Thursday, November 11, 2010

Rubber wheeled autonomous trams running for real in China

The world's first underground automatic passenger transportation machine (APM system) performed a trial run in southern China’s Guangzhou City on Nov. 8.

The unmanned APM has two separate carriages and took 23 minutes to run a round trip of 8 kilometers from the starting station to the terminal station.

The APM line connects the two top business districts in Guangzhou City and also strengthens ties with southern districts without taking up ground resources, thus it will become the inner city "gold Express."

The terminal station of the APM system is to be temporarily closed on the opening day because of the upcoming Guangzhou Asian Games, and another two stations located in the core area of the Asian Games will not be opened until Nov. 26, one day before the closing ceremony of the Asian Games.

According to the Guangzhou Metro Corporation, the APM system is a fully underground, totally closed and unmanned short-haul passenger transport system. Its carriage is similar to a subway train but has rubber tires like a bus, which run on concrete tracks instead of rails.

The ever colorful Peoples Daily Online has the story.

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