Comments

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  Maria B.

  14 years ago

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  At first glance, I thought "Awesome!". As a bike commuter, whizzing above traffic and taking direct paths to my destination sounded like a big improvement. Plus, it looks thrilling.
  
  Then I thought what I like most about biking: freedom. Taking a detour through a park to enjoy the greenery, impulsively stopping at a new shop that I hadn't noticed before, pulling over to chat with a friend, hopping up on a sidewalk to get around a bus or pizza delivery guy, etc. Being able to do whatever, whenever, is what I enjoy most about biking and being constricted to a rail would negate all that pleasure.

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  James

  14 years ago

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  Interesting advantage: because of its design, an individual who doesn't know how to ride a bike could still use the aerial bike line.

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  Andrew Leinonen

  14 years ago

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  As an outspoken bicycling advocate and an industrial designer, I am going to be the first to say that I think this is a terrible, terrible idea.
  
  What we need is not a brand new form of infrastructure of dubious safety and practicality, and definite complication and expense; we just need a tiny fraction of the space on roadways dedicated to alternative forms of transportation.
  
  Design isn't going to save the world in isolation, and as sexy as a crazy new kind of bike travel is, developing this idea isn't anywhere near as significant as modest lobbying in developed channels towards defined urban planning goals.

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  charlie

  14 years ago

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  what happens when your chain falls off?

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  mykle

  14 years ago

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  Yet another well-drawn but unbuildable bike "concept". Any bicyclist can immediately point out huge flaws in it. The most obvious is that it the handlebar attachment won't work for 90% of bicycles; likewise, the width of track and height of side-stays only allow one size of bike.
  Also, it's incredibly dangerous. A breakdown of any kind on the track would be a disaster: path blocked, bicyclist can't escape on foot & is stranded in midair over a busy intersection. If anyone ever falls off of this, they are immediately crushed under heavy traffic.
  But most of all: by the time you've acquired the right-of-way and built the towers for this structure, you've incurred half of the planning, work & expense of building a proper suspension bridge with a proper path. This concept is really not that much cheaper than a normal bridge.
  Finally: why should human-powered travelers have to put in the extra work & take all this risk? The car drivers have gas engines for power and giant metal boxes to protect them -- perhaps they could be asked to climb a treacherous floating overpass instead?

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  Ken J

  14 years ago

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  The inherent danger of this is far too likely to squash this concept. A lot of liability will be put on the coupling mechanism as well.

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  Dumitru Brinzan

  14 years ago

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  Wow, great concept!
  
  The fumes problem can be solved by wearing some sort of small mask, not just a helmet.
  
  As to operate this, it could be done just like a bus / metro, with pre-established routes and stops. One operator on each end of a route, who observes via wi-fi the amount of people on a track as well as the weight ratio.
  
  What this idea now needs is a couple of good engineers and some funding.
  
  Damn, i'm almost speechless :)

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