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考研英语阅读理解有一部分是截取自报刊文章，因此考生在复习备考的过程中要注意提高报刊文章的阅读能力，把握时事阅读。下面新东方在线小编分享历年真题同源的30篇报刊文章，附有注释和解析，希望考生认真阅读，提高对此类文章的阅读能力和增加相关词汇量。
考研英语阅读真题同源报刊文章30篇（20）
Behold, the bus of the future
It looks rather like a futuristic stretch limousine, but its actual
function is rather more populist: the Superbus is a novel publictransport
system being developed in the Netherlands by the Delft University of Technology.
It is an electric bus designed to be able to switch seamlessly between ordinary
roads and dedicated "supertracks", on which it can reach speeds of 250kph
(155mph). It could thus present an alternative to much more expensive
magneticlevitation trains.
Though it is as wide and long as a standard city bus, the Superbus is only
1.7 meters high, or roughly the same height as a sportsutility vehicle. Joris
Melkert, the project’s manager, explains that the designers managed to keep the
Superbus this small by doing away with the central aisle usually found in
today’s buses, a vestigial design feature that allows passengers to stand
upright, but also gives conventional buses the aerodynamic profile of a
brick.
The lowriding Superbus, in contrast, has a separate door for each of its
30odd seats. The low ceiling and the use of lightweight materials make for a
far more streamlined vehicle, which in turn requires only a modest electric
motor: though engineers have not yet decided whether the Superbus will be
powered by fuel cells or batteries, they estimate that it will be able to
accelerate from rest to 100kph in a leisurely 36 seconds.
The individual doors also allow for rapid loading and unloading of
passengers, which will need to be fast if the Superbus is to live up to its
promised doortodoor mission: instead of making predetermined stops, the
vehicle will pick up and drop off passengers based on their textmessaged
requests. This kind of flexibility is a central tenet of the project; the
estimated threeyear lifespan of a Superbus (as opposed to thirteen years for a
standard European bus) will also allow the latest technologies to be phased in
quickly as they become available.
To start with, that might include satellitebased tracking to keep the
Superbus on course, sensors to scan the road for obstacles up to 300 meters
ahead and a smart suspension system that remembers the rough spots in the
road.
Some detractors have suggested that making so many stops would erode the
Superbus’s speed advantage, and others question whether a new cog in the
Netherlands’ alreadyintricate transport infrastructure is even needed.
Furthermore, the Superbus does not yet exist, whereas maglev trains are already
operating successfully in Shanghai.
The future of the project is uncertain. Its intended route, a new transport
link connecting Amsterdam with the northern city of Groningen, was recently
scrapped by the Dutch government (although the Superbus was deemed the most
feasible of all the options considered, which also included a maglev train). In
spite of the setback, the project has since received an extra 7m ($9m) in
government funding, plus 1m from Connexxion, a local bus company. The Superbus
team’s latest plan is to unveil a fully functional prototype at the Beijing
Olympics in 2008. With its combination of low emissions, high speed and snazzy
design, this might prove to be a bus that is.
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发表于 2017-8-6 15:51:13
