MIT announce The Copenhagen Wheel

I reported on this way back in February when it was know as the Greenwheels. Nice to see that the best innovation in cycling this year has been connected with the best cycling city in the world. Smart, responsive and elegant, the Copenhagen Wheel is a new emblem for urban mobility. It transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that also function as mobile sensing units. The Copenhagen Wheel allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost. It also maps pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time. It's also nice to see that red can be green too!

Copenhagen 1937

Thanks to Inari at Cycle Consultants, Helsinki, part of British Council's Challenge Europe Climate Advocacy programme, for putting me on to this wonderful video of Copenhagen back in the day.


James A. Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks The Voice of the Globe

NYC Bike Fashion Show

Chic cycling, street style at 'Bike Style' fashion show in NYC. Credit: Emma Grady

Hudson Urban Bicycles (HUB) in the West Village, New York City, hosted Bike Style Saturday night, a fashion show premiering chic urban cycling looks. Friends of HUB donned tailored bicycle wear--blazers, cropped pants, and caps--from designers Lela Rose, Reiss, Sheila Moon, and Outlier; strutted and danced 'cross the runway to DJ jams; mounted European-origin bikes from Batavus, Abici, Moof, and Linus, and rode out into the rainy NYC night. Click through for our videos--the def jams might have you chair dancing--and more photos from the show.

Norreport Station CPH

Copenhagen based COBE Architect have won first prize for their bike friendly station design

COBE Architects blasted away its competitors with a sexy and bike-friendly new design in the recent competition to redesign Copenhagen’s Norreport train station. Almost retro in its lines, the architects’ vision of the new station is composed of a series of rounded, floating roofs set upon striking glass pavilions. Since bicycles are a preferred means of transportation in Copenhagen, ample bike parking was a main feature of the new structure, and other green features will include energy-efficient lighting and natural ventilation

Norreport Train Station is the busiest train station in the Danish capital, with over 25,000 people bustling through it daily. The main stipulations for the updated transportation hub were that it be able to accommodate lots of passengers and lots of bikes, and also be a place where people can gather and connect with one another. In an effort to make the station even more convenient, passengers can easily be dropped off on the street alongside their desired entrance, or ride their bikes and leave them at the station.

Eleven ventilation towers are placed around the plaza, which will help naturally cool and ventilate the train platform below. These towers also act as information boards and plaza lighting, utilizing LED screens and energy efficient lighting to direct passengers to their departing trains. The towers can also be used for advertisements, announcements and cultural events.

Via Inhabitat

+ COBE Architects

Fahrrad und Bahn

Translated from stuttgart.de

The Bicycle and train are highly complementary. The way to the train station or bus stop can be wonderful to travel by bicycle. Once there, stand under the bike and ride in the city of Stuttgart is often covered parking available. At the main station and the S-Bahn station Schwabstraße bike boxes can be rented. At stations in Möhringen Vaihingen and take the employees of the bike service stations at the good plays.
 

Those who want to cycle at the destination may take their bicycle in urban and suburban trains usually for free. Restrictions apply during peak periods. Thus, the carriage of bicycles in the light rail is permitted between 6 am and 8.30 clock and not in the evening between 16 and 18.30 clock. In S-Bahn, DB regional trains and the trains of the Württemberg railway company TRAIL may always bicycles are taken away. However, due in the morning peak period between 6 and 8.30 clock a child ticket.

A peculiarity of Stuttgart is the bike transport rack of the Marienplatz to Degerloch. With the help of special Vorstellwagens the "wave" brings you your bike comfortable, safe and free of charge from the valley to the Filderebene.

Photo: Stuttgart Department of City Planning and Urban Renewal

At stations in Möhringen and Vaihingen the staff of the bike service stations offer their services. Here bicycles can be parked safely. While the parking time from Monday to Fri from 7 am to 8pm you can clean his bike too, and wait. The bicycle service stations can also rent bicycles on offer. The donated and brought up to scratch bike can be rented for three to five euros a day.

The bicycle-service stations are open Monday to Fri from 7 20 clock. The prices for a "Bicycle Parking" as follows:
$ 0.50 per day
2 euros per week
5 Euro per month
50 euros per year 

Operated bicycle service stations from social enterprises "New Work". The employment project is helping young unemployed people on their way into a job on the first labor. Who his bicycle in a bicycle parked service station, so not only does his bike a good thing, but also helps in the integration of young unemployed.

Photo: Stuttgart Department of City Planning and Urban Renewal

Bike Boxes

Especially popular are the bike boxes at the central railway station at Schwabstraße. As in a mini-garage, the good pieces there are safe from thieves and protected from wind and weather. The bike boxes can be used for 5 euros or 50 euros a month in rent for the mobility counseling in the i-dot.

Photo: Stuttgart Department of City Planning and Urban Renewal

Bike Parking Design

Interesting new concept parking designs from Desiner Yinnon Lehrer

Re-Cycling

A friend of mine found a mint-condition mountain bike on a skip near his house recently – a prime example of “throwawayism”. According to Social Entrepreneur Ireland award winner Anne Bedos, it’s quite common for people to throw good bikes away. Rather than just get mad about it, Bedos decided to do something – she believes that salvaging abandoned bikes is an environmental imperative, and can also be used as an instrument of social change.

Her bicycle recycling organisation Rothar saves bikes from the scrap heap and works with at-risk people from Dublin youth groups to fix them up. The spruced-up bikes are then sold at a community-based bicycle shop, typically for less than €100. Genius.

Via Irish Times, www.rothar.ie 

Vélib Thievery

Vélib, the Parisian bike-sharing program, is great. But it would be incorrect to pretend that tout est parfait dans le meilleur des mondes (lit. transl.: everything is perfect in the best of worlds). Vandalism and theft has been a problem, and the latest news aren't good: About 80% of the original 20,600 bicycles have been damaged or stolen and the resources required to fix them or replace them are straining the program's budget. There's even a black market for stolen Vélib bikes in Eastern Europe and Africa...

The NYT writes:

Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

The first thing that jumps at me is the reported cost of the bikes. Maybe the New York Times has bad information, but if the bikes really cost that much, that's probably the first thing that should be changed.

JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day. The company maintains 10 repair shops and a workshop on a boat that moves up and down the Seine.JCDecaux reinforced the bicycles' chains and baskets and added better theft protection, strengthening the mechanisms that attach them to the electronic parking docks, since an incompletely secured bike is much easier to steal. But the damage and theft continued.

There will always be a certain amount of vandalism (especially if France doesn't solve its problem with the alienation of the banlieues), but using such expensive bikes makes them a much bigger target for thieves who want to make a buck, and they inflate the replacement costs, making the whole scheme a lot less profitable (and thus sustainable) than it could otherwise be. It must be possible to make rugged bikes for less than that...
In some areas, it can be hard for would-be cyclists to find working bikes. But despite these problems, Vélib has had 63 million rentals since mid-2007 and surveys show that Vélib users are still happy with their experience.
It will be very interesting to see if, as other bike-sharing programs grow, they attract the same kind of problems as Vélib or if this is more of a specifically Parisian problem.

Via NYT + Treehugger

London - Paris Cycle Route

London-Paris cycle route planned for 2012

AFP - A cycle path linking London and Paris will be completed by 2012, French and British local authorities said here on Friday as they formally launched the "Avenue Verte" (Green Avenue) project.

"We want to symbolically link the Tower of London to the Eiffel Tower with an alternative mode of transport to the car that crosses landscapes of great quality," said Didier Marie, head of France's Seine-Maritime department.

The 350-kilometre (218-mile) "Avenue Verte" will use existing national cycle network routes in southern England, passing through the counties of Surrey and Sussex.

Cyclists will need to take a ferry across the Channel from Newhaven to Dieppe.

In France, the cycle path will follow a route through Normandy as it winds its way south to Paris.

The route will incorporate stretches of disused railway lines as well as using regular roads where cycles will have their own dedicated lanes.

"These (existing dedicated cycle paths) were built for tourism but we quickly noticed they were being used by people going to work," said Matthew Lock, a local councillor from the English county of East Sussex.

Amphibious Velomobile

From an ambitious inventor in the Czech Republic, we bring you the HEPAV — the Human Powered Electric Amphibious Vehicle.

How does it work? Simply put, the HEPAV 1.1 is a recumbent tricycle with electric assist and a buoyant shell that allows riders to drive directly into and out of ponds, rivers and lakes. Inventor David Buchwaldek says he designed the HEPAV 1.1 to be like a kayak in that it can be transported by vehicle but ridden directly into the water. Video proves the viability of Buchwaldek’s design, but it remains unclear how practical it is. The HEPAV 1.1 seems pretty slow in the water at this point.

Unfortunately, the HEPAV 1.1 is still far too expensive to build to be commercially viable, but that may not be the point of the vehicle. Buchwaldek’s process and thinking is enlightening in itself and worth a trip to his website,esoteric-david.eu. Among other projects documented there are a human-powered airplane, an innovative bike rack available for purchase, and appropriately ‘esoteric’ advice like Life Tips and Tricks #25. “Progress is the realization of utopias.”

+ HEPAV 1.1