10 Ideas: Ways to 10x the number of people who cycle in urban cities

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.

Some of my favourites this week:

• Free bikes: just give everyone free bikes already.
• A unique transport solution: Install a floating bike highway down the Yarra
• Public transport credits:
• Get the State government to license GPS transponders from Garmin or someone like that. Link them to the Opal card network so that you scan your Opal card on the transponder on the bike and you get a credit equal to the fare from that destination to where you stop. This way if you ride half the time to work then overall you travel for free since most people won’t ride everyday (weather etc)
• A new type of bike sharing: Drones drop bikes whenever you need

The full list:

Taxation

1. Add a large congestion charge to cars — making it really expensive to drive which will stop some people driving. This will help free up space from parking to allow end of trip facilities for cycling
2. Congestion tax on cars
3. Exorbitant vehicle parking fees
4. Introduce registration for bikes. Use the fees to provide mandated 3rd party insurance and build more bike lanes.
5. Double car registration with the additional money going to fund bike infrastructure
6. Double fuel costs

Infrastructure

1. Install a floating bike highway down the Yarra
2. Build bike overpasses to bypass dangerous intersections
3. No vehicle parking at city offices
4. Adding shower facilities at the office might well help encourage people to cycle to work (REA seems to have success with this in Melbourne). Bike paths, of course, are key. I like the idea of having mini-destinations on bike paths for longer commutes. Cafe’s, small Woolworths etc.
5. For effective bike commuting you need more grade separation. Allrailway lines should have a grade separated bike path alongside them
6. Have bike chairlifts up steep hills (more of a sydney thing)
7. Add end of trip facilities at rail and bus stations — ride to the next mode of transport
8. Showers at work
9. Shared end of trip facilities provided by local councils
10. With 10x demand you are going to need bigger end of trip facilities which means to be economic you are going to have to convert existing car spaces to ride storage and changing spaces — as a result offer landlords a greater FSR based on new bike spaces catered for and allow them to trade this FSR with developers in smaller city blocks. As a result old buildings with no FSR will likely get rid of some parking and install end of trip facilities and sell the FSR to a larger site nearby

Bike upgrades

1. Make all bikes glow in the dark for safety
2. People don’t ride if it’s too hilly (SF / Sydney) because you get hot and sweaty and it’s just hard. It becomes a workout rather than a commute. In those cities, you might be able to retrofit electric motors to existing bikes to make it easier to tackle inclines.
3. Autonomous bikes dispersed through the cities, available on-demand like uber
4. Drones drop bikes whenever you need
5. Utilising old bikes / sold and fixed up and bought for a cheaper
6. Electric assisted bikes

Town planning

1. Make offices closer to home. Smaller satellite offices that mean everyone can be 4–8 kms from work.
2. Bikeways as an integral part of urban design
3. Mandate separate lanes to form trunk routes — Where a trunk route is available stop bikes from using traffic lanes so you have mandated separation. This should stop motorists being upset with bikes and improve bike safety. If you focused all your attention on trunk routes for 10 years then everything else would take care of itself since on minor roads people would be fine to share the space
4. Build speed humps everywhere (like every 200m) — cars can only go slow over them but bikes can go faster so more people will ride since bikes will be able to beat a Porche 911…
5. Complete separation between bikes, pedestrians and vehicles
6. Create more bike lanes

Changing laws

1. Helmets are a user experience issue. While lightweight, they are also very bulky and difficult to carry and secure. My Dutch friends in Melbourne refuse to wear them and just act dumb if they get pulled over. It’s about perceived and actual risk. I don’t know the research well enough, but if it made sense, I’d be keen to learn if making them optional made sense.
2. Create a bike path authority who have a non-aligned mandate of delivering 1000km of shared bike path each year.
3. Remove the need for helmets — dumb idea given the likely increase in injuries but the question was about increasing cycling not reducing overall transport costs
4. Ban cars

Benefits for cyclists

1. Free buses to city outskirts based bike stations
2. Reduces medical premiums for cyclists
3. Free private health insurance for anyone who rides to work at least 80% of the days of a year
4. Free bikes — just give everyone free bikes already.
5. Bike commuting is more attractive in suburbs where there’s substantial traffic congestion. In 5–6 suburbs distribute free bikes
6. Free bikes and parking facilities
7. Introduce bike only train carriage which you charge extra (using Opal card) for. This would allow people to leverage existing train infrastructure
8. Provide incentives for the adoption of electric bikes — if you want 10x adoption you need to make it easy for the people who won’t do it because their legs hurt too much. Back this incentive with a massive ad campaign to change the idea that you need to be fit and strong to ride a bike so that you create a new pool of demand for the bikes
9. Get the State government to license GPS transponders from Garmin or someone like that. Link them to the Opal card network so that you scan your Opal card on the transponder on the bike and you get a credit equal to the fare from that destination to where you stop. This way if you ride half the time to work then overall you travel for free since most people won’t ride everyday (weather etc)
10. Bike stations for free for a certain time
11. Bike sharing app connected to health insurance to get discount
12. Gamification — leader score.

PR Campaigns

1. Given bike safety increases substantially with the number of people riding, kick off a massive promotion campaign
2. Get paid for riding a bike and advertise brands

Other ideas

1. Cold and rain don’t seem to deter people from riding in London, Amsterdam. Hot weather in Melbourne and Singapore seems too. I don’t have a solution for this short of artificially lowering body temp during exercise.
2. This complex and I don’t understand it enough. I don’t know why bikes are big in the Netherlands and not as much in London. Amsterdam is remarkably flat through which goes back to topography. A marriage made in heaven?

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.