- published: 08 Jun 2015
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Guided buses are buses steered for part or all of their route by external means, usually on a dedicated track. This track, which often parallels existing roads, excludes other traffic, permitting the maintenance of reliable schedules on heavily used corridors even during rush hours.
Guidance systems can be either physical, such as kerbs, or remote, such as optical or radio guidance.
On kerb-guided buses (often abbreviated to KGB) small guide wheels are attached to the bus which engage vertical kerbs on either side of the guideway. These guidewheels push the steering mechanism of the bus from side-to-side, keeping the bus centralised on the track. Away from the guideway, the bus is steered in the normal way. The start of the guideway is funnelled from a wide track to the normal width. This system permits high-speed operation on a narrow guideway as well as precise positioning at boarding platforms, facilitating access for the elderly and disabled.
Only a few examples currently exist, but more are proposed in various countries.
The Black Hills (Pahá Sápa in Lakota, Moʼȯhta-voʼhonáaeva in Cheyenne) are a small, isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, USA.Harney Peak, which rises to 7,244 feet (2,208 m), is the range's highest summit. The Black Hills encompass the Black Hills National Forest and are home to the tallest peaks of continental North America east of the Rockies. The name "Black Hills" is a translation of the Lakota Pahá Sápa. The hills were so-called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they were covered in trees.
Native Americans have a long history in the Black Hills. After conquering the Cheyenne in 1776, the Lakota took over the territory of the Black Hills, which became central to their culture. In 1868, the U.S. government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. However, when European Americans discovered gold there in 1874, as a result of George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills Expedition, erstwhile miners swept into the area in a gold rush. The US government re-assigned the Lakota, against their wishes, to other reservations in western South Dakota. Unlike most of South Dakota, the Black Hills were settled by European Americans primarily from population centers to the west and south of the region, as miners flocked there from earlier gold boom locations in Colorado and Montana.