The TrioBike revisited

About two years ago, I mentioned the Danish designed TrioBike in a post. I liked it a lot when I first saw it and I still think that the TrioBike, which has an optional convertible front carrier for kids, is a very nice cargo bike/trike design. I noticed recently that the Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog has a very good post about the TrioBike, which features a few great photos of the bike in use on the streets of Copenhagen. The CBCB post also points out the three-in-one nature of the design:

“You can transport your kids to kindergarten or school in the cargo bike incarnation and drop them off. Instead of riding the cargo bike around all day you merely pull out a front wheel from under the cargo bay, detach the front forks from the cargo and pop on the front wheel. Off you go, riding to work on a proper bike. If you fancy going for a walk, you can merely use the cargo part as a stroller.”

If you want to see for yourself how easily it converts, take a look at this video on the company’s website.

Of course, cargo bikes that can carry kids in the front are not new. Check out these much more traditional cargo bike designs on the Dutch Bike Seattle blog. You can even buy a Dutch Bakfiets (translates to box bike in English) from them if you like.

Photo credit: Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog (Cycleliciousness)

Pedal-Powered Snowplow

Some of you may have already seen this picture of a pedal powered snowplow on Trek’s “1 World 2 Wheels” blog a few weeks ago. This machine looks pretty interesting in the still picture, but you really need to see it in action to get the full effect (click the video link from this story on a Wisconsin news station’s website). It was designed and built by Kevin Blake, who works by day as an engineer at Trek. In the video, he talks a bit about the construction of his recumbent snowplow bike, which has a handbuilt steel frame but is also made from old bike parts, a salvaged Craftsman riding lawnmower, and a couple of snow shovels. Pretty cool idea; it almost makes me wish I lived somewhere that gets some snowfall …almost. I should also mention that Kevin was a runner up in the “Innovate or Die” contest with this machine. He didn’t get the $5,000 grand prize, but apparently he did win a Specialized bike (just what every Trek engineer needs I am sure).

While I am posting, I want to mention bike content that I spotted on a couple of Industrial Design websites this morning. Core 77 has gallery coverage of the North American Handbuilt Bicycle Show. It is great to see that the show is growing and being covered at sites like Core this year. I also saw an interesting bike rack design in a recent designboom post. It looks like the lock hole lines up pretty well with the top tube on the bike in the photos, but I wonder how well it would work with variety of bikes of different types and sizes.

Photo credit: Trek “1 World 2 Wheels” blog.

Share the Road message on buses

I hope you all don’t mind a bit of an off topic post today, but I am hoping that a few of you readers can help me out. Many of you know that I live in Greenville, South Carolina. I have mentioned several times before that this town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountians is a great place to live and ride. As the advocacy chairperson for the Greenville Spinners Bicycle Club, I am interested in doing what I can to make this area an even better place to ride a bike.

One idea that I would like to see implemented here in Greenville is a “Share the Road” message on our local buses (we just recently got bike racks on all of our buses, so this seems like a good next step). Our City government just took over the administration of the transit system and will be repainting all the buses soon, so now is a good time to really push this idea. I took the picture shown here of the back of a MARTA bus in Atlanta not too long ago. I like this ad, which was done by the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign, because it not only asks drivers to share the road with cyclists, but it features a real person on the bike. In my opinion, a real human face does a better job of reinforcing the message to watch out for cyclists on the roads than does a little stylized icon of a bicycle.

Since this blog has readers all over the world, many of you living in bike friendly cities, I thought it would be a good idea to pose the question; Do any of you have “Share the Road” message on buses, bus stops, etc in your town? In particular, I would love to hear success stories about such programs in other cities. If any of you could let me know about them with a comment or an email, I would greatly appreciate it.

While you are at it, don’t just limit ideas to the “Share the Road” message on public transit. I have seen other really good ideas for spreading the message, like the “and we bike” campaign in Washington County Oregon. I would love to hear about other creative ways that cities have effectively spread the message to share the road. Thanks in advance for any links that you all can provide. I’ll be back to bicycle design related posts next week.

Electronic Dura-Ace

As a comment to yesterday’s post pointed out, I linked to pictures on Belgium Knee Warmers, but I did not specifically point out the shots of the electronic Dura-Ace shifting system that was seen on the bike of Gerolsteiner's Fabian Wegmann. Shimano’s electronic Dura-Ace group has been in development for a while (check out this nearly 2 year old Cycling News tech article if you haven’t seen it). Still it is interesting to see the system being tested on a Pro bike in the Tour of California this year. From the looks of it, I would say that Shimano must be getting pretty close to releasing the group. If you are interested, you can read more about electronic Dura-Ace on a Cycling News tech post from yesterday.

Of course the bigger question this brings up is; do we really need electronic shifting? Mavic tried it a couple times in the 90’s, first with Zap and then with… whatever that other one was... yeah, Mektronic, that was it. Campy has been ahead of Shimano in their development of an electronic system as well (electronic Record has even showed up on bikes in the Tour de France a couple times), which probably explains why we are seeing such refined prototypes from Shimano at this point. I could go on and on with my thoughts on the benefits and disadvantages of electronic shifting, but I have the flu right now and I just don’t feel up to it. Instead, I’ll just get back to my coffee and cold medicine and leave the discussion up to you. What do you think? Are electronic shifting systems just an attempt to complicate a simple machine, or do they offer real advantages for racing bikes? What about beyond racing? Am I going to have to change the batteries on my commuter in a few years? Oh wait, it’s a single speed, probably not.

Photo credit: BKW

Tour of California

It has been a bit of a theme lately, but I doubt that I will spend much time looking for wooden or bamboo bikes on the web this week. Like many of you, my attention this week will be on the Tour of California. Also like many of you, I am not in California to see the race in person, so I have to rely on web coverage to get my daily cycling fix. The first site I visited this morning was KWC’s Spare Cycles blog to see his pictures from yesterday’s prologue. He had a few nice pictures of the various team’s time trial bikes before the race (like the shot seen here). I hope to see more nice shots of the bikes of the TOC from Ken as the week progresses. Belgium Knee Warmers is another great place to see shots of the bikes. They have some good ones up already and I look forward to seeing more.

Another site that I will be following this week is Cyclelicious. Fritz lives in California and is covering the race on his blog. He also has quite a few race pictures on Flickr already. Speaking of Flickr, I will also be checking the 2008 TOC photo pool this week to see new pictures that are added as the race goes on. I won’t just be relying on pictures for daily race coverage though. I listened to the Fredcast coverage of the prologue this morning and I look forward to more daily coverage from that podcast.

Of course, in addition to blogs and podcasts, I will be following the race on Velonews, Cycling News, and Pez. In particular, I’ll be checking the Cycling News tech section for coverage of the bikes of the Tour of California. If I see anything that really stands out, I’ll be sure to pass it along. If you are at the race and you see anything interesting, be sure to let me know about it.

Photo credit: KWC.org photos

More wooden bikes

In response to my last post about wooden bikes, I received a few links from readers that I want to pass along.

Angel sent me the picture that you see here of a bike from Italy made by Tino Sano.

Murray spotted a similar Italian made wooden bike that was displayed on a Mediterranean cruise ship’s art gallery. He also pointed out a link to the designer’s site.

In a comment, Antii pointed out the work of Saku Holma. Check out the pictures and drawings of Saku’s bent wood recumbents. I really like a few of these.

Mr. Beattie mentioned the Renova wooden bikes, which were recently shown at NAHMBS in Portland. Unlike most of the wooden bikes that I post, these are actually for sale and available in the U.S. Read more about the Renova bikes here and here.

Finally, I’ll mention a book that I spotted in Velo Vision. The book Holzfahrrad im Eigenbau by Michael Heinzelmann tells you how to build your own wooden bike. You have to be able to read German though, so it wouldn’t do me much good.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Heart shaped frame

I don’t have time for much of a post today. Since it is Valentine’s Day though, I will at least pass along this picture of a chopper with a heart shape in the frame. This photo was used on the cover of Momentum Magazine issue 26 to accompany their “Love on two wheels” article.

I noticed this picture last night in an ad that appeared in back issue of Velo Vision magazine. I check their website pretty often, but Peter sent me a few issues of the print magazine to look through (which I greatly apreciate). There is a lot of great content in those magazines, so you will probably see a few posts that reference some of the articles in the near future. Stay tuned.

Photo credit: Clancy Dennehy for Momemtum

Bamboo Composite frame at NAHMBS

I have not found the time to look at many photos from The North American Handmade Bicycle Show yet, but here is something that caught my eye at first glance. Longtime readers may remember my post about Brano Meres and his homemade carbon bike. Brano was at the show this year with a couple of new road bikes, one of which is pictured here. The bamboo composite bike looks a lot like a carbon frame, but it is made from bamboo fibers instead. Just like a carbon frame, the fibers are embedded in a plastic polymer to create a shaped composite frame. Brano points out that the frame is too flexible at this point, but it is certainly an interesting idea. Read more about it at Cyclelicious.

The other road bike that Brano debuted at the show had a frame and seatmast made from carbon fiber truss. You can see that bike here, or check out both road bikes on Brano’s site.

Of course, there were many other interesting things in Portland, so I am anxious to take a look at more show coverage when I have some free time. Fritz was at the show, so there is good coverage on Cyclelicious and in his Flickr stream. Brandon 448 also has a great set of Flickr images from the show that I want to look through when I can. Bicycling magazine covered the show and has a wrap-up post. The guys from Bike Hugger have some video to check out. I am sure that Bike Portland has good show coverage as well, but the site seems to be down at the moment. I have no doubt that there are many other good sources I should check as well. Let me know about any that I am missing.

photo credit: Cyclelicious

Demon downhill bike

Posts which feature student designs are always popular here on Bicycle Design. I expect this one to be no exception. Ricardo Malachowski, who graduated from Elisava School of Design in Barcelona last year, designed this downhill bike as his graduation project in the Master of Transport Vehicle Design program. The hard points of the bike were based on the existing Cannondale Judge, but as you can see the look of the bike is all new.

If you are not too scared of creepy slime covered aliens, check out the video that Ricardo created for his Demon concept bike. The animation of the bike is nice and shows off some of the complex surfacing that went into the frame design. You can also check out a few other bike projects, as well as other work by Ricardo, at his online portfolio. Take a look; it is worth browsing through his Coroflot site to see some of his development sketches. Nice work Ricardo.

Bent Ply bike sketches

A few weeks ago I posted a bike, sent to me by a reader, which featured a frame partially constructed from laminated wood. Peter from Velo Vision recently sent me an email and identified the mystery bike as the work of James Coleman, a design student at Loughborough University in the UK. When I first saw the bent ply bike concept, it reminded me of a few thumbnail sketches that I did a couple years ago. The message from Peter reminded me again of the old sketches, so I decided that I would dig them up to share (it has been a while since I posted any of my own sketches on this blog unless you count the three bikes in the header).

I did these thumbnails one day while I was looking at Alvar Aalto chair designs from the 1920’s in a furniture book (and in that book is where I found the sketches). You have probably noticed that all of the classic bent ply chair designs take advantage of the flex that is inherent in the material. Laminated plywood is very strong, but it does flex in the direction perpendicular to the individual plys. As I browsed though the pages of chairs from Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and others, I wondered why so many bikes that I see designed from plywood have the material oriented in a way that it does not provide any suspension for the rider. The Jano bike and the Sandwich bike, both of which I have posted before are nice designs, but they are examples of bikes in which the orientation of the plywood would not provide any vertical compliance.

Anyway, my idea was to create a frame from two curved pieces of laminated hardwood so that the frame would have a natural suspension effect. It might even be possible to add a carbon ply in the middle as at least one skateboard manufacturer has done in recent years. As you can see, the sketches are rough and I haven’t given the idea much thought since the day I did them, but I think they could be possibly developed into something. There certainly would be several challenges to overcome in the design and development of a bike like this. The plywood “top tube” would need to be wide enough to provide the necessary strength, but at the same time it would need to be narrow enough that knee clearance would not be an issue. The same issue would apply to the Q factor at the bottom bracket and don’t even get me started on the chain and seat stays. There would be many other challenges as well, but it would be a fun idea to take further if I had the time. Of course, I probably wouldn’t be posting the idea here if I thought it was really worth pursuing (does the world really need another wooden urban bike?). Still, I think there would be a niche market for a bike like this. I could see this bike, with a natural birch ply frame and a Shimano Alfine grouppo, for sale in a furniture catalog like DWR. Maybe I will clean up the sketches and do a quick rendering to post one day; probably not though, so don’t hold your breath. Then again, maybe I should do the rendering just for the person who recently left the following anonymous comment; “great. another wood bike. i have news for you- wood is NOT a good material for bikes. enough already!” Yep, this post is just for you.

Rest in peace Sheldon

Just over a year ago, I heard that Sheldon Brown had primary-progressive MS and could no longer ride a bike. I was saddened to just learn from Fritz at Cyclelicious that Sheldon passed away last night.

I never actually met Sheldon Brown, but I have known of him though his webpages since the mid nineties. His fixed gear pages were probably some of the first bike related websites that I ever bookmarked, and I still reference his many bike related pages today. I hope that Sheldon’s sites will stay up as a tribute to someone who gave so much to the world of cycling. Captain Bike freely contributed a ton of knowledge to many of us. He will definitely be missed by many.

Compressor pneumatic bike

I always like it when industrial design students and recent grads send me renderings and descriptions of their bicycle related school projects. Not only is it interesting to see their concepts, but also those submissions make for pretty easy posts on my part (a good thing for busy Fridays like today). A couple weeks ago, James Breaux, a recent ID graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, sent me his concept for a bicycle powered by a pneumatic system. In an effort to keep this post easy, I’ll let James explain the idea in his own words:

"The Concept: A pneumatic system that replaces the chain. With every crank of the pedals, compressed air is pushed through the chain stays, which then turns the rear wheel, similar to the cannonade jack knife concept. However, one main difference in my concept (other than the pneumatic/hydraulic difference) is that when the rider is coasting downhill the bike will store up air inside the main chamber of the frame through a flywheel system. This also acts as an air brake and the stored compressed air can be released while pedaling uphill as an added boost (not meant for long propulsions or to replace actually pedaling). The frame of the bike can be manufactured through a process called super forming, which is essentially vacuum forming metal that is heated to very high temperatures, the tubing of the bike can be made lighter and completely air tight.

Here are some stats that an engineering professor helped me come up with for the bike

- A 180lb person riding a 30lb bike can travel 50 meters at a 5% incline with the bike filled at 20psi working at a 25% efficiency rate

- It takes about an hour to fill 1.5 cubic feet of air at 50psi with a low voltage compress that is rated at 1000th of a horsepower

-A human can put out between a 10th to 1 horsepower. This means the frame could refill the air compression in 10-15 minutes through coasting or pedaling.”