You read me right.  The newest transit technology proposed in China is something called a “straddling bus” which actually travels over the tops of cars.

This bus doesn’t have to stop traffic to pick up passengers and can hold as many as 1,200 passengers at a time.

Check out more on this crazy bus here.

This year, instead of driving to the Summer Festival, you can take the BTB Party Bus.

Click here for all the details.

From the BTB website:

BTB Party Bus is proud to partner up with the Ann Arbor Summer Festival to provide GREEN transportation for groups of all sizes to and from all Summer Festival events.

Besides giving you a carbon-neutral way to get to Top of the Park (BTB Party Bus runs on waste vegetable oil from your favorite Ann Arbor area restaurants), riding the buses will also give you a way to donate back to the festival – $.50 will be donated for every person that rides the bus!

Click here to view rates and service area

At this point, according to the AATA, they have completed the pilot and were pleased with the results.  In the future, they are looking to go through the competitive procurement process (e.g. putting out bids to a number of companies for the service) to try and implement real-time bus information fleet-wide.

I did see what it might say for my normal bike commute, and it was pretty good.  I come from the West Side and normally bike on Washington, which is the first suggested route it gave me.  However, what Google doesn’t know is that there are some non-motorized paths I take that make the trip a little nicer for me.  Still, it’s really cool that these directions are now available.

A recent blog post from Suite101.com gives some good suggestions of ways to both get things done and have some fun while on the bus.  Here’s a rundown of the suggestions.  Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section:

Ideas for getting things done and having fun while busing to work

• Entertain yourself: Listen to music, watch a movie, play a game on your portable device
• Exercise your brain: Do a crossword puzzle, sudoku, or learn a new craft like knitting
• Get some work done: Work on your laptop, write up to do lists, spend some time planning things you have to do
• Be social: Chat with other passengers
• Be creative: Write, draw, think
• Be lazy: Take a nap

Any other suggestions/ideas?

Drive Less.  Save More. is an Oregon-based program to encourage people to–well–Drive less and save more!

One of the neat things they have on there website are how-to videos related to different modes of transportation.

Check it out here.

According to the DDA, you can use this form for the following reasons:

If you know of a downtown location that could benefit from additional bicycle parking, you have noticed a hoop in need of repair, or an abandoned bicycle – we want to hear from you. Please use the following form to make requests related to bicycle parking in the DDA area.

So consider yourself empowered to request more downtown bike parking.

Click here to check out the bicycle parking request form.