BIKE INTERMODAL - Multi-modal Integration of Cycling Mobility through Product and Process Innovations in Bicycle Design
Overview
Background & policy context:
The Bike Intermodal project aimed to be a 'third pillar' to support the overall motivation to use low impact transportation (bicycle, pedestrian, public) more widely in the urban environment.
This comprised taking a 'product approach' to complement existing infrastructural and policy approaches such as establishing bike lanes and incentivising carpooling.
Bike Intermodal assumed that technological advancements, providing newer, better, higher performing products can do as much as — and sometimes more than — persuasion, obligations or deterrence. In addition, product development can generate economic prosperity.
Objectives:
The project’s main objective was to create a super-compact, super-lightweight electrically power-assisted 'folding' bicycle for intermodal use in combination with other public and private forms of transportation.
The bicycle needed to:
- Fold into a flat package, a fraction of the volume occupied by the current breed of folding bikes
- Weigh half as much as current, non-power-assisted bicycles. This technological objective is instrumental to achieve transportation goals such as:
- Increasing the number of urban trips by bicycles
- Increasing the efficiency of public transport and their users
Methodology:
The project sought to draw upon innovations in the way a bicycle is built, using proven and cost-effective technologies commonly used in the automotive industry, but never applied in the bicycle industry.
This approach would help to:
- Use half the amount of materials and energy used in current bicycles while using one quarter of the components
- Take advantage of robotic algorithms that allow automatic opening-collapsing (cabrio-roof style), which is much more compact and practical to carry aboard public transport.
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