World’s first driverless rail transit system revealed in China

A Chinese train company is dealing with a new method to get around.

The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit, or ART, is a 98-foot (30-meter) train-bus hybrid that does not require a motorist or tracks due to the fact that sensors can identify white dotted-lines painted on the road, CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive stated.

The mass-transit vehicle’s size can alter since carriages can be included or eliminated.

One ART bus will cost about $2.2 million and can take a trip of about 15 miles after 10 minutes of charging. Zhuzhou City in the Hunan Province anticipates to begin using the ART downtown next year.

CRRC started designing the ART system in 2013. The first ART vehicle is 31 meters in length, with a maximum passenger load of 307 people or 48 tons. Its highest speed is 70 kilometers per hour.

As of 2015, China has 121,000 km of railways, making it the second longest network in the world, consisting of 19,000 kilometres (11,806 miles) of high-speed rail (HSR), the longest HSR network worldwide.