Comments on: Future City Mobility: London 2030

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:11:55 +0000

There're some cool designs at http://www.ibdcaward.org
It's an international bike design competition held in Taiwan.

By: Rüdiger

Rüdiger — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Yawn. A bit blue sky? To say the least. Yet another "concept" bike that is impractical and breaks no new ground in innovation or aesthetics.

By: MonkAre

MonkAre — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:59:14 +0000

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:06:51 +0000

oh no. not another hubless wheeled bike.

By: Human_Amp

Human_Amp — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:43:33 +0000

Fabulous – and most inspiring to create a better future – well done !

FWIW Seymour-Powell (who gave the design award at the RCA) are great designers and especially inspiring design thinkers … check out their recent lectures … well worth a watch to be inspired to make the world better … (fun to watch too !)

Richard Seymour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO4r3CZx6G0

Dick Powell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMRrI0lQ0Po

They may just inspire about design rather than raise heckles ! …. Mark

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:29:29 +0000

Ooops.

Well, having actually looked at the images, it looks like Ron was right.

Charging batteries on a bicycle is a terrible, terrible idea. It would make pedalling so much less efficient. I like my plan more. More digital, less physical.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:44:23 +0000

...I think the idea may have been that the more you ride your bike, the bigger the discount you get when you do decide to use other forms of public transportation, rewarding you for being mostly-green.

Or maybe not. But that's what I think it _should_ have meant, anyway, hahah.

Also: let it be known that I am really, really, really sick of hubless wheel concepts.

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:47:46 +0000

Very interesting. Mr. Walgren needs to work for Hollywood. I don't know how many innerable times I have seen folks suggesting we can easily power a double decker battery electric powered bus aimed to cruise at 40-60mph while carrying several people and equipment. Its all well and good to dream about that, but just to put things into perspective, battery powered buses today are still some of the least reliable of the fleet. You need hundreds of pounds of batteries to give you the same energy as that of a gallon of gasoline and its very costly to operate these. On top of that, considering human muscular efficiency is around 25%, each person will have to produce huge wattage to put anything useful into the bus. And if not a lot of people are riding on the bus anyway, it is economically unfeasible to operate it and I think pointless for a few to produce that much energy for a 'currency' system, just to ride the bus.

I'm curious, why doesn't Marten suggest that you save your energy and jsut ride a bike for that distance, instead of having to go through all this conversion business, using it as energy currencies and what not.

By: GeekGuyAndy

GeekGuyAndy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:22:54 +0000

I'd whine that there isn't a rack, but heck, there isn't even a waterbottle holder!

Maybe this design helps for their complicated mobility system, but I'd love to see some designers come up with bikes that are more functional. How about better ways to carry gear or making a more efficient drivetrain? There's just too many "designs" that are just infeasible and made to look pretty instead of being functional.