The CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Company announced on June 2 that it has developed a type of smart bus, known as Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART), to tap into China's lucrative urban transit market.
The ART bus is about 30 meters long and equipped with sensors that can read the dimensions of roads and plan its own route, said chief engineer Feng Jianghua. It has three carriages with a total capacity of 300 people.
It costs around 400 to 700 million yuan (US$58 to 102 million) to build 1 kilometer of metro line. A standard ART bus costs around 15 million yuan (US$2.2 million), said Feng.
A 6.5-kilometer ART line will begin operation in downtown Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, in 2018.