Idea Volcano

read, share, suggest, and use cracking business ideas

1. Jake Coltman 06.25.07 / 11am

   Building on this idea:

   A problem I have with cycle paths is that I can’t possibly get my bike to it without a) crashing or b) dying, however, if I could bike along it, then t would save me much time. Therefore, if you had a service at both ends, very similar to a toll booth, so you can pick up a bike at one end and then leave it at the other. I’m not sure how viable this would be, but the overheads and set up costs would be quite low.
2. Lever 06.25.07 / 11am

   1) Bike taxi - get a motorised bike so you can pedal when you need to and use the motor for those uphills

   2) @Jake: Some people are such poor cyclists that I think there should be a cycling proficiency test for adults not just school children. Granted, the roads can be busy and dangerous, especially when getting between cycle paths, but shrinking violets should be in flower beds not on the roads.

   3) Make all car drivers get on bikes and pedal around their locale as part of the car driving test, at least they’d have some more respect for cyclists.
3. John 06.25.07 / 12pm

   @Jake, but would you actually be prepared to pay for this service on a regular basis?
4. Jake Coltman 06.26.07 / 1pm

   Well look at it like this, it would save me almost an hour every day, in that hour I could be doing many more financillay benefical things, it would pay for itself.

   @Lever. The only way to reach the path from my house is to bike directly across four or so lanes of heavy traffic. I doubt a cycling test would help for that
5. Dan Bird 06.26.07 / 5pm

   Like this idea, though I have read recently about London black cabbies being happy to carry bikes.

   @Lever - never mind motorists learning to ride - if fuel injection pumps were pedal powered, every motorist would soon find out the energy cost of flooring it… (now way off-topic sorry)
6. Noel Hathorn 06.28.07 / 10am

   Cambridge ran a bike scheme similar to this a few years back, there were free bike parks where you caould pick up a bike, cycle to another of the free parks and leave it. Unsuprisingly unscrupulous members of society stole all the bikes, so I think that it would be very important to consider the security of an essentially great scheme, perhaps a deposit system?
7. Kirkdale 07.01.07 / 9am

   No reason why this shouldn’ work, just a matter of taxis being widely equiped and there being demand. The bike racks would need to be very small when packaged away and quick to set up for the taxi drivers. Sounds like an idea for an engineering firm with political clout at local authority level. This sounds like the perfect scheme for public body funding to kick start the investment in bike racks.
8. John 07.01.07 / 11am

   A bike lift similar to a ski lift were you would just simply hook up your bike and it would assist you up the hill.
9. Old Nikko 07.07.07 / 6pm

   Funny how this works…
   In San Francisco, every city bus has a bike rack mounted in the front. The result… SF has probably the highest number of cyclists in the USA.
10. Kirkdale 07.08.07 / 12pm

    Looks like time to lobby Ken Livingstone et al to push for bike racks on public transport in UK.
11. Kirkdale 07.13.07 / 11pm

    Hi folks,
    I thought the idea so good I asked SUSTRANS to look into it. Here is their reply.

    “Sustrans supports moves to improve the interface between public transport and cyclists and there are examples of bike buses in the UK and elsewhere, but often funding is an issue . It may be better to lobby the local transport team if you can show a need for such a service (they only really exist for tourist routes - C2C, Brecon Bike Bus etc).” Bo Lewis, Information and Trading Officer

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