China Xinhua News has reported that the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), born to help China deal with its huge traffic problems, is a scam.

Dubbed the "straddling bus", it recently started trial runs in Qinhuangdao, a city located in the north-east of China. Jinchuang Corp, the company which built the bus, created many questions which they could not answer.

One of the main downfalls of the bus was it did not simulate real traffic conditions, as the TEB traveled only about 300 metres, without mimicking real-life traffic conditions. More shockingly, the authorities in Qinhuangdao city weren’t even aware of this trial.

The height of the vehicles that can go under it was also a limiting factor as only vehicles measuring 2.1 metres in height could pass through while the height limit for vehicles on the road in China is 4.2 metres.

To add on to the problem, Shanghaiist wrote that a few media outlets claim that the bus is a fraudulent peer to peer (P2P) investment project aimed at scamming investors. Many government departments have refused to acknowledge their relationship with the project, including the municipal development and reform commission in Qinhuangdao and Shanghai Jiaotong University.