The ART 2.0 is on display at InnoTrans in Berlin at the moment.
And it is located on the track display, alongside the CRRC Cinova H2 high-speed train. InnoTrans does also have a dedicated Bus Display at the trade fair grounds.
The reason this is of note is that the ART runs on rubber tyres – and yes, so too do some of the vehicles on the Paris Metro. However, the ART also doesn’t run on rails. According to CRRC, it runs on “virtual rails”, which are markings on the road surface. The vehicle uses cameras and sensors to measure the dimensions of the road and to map its route. There is no permanent way to keep it on track, as it were.
Granted, efforts have been made to make it look a bit like a train and not a bus.
Another vehicle that is going down this train aesthetic route is the ‘Irizar ie tram’, a “tram on the tarmac”, that the company also describes as follows: “The Irizar ie tram is a 100% electric, zero-emission bus with the appearance of a tram that combines the large capacity, ease of access and internal configuration of a tram with the flexibility of a city bus.”
And CRRC says that in April 2024 the ART 2.0 “arrived in Istanbul, Turkey and successfully passed a test on the European side line section of METROBUS.”
So why then also the insistence on claiming it is a “novel type of rail transit”?
