Friday, April 27, 2012

Making it even better for cycling at PCN

I found this awesome design company called Cyclehoop in the UK who designs and fabricates innovative cycling infrastructure.  While it is in the UK, I find that certain concepts can be leveraged over to Singapore.  Here are 2 products which I think could improve the overall Singapore PCN cycling experience.

Vending machine that sells bicycle, bicycle repair related stuff alongside canned drinks and snacks. 
 
Road pillar that serves as a air pump

And if there are bridges and u need to carry ur bikes to reach the other PCN connection... you can roll the bike up the bridge. The bridge has been built already, no problem. This ramp can be retrofitted which means existing infrastructure can be adapted to make it more bike friendly. I know the Braddell road/Bishan PCN and St Andrew/Moonstone bridge would be much more used if this was implemented.

5 comments:

  1. For the Braddell Road/Bishan PCN, I remember that there was a concrete ramp on the side of the steps for pushing your bike up/down the stairs for the overhead bridge.

    Ditto for the St Andrew/Moonstone, although they only had the ramp on one side

    Have they removed that?

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  2. Personally, I feel that the ramps are not very useful for me, as it takes more effort to push the bike up the ramp than just carry it up. Going down can be quite dangerous if you don't hold on to the bike tightly.

    Full ramps would be good I feel. If there is no space for long ramps, how about spiral ramps?

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  3. On my first ride with LCSG, I wondered why most of you carry instead of using the side concrete ramp, and I guessed could be because your foldies are light to carry. When I pushed my Polygon foldie, then I realized the reason. Although foldies are light to carry, but pushing should be better. The reason is foldies being light, not enough friction to keep light foldies from sliding towards the stairs on the sideway slanted concrete ramp, unless one keep the bicycle vertically upright. I don't have this issue with my heavy bike.

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  4. Thanks for the comments. I think the angles are too steep. Or we might be doing it all wrong. Let's get the PCN folks to share how the proper way to roll up the bikes.
    Ramps for bridges are only one of the areas of issue. To create a pro-cycling culture, it would be good to have some footpumps, water coolers along the way so that people who cycle can have sip of water or pump up their tyres if they get a flat. I am targeting those mamachari bikes which dont bring patch kit, pumps... but they cycle all the time to market and work.

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