去年，立体公交“巴铁1号”的报道曾大量刷屏，其上层运送人群，下层通行车辆的设计十分别致，似乎能够解决交通拥堵的问题。

然而，近日有消息传出，“巴铁1号”将被拆除，原有扩建计划也将全部终止，“巴铁”项目被指是由理财公司包装的金融骗局，相关人员涉嫌不法集资已被抓捕归案。

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=v1320k7iq9c&width=500&height=375&auto=0

China's Elevated Bus Project Seemed Too Good To Be True — And It Was

NPR NEWS

In China, a futuristic[1] new kind of urban transport that its promoters claimed would beat traffic jams appears to have gone off the rails[2]. That became clear last week when police arrested the people behind the project on suspicion of fraud.

[1]futuristic：strange and very modern, or intended or seeming to come from some imagined time in the future 未来派的；超前新奇的

Her latest novel is a futuristic thriller, set some time in the late 21st century.

她的新书是一部未来派风格的惊险小说，背景设定于21世纪后期的某个时间。

[2]go off the rails：to start behaving in a way that is not generally acceptable, especially dishonestly or illegally 举止怪异；越过道德底线，行为不轨

He went off the rails in his first year at university.

他刚上大学一年级行为就很出格。

Dubbed the Transit Elevated Bus, the vehicle looks a bit like a catamaran[3] on rails or a bus that straddles[4] two lanes of traffic.

[3]catamaran [.kætəmə'ræn]

a sailing boat that has two parallel hulls (= floating parts) held together by a single deck (= flat surface) 双体船，双连舟

[4]straddle：Something that straddles a line, such as a border or river, exists on each side of it or goes across it 跨过，横跨（边界、河流等）

Our farm straddles the railway line.

我们的农场横跨铁道线。

Gridlock[5]? No problem. The electric contraption[6] would just whisk[7] its cabin full of 300 or so passengers right over it.

[5]gridlock：a situation where roads in a town become so blocked by cars that it is impossible for any traffic to move （市区）交通大堵塞

A car breaking down at rush hour could cause gridlock across half the city.

在交通高峰时间，一辆车抛锚就可能使半个城市都陷入交通瘫痪。

[6]contraption：a device or machine that looks awkward or old-fashioned, especially one that you do not know how to use （尤指不知如何使用的）笨拙的装置；过时的机器；奇怪的玩意儿

What's that strange contraption in the garage?

你车库里那个奇怪的装置到底是什么？

[7]whisk：to take something or someone somewhere else suddenly and quickly 突然拿走，快速带走

Our coffees were whisked away before we'd even finished them.

我们的咖啡还没有喝完就被匆匆拿走了。

Following the project's unveiling in 2010, the vehicle's designer told the official People's Daily newspaper that five Chinese cities had signed contracts to establish pilot projects using the buses.

Time magazine hailed it as one of "The 50 Best Inventions of 2010." Last August, a prototype actually made test runs on the streets of the northern port city of Qinhuangdao.

But experts raised doubts about the feasibility of the idea from the very start.

How, they asked, would the straight vehicle handle curved streets? How would it turn corners or avoid pedestrian overpasses and tall trucks? And how would cars driving underneath the bus be able to see road signs or switch lanes without causing accidents?

"The elevated bus would just get stuck in traffic and make things even worse," says Shen Gang, an urban transport expert at Tongji University in Shanghai and an early critic of the project. "The idea was absurd, childish."

Yet the project continued to pick up speed. A model of the bus attracted attention at an international high-tech expo in Beijing last year.

In a video interview last year, Bai Zhiming, the entrepreneur who bought the patents for the elevated bus, boasted to the People's Daily that the Beijing municipal government had expressed interest in the project.

State media reported that investors pumped more than half a billion dollars into the project, after being promised returns of 12 percent. The scheme was to be funded by wealth management products sold by Bai's online lending platform.

China's government is trying to curb such schemes, which often prey on[8] consumers with few attractive investment options — and who, when they lose their savings, often take to the streets in protest.

[8]prey on：to hurt or deceive a group of people, especially people who are weak or can easily be hurt or deceived 伤害，欺骗，坑害（尤指弱势人群）

He would attack at night, preying on lone women in their twenties or thirties.

他总在夜间出没，袭击二三十岁的孤身女子。

Suspicions mounted as the official rollout of the elevated bus system was repeatedly delayed. The Qinhuangdao municipal government denied it had endorsed the project, and last month began dismantling[9] the test site.

[9]dismantle：to take a machine apart or to come apart into separate pieces 拆开，拆卸

She dismantled the washing machine to see what the problem was, but couldn't put it back together again.

她拆开洗衣机想看看出了什么问题，但是却装不起来了。

Last week, police arrested Bai Zhiming and 31 employees of his online lending platform. Police say they're now trying to recover investors' funds.

Yang Tao, an expert at the Urban Transport Planning and Design Institute in the eastern city of Nanjing, says that the whole scam was based on a flawed approach to urban transport.

"New kinds of vehicles won't solve the problem," he says. "It has to be resolved through balancing supply and demand for transportation."

In other words, he says, you've got to try to fix the gridlock itself — not just sail over it.