been quick to condemn this idea as ludicrous. Given the changes we have seen, technological, political and otherwise, I hesitate to reject any new idea immediately. I prefer to wait until it is an old idea, so my opinion may go unnoticed.
And based on what I saw of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, I’d rather not bet against Chinese people finding a way to get the job done. If the drive train on the Straddle Bus doesn’t work as planned, they can always have a phalanx of coordinated drummers carry the vehicle to its destination.
Have you ever mistakenly declared “that will never happen”?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Storm Babooners:
The question is not “have I” said IT would never happen. The question should be “How many times?” Let me count the ways.
I saw the first computer of my life at college in Sept. 1971 on a college tour. The computer, the size of my kitchen and dining room, sat in a room cooled by noisy fans. Had anyone told me then that in 2010 I would own 3 of the tiny beasts as part of my business and personal life I would have looked at you in disbelief. I also could not have believed that I would have a small business.
Ten years ago had you told me that my feisty, willful little mother would succumb to Alzheimer’s, living in a happy fog in my brother’s home, I’d have said, “Can’t happen.”
Other topics: that every morning I would participate in a blog that has become a mindful, on-line, interactive journal that starts my day; that I would get a divorce; that Ronald Reagan or George Bush would be viable candidates for govenorships, much less President of the USA; that MPR would fire Dale Connelly; that I would live 20 years past a cancer diagnosis and treatment (not unscathed, but alive). And many, many more.
I try not to say “never” anymore. It just doesn’t work out that well.
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Would we break the spell if we expressed the wish that cancer “never” darkens your life again? I’ll think that (but not say it aloud) for you and all cancer survivors, including my sister. I never thought she would see this fall.
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Thanks to you and Anna for the good wishes. I hope the big C won’t darken the door again, but I won’t say never. My fervent prayer then was that I would live long enough to raise my son who needed his mom. After getting to do that, the rest of life is gravy and I’ll take what I get.
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Being a wee touch younger, for me it was a “can’t happen” that Reagan was able to be re-elected. I still remember hearing the news. I was making chocolate mousse in the shared dorm kitchen and wound up adding about double the amount of called-for liqueur. I haven’t tried to predict an election since then. (It was the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in.)
And I, like Steve, will think loud thoughts about my opinions of cancer and its proximity to friends and loved ones, but will not utter them out loud.
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I remember reassuring worried Canadian friends that Ronald Reagan could never be elected. Boy, was I out of touch!
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I’m with you on the political stuff. I have made the assumption far too many times that other people see things the way I do. What a mistake.
Reagan was running against Walter Mondale in 1984, and Mondale was talking openly and honestly about the need to raise taxes, a strategy that was shocking at the time, and it did not win many votes. We’re about to find out if that has changed.
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I remember celebrating when Republicans put Ronald Reagan up for president. After all, in the best movie of his career, “Bedtime for Bonzo,” Reagan was out-acted by a chimpanzee. I was glad the Republicans had chosen the one man who would be easiest for Jimmy Carter to defeat. Shows how smart I am.
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Ah, but dear friends, I remember thinking when that new senator from Illinois stated he was going to run, “not yet, it is just not going to happen and we will need you later, when we as a nation have grown up a bit more”.
Sometimes, it is ok to be wrong.
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When Reagan ran for the nomination in 1976, I was just out of high school, and a number of friends and I made a pact that if he were to be elected president we would all move to Canada. Four years later we all had jobs and apartments and had to sheepishly back down.
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Radio Heartland being canceled.
Twins winning first game in Chi last night.
America getting even stupider and tea-ier.
My son getting married.
Me being first on in the morning
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I once was first last spring.
Now waiting for rain to blow though before riding in.
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Heighdy ho Clyde! You’re up early, young man! Tell us about the wedding!
Dale, I’ll try to think of some “nevers” later and check back in. But for now, I predict that this bus will never be popular in America. Many of our interstate bridges are 14 feet high. The bus is 18 feet high. Each time it goes under a bridge or enters a tunnel it will crash, crushing all passengers in the front car. I hate to sound like a pouty Republican making dour predictions for mass transit, but if killing that many folks at each bridge will surely reduce enthusiasm for riding the bus.
Enjoy this day, Baboons. Here in Saint Paul we’ve just had a bunch of terrifying lightning strikes. This would be a bad day to fly a kite on a wire “string.”
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steve, I am always up early; I just don’t post until after my bike ride to the office. We had a similar storm here. I waited for it to pass and then rode in–nice ride in except for my wet rear from water and grit off the back tire. I am very lucky with riding. I seldom really get very wet.
Also, the wedding is this coming weekend. I was out last few days dealing with some of life’s complications, which, of course, you can never really deal with.
Wedding will be in Balboa Park in San Diego, in an area called the Mexican Village, sort of hidden next to the Zoo entrance. About 1/4 of the attendees will be up front. (“Yes, Mama, I will include all of my female cousins and my sisters in the wedding, all 6 if them, plus two friends.”) So our son had to come up with 8 people to stand up for him, with his long-time friends dispersed pretty widely. But a few are making it; the core of his U friends will be there. He has one strain over this: he got very exciting news at work yesterday as he headed out the door for two weeks, which he really did not tell us very much about; big secrecy issues in software development. And at the wedding and even in the pwedding party will be many former workmates and close friends who are now competitors. So he is not even going to tell his wife until after the wedding so she does not slip. She will understand; she works for Apple.
Our daughter will marry them and her kids are flower girl and ring bearer and who will never quite recognize that the whole point of the wedding is not for them.
I will be around today and part of tomorrow. Back next Wednesday but probably too busy to blog much.
Dale, all of this is why I am not offering to host, either the blog or bed bugs.
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No worries, Clyde. You’ve got enough to think about.
I will probably have a second blog holiday, perhaps in late October. There will be opportunities a-plenty.
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Clyde, I hope that you all have a wonderful time at your son’s wedding. I remember that part of Balboa Park, it’ll be gorgeous.
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I think I’m about dead even between, “it’ll never happen” predictions and “yeah, we’ll get that done.” Today is a “take 2” on the latter – with fingers crossed that we can get our new stuff launched this time around without any hitches. If we don’t, I don’t think I’ll want to be at work tomorrow. Or most of next week. (And who knew that a double major in theater and anthropology would wind up in a tech-related field? Certainly not something I would have predicted or believed if I hadn’t lived it.)
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Anna–my son has a degree in archeology and is a software producer. He has worked with very few people with degrees in tech. I heard a man at a conference explain that he never hires people with tech degrees to design and manage in his software company. He said he can teach creative people tech but he cannot teach tech people to be creative.
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Another discussion on another list asked ‘What do you want incoming students to know’? And the majority of answers said something to the effect of ‘teach them how to think on their own; how to ask questions and not be afraid and we can teach them the specifics’…
Yep; good advice.
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Ben, a delicate issue to raise with me right now: the compnay we started to help schools do just that is now done and our products will all be pulled from the market by those group that took us over. [I took out the tirade I had just written.]
[Then I took out a statment of mine on ed. reform.]
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Can’t happen.
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Apparently my alma mater (Macalester) continues to be proud of its “nerd factor” in terms of teaching how to learn as much as what you learn…found this through the MPR On Campus blog yesterday. Not too surprised that two of the ten are Mac and Carleton.
http://www.unigo.com/articles/nietzschean_supermen_%28and_superwomen%29/?taxonomyId=1137716
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I see Grinnell is also on the list-so many from the Midwest-hmmmmmm.
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Hey, go Pioneers! Grinnell is my alma mater! Apparently that makes me an intellectual dork.
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Well, I graduated from the “great gray mediocrity.”
My favorite ed. quote by Eric Hoffer “Learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
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Mike–my son, a long-time devoted fan who sent a few emails beginning as requested “Dear Idiots,” will not be listening to hear this, but you could play Fright Train for him, a favorite song of his, after he which he once named a cat.
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Did you mean “Freight Train”, Clyde? If so, Pat Donohue’s version will air about 10:02am…enjoy!
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LOL, I am imagining a cat with either of those names!
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Thanks.
You mean there is no “Fright Train?” There should be for sure. Maybe by Lyle Levitt or a talking Johnny Cash version.
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I have a cat who would fit the name “Fright Train” quite well.
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Morning–
I honestly don’t remember when I’ve ever been far-sighted enough to predict anything besides the outcome of a movie; and I probably had that wrong too…
I could never say something like that– unless it was in sarcasm:
“I’ll never finish this set.”
“I’m never gonna finish baling hay”
“It’s never gonna rain again”
“He’s never gonna get this cleaned up”
“Bet that dog never comes back”…. you get the idea…
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The question with a set, for me, is not so much “is it finished” (sometimes) vs. “is it done” (always). Seems like I almost always have one or two things that don’t get completed to my satisfaction, so the number of truly “finished” sets is smaller than those that are “done.”
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Oh, absolutely. And don’t we always take as much time as available to ‘finish’ it? Doesn’t matter; two weeks or two months… we’ll keep futzing with it until opening– or the day before closing!
‘Done’ from a practical, function-able point of view? Yes. ‘Finished’? Well…..
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and this is what I have always loved about live theatre. That show is opening when it opens whether you are “done” or not and you cannot keep endlessly futsing with it-you have to move on to the next show (as a producer once said to me-what are you going to do-refund $.50 to everybody who came to opening night because the last bit of trim wasn’t on Violetta’s Act III frock?)
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Fascinating idea – having experienced Chinese traffic first hand, I can imagine that they are highly motivated to come up with some innovative solutions!
In other news – and perhaps someone here already mentioned it but I could not find it in a quick scan – the authors of “Old Blevins”, the Austin Lounge Lizards, will be at Celtic Junction in Saint Paul this coming Friday, and in Fergus Falls on Saturday. So far its been too-short-notice for our babysitters….
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Thanks for the heads up, Nils!
The Austin Lounge Lizards calendar gives details of these two Minnesota shows.
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welcome back nils. its been a while. good contribution. ain’t chinese traffic grand. i used to laugh 20 years ago at the people bikes vehicles in criss cross fashion
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use to laugh harder when i saw a new guy who had never seen it before cringe and suck air continuously as we drove through the chinese street scenes.
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dale can’t you figure out a way to interview them and post it with a link?
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OMG, I knew that bus reminded me of something. It’s a SHERPA, the mountain on wheels!
I’m sure I’ll eventually remember when I’ve said “that will never happen,” probably tonight on the way to sleep. [Thought I’d already posted this, but don’t see it.]
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The Intimida dealers are saved!
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You are so right — It Is The Sherpa! I never realized the Sherpa was Chinese. I had placed in in the USA all these years. Glad you cleared that up Barb.
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Since it’s now clear that the Chinese listened to The Morning Show, what will they rollout next ? I’m worried about the Beijing branch of Genway with rice that climbs onto the chopsticks and Captain Bil Lee and the pirates on the Yellow Sea.
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excellent beth ann
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I miss GenWay
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So THAT is why the Chinese are hanging on to Tibet with such ferocity-it’s where the Sherpas come from!
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I said after a bad relationship that I would never date a guy with a beard who drove a truck and liked to fish, and then married a guy with that description. I said I would never have children – had no interest – and now have two of my own that I love dearly.
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the idea of the bus on stilts is wonderful. they have no bridges there. that is prescisely why they need buses on stilts, many many intersections. we could fix the usa model by having it capable of dipping though the bridges. the traffic backups never happen under bridges always before and after….
never gonna say because i said so
never gonna vote republican (ramstead was a good guy)
never gonna pass a hitch hiker
never gonna forget (i can’t remember what though)
i remember thinking the jetsons would never be real stuff. most of it is now except bucky fullers individual flying machines.
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i never thought i’d be able to quit smoking
i never thought i’d see the american public so dumb they fall for the song and dance they are swallowing these days from the pay no taxes, praise the lord, lock up the aliens, outlaw the abortion, we aren’t really the rich guy party but don’t check how we line our pockets over here while we’ve got you looking over here party…
i never thought i’d see twist top and artificial corks be acceptable even preferred.
i never thought i’d see a day when you can look stuff up so fast on the internet that there is almost nothing you can’t discuss with data to back you up.
remember dick tracys two way wrist radios? no way!!
disneys prediction of sitting in front of the tv screen talking to your friend in japan live watching each other talk in front of the camera.
never thought i’d see tatoo’s everywhere, school marms, dweebs, marines and babes, neck, ankle, low back, clevege…its everywhere its everywhere.
never thought i’d see the day when americans feel entitled and the chinese japanese and people from india kick our butts because they are hungry to get ahead and we aren’t.
never thought i’d see the twins get out of that baggie and the vikings saying they wanted to go play outside too
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Fun, tim.
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