Danish Bicycle Design in New York?
A Copenhagen design company, Goodmorning Technology, are developing a design for a new City Bike for New York City, in the style of the Vélib' Bike Share Programme in Paris.
The drawing above is from an article in the Danish paper Politiken, showing a rough idea of the design. Ida Marie Nissen and Mads Kjøller Damkjær, from Goodmorning Technology, are working on a total solution, not just a bike design, which they'll be delivering to NYC's Parks Commissioner Adrien Benepe before Christmas.
They are focusing on designing a bike made of sustainable materials as well as working out the entire implementation of the scheme. This is where it gets tricky, according to Ida Marie Nissen.
"The mere fact that the sidewalks aren't owned by the city, but rather are private property, makes it quite a challenge when you have to find space for bike racks. There are so many barriers and hurdles that we don't experience here at home, but that we have to take into consideration when doing the strategic planning", said Nissen to Politiken.
It's worth noting that in Paris, they use by and large street space, not sidewalk space.
"We don't know if the project will be green-lighted but we can only hope that the city bike ends up resembling our original design", adds Mads Damkjær. They've designed a robust bicycle with lights, reflectors and a lock mechanism. The enclosed wheels are 'prime advertisment surfaces', as Damkjær calls them. [Thank god the style-savvy Parisians have so far avoided unattractive ads on their Vélib's].
The design also includes a helmet, which is quite odd considering the fact that no-one is going to wear a helmet worn by many other people. This is the main hindrance to bike share programmes in helmet-oriented places.
It's a major problem in Australia, with their helmet laws. The Age has this little article and there is an analysis of the problem here.
Here's a fun article about what lovely diseases you can get if you share a helmet - and other sports gear. Barf-o-rama.
Apart from that strange glitch in the design, the bike looks great and practical and I, for one, would love to see a Copenhagen-designed city bike in Det Store Æble.
9 comments:
I would be too excited to be picky if I saw a functioning bike rental program in the US!
Kind of like a desperate lover, I suppose. ;)
All this makes me wonder how the Bycykel prpgramme is going back home? Funny, when you think of it, that it doesn't get nearly as much press as the Parisian Vélib' bikes that it predates by many years. Are the bycykler widely used or is transport biking so much a part of the scene in Copenhagen that not as many people (proportionally speaking) use it?
only tourists use them, christopher. we all have our own bikes.
but there is a next generation on the way where the bikes will be more modern, like the Velib.
I kind of suspected as much; one of the consequences of bikes being part of everyday life, just like using saddle covers for advertising. Not much news on the Bycykel web site, unfortunately...
One thing that I wonder about is where people store their bikes? Here in Montreal, at least in the densely populated central neighbourhoods with their typical outside staircases, you see bikes locked up on residential streets on first floor balconies (like my Kickbike), staircase railings (like my hybrid pedal bike), front yard fences, or traffic sign poles on the sidewalk. (The last two tend to get mangled by sidewalk snowplows if left there over winter though...)
In Leiden and Amsterdam, I noticed people would bring their bikes inside and store them in the front hallway of their building so you would really have to squeeze by them to get inside. But Dutch front hallways seem to be a bit wider than ours. Where do Copenhageners keep their bikes when at home?
@ Christopher: David Hembrow has mentioned it on his blog before, and that is that every home has to have a certain ammount of storage space (big enough for a couple of bikes, but also for other purposes) in practice most people use it as a shed where they also store their bikes. In older neighbourhoods back yards are used. Or sometimes the hallway.
I have a blog post about it, christopher.
Well, I guess I have my answer from A to Z! Thanks Anneke and Zakk... I guess I missed that particular posting.
Of course there will be room for advertising. France has a high taxation rate that is not broken up into Federal / State taxes. All of the money goes into the same 'pool' and is controlled by one governmental group (lower costs for administration?). Here, we have money parceled out into multiple piles- city, state and federal, and they all point to the other to get something payed for. So public bike programs can get very complicated. The easiest way to cut a lot of that complication is by getting private money to foot the bill, thus advertising, the easiest public money out there.
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