My office recently bought a couple nifty Brompton fold-up bikes for the staff which are pretty cool but what about a bending bike that becomes it’s own lock? We’ll just put aside the thought of what might happen should you take a spill. Some text from Design Boom:

Design student kevin scott designed this unusual bending bike that not only folds up tightly but can be used to locks itself up. The de montfort university industrial design student designed the bike to make its safer and easier to lock up your bike in the city. His design looks like a normal bike when in riding mode, but a simple level on the frame triggers the frame to go from rigid to pliable. A ratchet system built into the frame enables the bike to simple be bent around a pole fitting one side of the handle bar into a closure under the seat, locking the bike in place. The design just won runner-up for the business design centre new designer of the year award at new designers. Scott will be using his prize money to further develop the bike, building more iterations for a full testing of its viability.

images via Design Boom

On my way to run some errands the other day I drove down a road that had obviously been driven on while the striping had still been fresh because the white on one side suddenly started weaving all over the road. It was interesting because one, I continuously like to think about tracing pathways and two, it fascinated me to think of who it was that drove over the fresh paint and why they couldn’t seem to keep a straight line. A getaway vehical perhaps?

It reminded me of a recent post earlier this month from Abitare regarding some bikers who decided to throw a several gallons of colorful paint at the entrances to the intersection at the busy Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin. The cars then would drive through these massive puddles of color and make lines with their tires through the intersection that would trace their movement as they went on their way. While this doesn’t trace the total movement of cars, it makes for a pretty intersection piece at least that helps to gain a feel for the specific traffic intersections and flow.

This reminds me of a previous post on active paths and desire lines which referenced a little invention for the bicycle called the Contrail. The idea behind this invention is to have a device that stays with the bike to map out it’s path in real time versus being place specific and requiring the user to pass through. Instead the Contrail helps to map the path instead of the space.

What I think would be really interesting is to map out vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian in a manner like the Contrail in a way that could be stored as data but seen visually, even if only online, to help understand how the different modes interact, where problem areas are and where it looks and feels as though the three work together harmoniously. That and it would be really nifty to look at.

images via Abitare

We all know that Copenhagen is the bicycle capital of the world. They have such a fantastic infrastructure setup for the hoards of cyclists that they are now able to begin focusing on the friendly little details of urban bicycle life. What’s the latest and greatest on the streets? A little something to lean on.

The new double railing system has tapped into a little subconcious human behavorial detail like the Paul Bennett from IDEO discussed in a TED lecture about designing for people. Basically, observe what people do and design for that. The natural behavior when it comes to bicyclists can be observed anywhere there is a pole, a person or just anything at all to lean on at a traffic light.

And not only lean, but put up a foot so they don’t have to get off the seat and maybe can even have something to push off on.

This bicycle friendly detail popped up in Copenhagen on a little island midway between crossing a street. For the people that get stuck on the island from a red light can grab onto the bar and put a foot up while they wait for the green. It’s also very nice and it reads, “Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here… and thank you for cycling in the city.”

This friendly little detail is part of Copenhagen’s “Hi, Cyclist!” behavorial campaign developed by Mikael Colville-Andersen, also author of the blog Copenhagenize. He describes it as, “a behavioural campaign and a communications template with which the Bicycle Office can communicate with the cycling citizens. The average Copenhagener who rides to work or school each day doesn’t really pay much attention to bicycle infrastructure or even bicycles. They just ride.”

Mikael continues on to say, “We all have a sense of pride about the city in which we live. Here in Copenhagen we love to hear that we’ve been voted the world’s most liveable city and things like that. I figured that our cycling citizens should be made aware of all the positive aspects of our bike culture, in order to stimulate that inherent civic pride in relation to our cycling life.”

It’s such a simple detail, this double bar system for leaning, resting and pushing off, but it works so well because it taps into the very thing people want without overdoing it and throwing in any unnecessary bells and whistles. It also gives back to the cyclists that make the city what it is today and the friendly note offers that thanks and spreads the love.

images via zakka/mikael, copenhagenize

A “desire line” is the preferred path which one takes to get from one place to another, often referring to the worn path through grass, shrubs or any other location which was not designed or designated for pedestrian traffic. Chances are there is a sidewalk nearby but has been considered the less direct route and therefore is the least perferred option. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what the desire lines and active patterns might look on a city-wide scale.

While visiting MFO Park near Zürich, Switzerland there was a very interesting phenomenon, a desire line that quite literally glowed. Even though the park acts similar to a plaza in that there are no paths, the whole site is meant for walking, there was a very distinct path that many people took on a continual basis. This connection is between the public transit and a residential portion of the neighborhood which the park essentially was placed right in the middle of. So the people just cut through the park and slip past wall-like clipped hedges that border the edge of the site.

images via Lisa Town

The way people navigate through space is such a huge piece of the design puzzle, it shapes cities and forms experiences. I often thought it would be really interesting to be able to track people in a more visual way in how they go about their day. I wonder what kind of patterns would form as their lines crossed large spaces, cut corners and brought to light the eaiest way in the pedestrians mind to get from point A to point B. Especially now that there is a greater shift from the vehicular and more focus on those on foot or wheels. How do these people move through the urban fabric in a vehicular world? What could their paths tell us about how a city’s infrastructure could potentially be restructured to better fit the needs of the people now and in the future?

I wrote recently in reference to an article on Copenhagenize about the bike counter. This is a really interesting device but while it may explain the chapter about how many people use a specific path and the patterns of time and day usage, such a device wouldn’t explain the whole story of perhaps what other paths people would like to use. It would be really interesting if there was a way to be able to track people ithat was effortless and allowed them to go about their typical day while still furthering the experiment. How cool would it be to deploy such an experiment and, after say a week, have the city turned into a life size urban traffic diagram?

image via contrail

Pepin Gelardi has thought of this as well and came up with something called Contrail as part of Design21’s Power To The Pedal” design competition. From Contrail’s website: “Contrail is a tool for developing bicycle communities. As you ride, contrail leaves a faint chalk line behind your bike. The goal is to encourage a new cycle of biking participation by allowing the biking community to leave a unique mark on the road and to reclaim this crucial shared space.”

Contrail points out an interesting note in that by actively placing lines where cyclists go, cars become aware of the use and the hope is that they would then become more aware and cautious of the cyclists. In addition, this could spur on more cyclists to take to the road and follow the masses with the feeling of safety in numbers.

image via contrail

One interesting thought might be to tap into the power of gps devices and conduct an experiment that tracks people with these devices for a period of time, analyzing the patterns that emerge from the data. It would be really interesting to track not only bikes but pedestrians as well to get a sense of how the entire city operates and even more important, how it could potentially operate even better.

image via New York Times

Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is no stranger to the biking scene as he’s been pedaling around New York for thirty years. He wrote an article in the Times recently about the book Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities by Portland-based author Jeff Mapes.

Byrne agrees that a revolution is coming but that it also isn’t here quite yet. Since he’s been using a bike as his primary mode of transportation for three decades, he’s seen the changes first hand and how it’s gone from only the people that have to bike to adding the people that want to bike and actually enjoy it as a mode of transportation in an urban area.

image via Portlandize

Many cities have made changes to accomadate those on wheels like here in Portland with new additions like the big green bike box and trading out vehicular parking for bike corrals.

But not everyone has taken the leap, more often than not, people still look at biking as a recreational outing like a weekend trail ride and not as a mode of transportation. And many bikers feel that drivers only tolerate bikes and still don’t fully know how to live with them in harmony on the streets. The more people on bikes creates safety in numbers, which helps, but there’s still a ways to go both in infrastructure and the mental shift from what is currently still predominantely a car culture.

Also, here’s an older video from the time of the design competition New York City held for the design of some new bicycle racks. David Byrne, a judge for the competition, decided he would make some of his own, as seen in the picture at the top of this post, which he had made and installed in various parts of the city:

Everyone has told me that biking in Europe is a must-do experience and everyone at my office kept asking me when I was going to buy a bike. Everyone here travels by bike and not just for fun or exercise but as a primary mode of transportation. There are already so many people on bikes that I can hardly imagine what it will be like in the summer when the tourists finally roll in. But before that happens, we decided to take advantage of the bikes allowed to us with our apartment and set out on a ride.

We grabbed the bikes and first headed to the nearby town of Nußdorf to grab a few items from The Real or as they call it here, The European K-Mart. After that we headed to Meersberg for a round trip of about 25 km. It was an amazingly beautiful day without a cloud in the sky and the bike path went along the lake the whole time while going through rolling farmlands and small medieval towns that seemed to be out of an old story book.

We also went through a couple resort towns that were completely shut up and deserted since the tourist season hasn’t kicked up yet. Of course, it was closed up with good reason. Even though the sun was shining it was so cold that a layer of ice had formed in the harbor of the towns. In Meersberg several people were out walking and enjoying the sunshine, but not without heavy coat, hat and gloves.

image via Lisa Town

A castle on the hillside welcomed us into town and we stopped for a break at a fabulous little restaurant on the lake. We shared a salami pizza, “the best spinach cream soup” (as the waiter told us, very matter-of-factly and without so much as a smile, funny guy) and ended it all with warm, homeade apple struedel in a vanilla bean sauce. It was a beautiful day and we were lucky enough to ride back as the sun was beginning to set over the mountains with beautiful colors reflecting on the lake. This area truly is a beautiful place and it’s times like this when I realize how lucky we are to be here.