Pedal Powered Vehicles Workshop

[eddiec]

Just stumbled across this article in the Melbourne Times:

"Wheels of Change"

"The way RMIT academic Mick Douglas sees it, pedal powered vehicles could be taxis, delivery vehicles and the ideal transport for some mobile businesses. But the traditional two-wheeled bicycle may not be up to those tasks. That is the problem Douglas is inviting bike-minded folk from across Melbourne to grapple with during a series of workshops starting late this month. The aim is to design prototype vehicles that can push the humble treadly into new territory. International pedal-power designers Shreya Gadepalli (India) and Matteo Marignoni (US will also join in. For details, visit http://pedalpvw.blogspot.com"

Sounds interesting, if anybody's interested... But I'm a bit bemused as I'm sure I've seen plenty of bike designs for all of those tasks in places around the world and through history, so curious as to the need for new 'prototypes'...

 

[[email protected]]

Perhaps the article uses "Traditional two-wheeled bicycle" to refer to
the "Safety bicycle" style frame. Probably a butcher's bike or similar
semi-Safety cargo bike qualifies as "non-traditional" for a journalist.

Incidentally, there are quite a number of good electric-back-up
velo-ute or velo-lorry designs out there, in addition to all the quads,
trikes, long jons, truks, butchers, trailers and panniered "safety"
bikes. And a recent wave of cargo recumbants too.

I'd be well chuffed if the boffins can produce a very inexpensive
standardised hitch format, with multiple mount options (hangers,
drop-outs, caliper mount points, rear triangle, seat-tube, luggage
rack). That'd be fantastic, to have a universal hitch standard for
trailers.

 

[cfsmtb]

See you at the morning sessions!

Confused about the workshop? Then consider this instead, bikes can be utilised for far more than transport... ie: payload, small business, local logistics etc etc etc. Why do you think rickshaws were initially manufactured?

http://www.bikesatwork.com/
http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/beijingbikes/
http://www.worldviewmagazine.com/issues/article.cfm?id=15&issue=6
http://www.bobtrailers.com/
http://www.cyclofiend.com/working/

 

[eddiec]

speaking of such things, had a great surprise last night...

headed off to do the usual fortnightly grocery shop with the bike trailer (the headwind made that interesting!) accepting the usual oddity that that makes me, only to pull up the supermarket door to find another bike and trailer there!! I'm not such a freak after all! Great stuff... Maybe people will start to think it's some new trend

 

[flyingdutch]

RMIT lerv using their Industrial design students to design stuff, patent it and live off it (ie Superbike™, etc), or even in some cases lecturers bugger off and patent it themselves

Vicroads did the comical copy of the dutch/german/french system of integrated traffic lights that told you what speed to ravel at to get all greens for x-distance
Was trialled in early 80's along Canterbury Rd and cos they tried to do it on the cheap it displayed such useful info as
"if you travel at 6kph you will get green lights for the next 8 kms"!!!!

of course, they could just get these:

http://www.fietsfabriek.nl/index_eng.htm

 

[EuanB]

speaking of such things, had a great surprise last night...

headed off to do the usual fortnightly grocery shop with the bike trailer (the headwind made that interesting!) accepting the usual oddity that that makes me, only to pull up the supermarket door to find another bike and trailer there!! I'm not such a freak after all! Great stuff... Maybe people will start to think it's some new trend

/me points this out to SuzieB

See? It's trendy to have a trailer! I wanna trailer!

Oh wait a minute, that means I'd have to help do the shopping.....

mutter.

 

[cfsmtb]

Was trialled in early 80's along Canterbury Rd and cos they tried to do it on the cheap it displayed such useful info as "if you travel at 6kph you will get green lights for the next 8 kms"!!!!

My dad worked out you could do that in Hobarts "CBD" circa 1982. Crawl through on 30km & get the lights virtually everytime. Very much doubt the same ploy would work now.

 

[TimC]

On 2006-01-19, flyingdutch (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
>
> RMIT lerv using their Industrial design students to design stuff, patent
> it and live off it (ie Superbike™, etc), or even in some cases lecturers
> bugger off and patent it themselves
>
> Vicroads did the comical copy of the dutch/german/french system of
> integrated traffic lights that told you what speed to ravel at to get
> all greens for x-distance
> Was trialled in early 80's along Canterbury Rd and cos they tried to do
> it on the cheap it displayed such useful info as
> "if you travel at 6kph you will get green lights for the next 8
> kms"!!!!

The reason I heard they stopped being used was because people would
watch when they went 58... 59... 60... 30..., and speed up far faster
than the speed limit to make sure they beat the lights. Just the old
version of idiot box accelarating across the orange turned red lights
we currenlty have.

--
TimC
I've told them and told them: Temporal anomalies are different from
spatial anomalies. But the kittens know better. They laugh at my
feeble attempts to fool them. -- barbara in ARK