It seems that China's innovative straddling bus project just won't give up easily, although previous questions and controversies have impeded its launch.

A citizen walks past a Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) which is on road test in Qinhuangdao, north China's Hebei Province, Aug. 2, 2016. China's home-made transit elevated bus, TEB-1, conducted a road test running Tuesday. [Photo: Xinhua]

The project, instead of being demolished as rumored, has been continuing in low profile mode over the past month, and its cooperation with the local government of north China's Hebei Province- seems not have been influenced by those negative reports.

Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) Technology Co. Ltd, the company that signed the cooperation agreement with the local government to solely manage investment and the construction of the project, said that it wouldn't dismantle the test track. What's more, a 120-kilometer operation line in the city of Qinghuangdao has already been included in the plan.

In addition to the previous projects in Qinghuangdao and Zhoukou, the company also signed a new agreement with Zhangjiakou, another city in north China's Hebei Province.

Song Youzhou, the inventor of the straddling bus, said the project won't be scrapped for the moment. But even if it doesn't turn out to be a "keeper", a museum may be built to remind the world of the ambitious prototype.

Photos of a supposedly successful test run of the straddling bus went viral earlier in August, as both the feasibility and purpose of the transportation project were being widely questioned.

The Global Times had cited a private source as saying the sample bus was hardly more than a raw model and there was no cutting edge technology applied.

Chinese online news outlet Sohu.com proposed that the project could just be a money-raising gimmick for the benefit of the local government.

Some reports suggested the project was approved by local government as a tourism project instead of a transportation project.

Experts also suggested that there was a real danger that the bus could tip over because of its weight, and high center of gravity. They also noted that with the space underneath only two meters high, many vehicles would actually be unable to fit underneath it.

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