Future City Mobility: London 2030

Marten Wallgren is a vehicle design student at the Royal College of Art in London. He was part of a group, along with Il Choi, David Seesing, and Miika Hekkinen, who recently won a Seymour Powell award for best concept in the “Future City Mobility” design competition. The group’s concept consists of multiple vehicles, including a bus and taxi, which were designed to integrate with a specially designed bicycle/electric scooter. In a blog post about the competition, Marten explains:

“The brief was basically to look at the traffic situation in London for the year 2030. Our concept was to create a car-free-zone in the central of London, called London Garden. Inside this zone we developed a system created around bicycles, allowing a special designed bicycle/scooter to be well integrated with the infrastructure as well as becoming a part of the interior of the buses and taxis. Inside London Garden, the users have more awareness of the individual energy consumption. In fact, the energy that you create while biking is used as a currency while docking the bicycle into the bus or taxi.”

About the need for a transportation solution in future London, Marten went on to say:

“The congestion will get heavier and the infrastructure is not very adaptable. Old historical buildings can’t be moved to create wider streets and to make people pay a fortune to enter the city core may not be social sustainable solution. It’s time we start thinking about alternative solutions.”

Click through to Marten’s post to see more of their concept illustrations for the project. The concept is a bit blue sky at this point, but there are certainly some interesting ideas. Congratulations on the award Marten, Il, David, and Miika.


Posted

in

,

by

Comments

9 responses to “Future City Mobility: London 2030”

  1. GeekGuyAndy Avatar
    GeekGuyAndy

    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.

  2. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    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. 🙂

  3. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    …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.

  4. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    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.

  5. Human_Amp Avatar
    Human_Amp

    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

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    oh no. not another hubless wheeled bike.

  7. MonkAre Avatar
    MonkAre

    It’s so nice site. We love to see more on this site. Keep on updating… MonkAreRee Bali ***

  8. Rüdiger Avatar
    Rüdiger

    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.

  9. Julie Avatar
    Julie

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

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *