Saturday, March 21, 2009

Ever Wonder

How you could fit more bikes on a tram network? Stuttgart shows us how.

H/T Spagblog

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

They have the "Bike-Tram".

Amtrak has the "Auto-Train".

Anonymous said...

how do they make sure that the tram doesn't start to leave before someone can get their bike off? Also, is bike theft a problem?

crzwdjk said...

It's not really an ordinary tram. It's a rack railway that goes up a hill. I believe the train actually pushes the trailer up the hill, so neither bike theft nor cyclists left behind are a problem, since in the predominant direction of bike traffic, the driver can see the bikes and trailer.
Another interesting piece of hill-climbing infrastructure for bikes is the bicycle cable tow device that if I recall is in Trondheim.

Daniel Sparing said...

hi, thanks for the link!

@arcady: you are right, to be honest, these generous bike carriages are only attached to the one cog-wheel railway line, but it is true that you can take bikes on the urban trains.
The city, being the home town of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, is a great surprise for every visitor who expects and dirty industrial city: it's in fact a very green city with huge parks and its Stadtbahn network (result of over 20 years of integration of the existing tram and metro lines) is a leading example.

p.s. trondheim bike lift video and pics:
http://bit.ly/trondheimvid
http://bit.ly/trondheimpic

kenf said...

Just try to do that with a friggen bus, rapid or otherwise.

Daniel Sparing said...

@kenf there are some examples for that:
Portland http://trimet.org/howtoride/bikes/bikesonbuses.htm
San Francisco http://www.sfmta.com/cms/bcomm/BikesonMuni.htm
but bikes on buses are controversial here in Europe too. In Austria I could get on an inter-city bus but here in Hungary even trains are still an issue sometimes.

kenf said...

Spag, I know you can do bikes on buses. Here in Washington DC all of our Metrobuses are equipped with bike racks, as are many of the suburban bus systems. However. these racks usually only take 2 or 3 bikes. On a rail system you can have a small car to hold the bikes,which can be pushed in front of the train.

Daniel Sparing said...

@kenf ok sorry for my misunderstanding. we don't have such racks at all so it was new to me.

however, there are high-capacity trailers sometimes, check out this brand new one on two German bus lines:
http://www.adfc-nrw.de/kreisverbaende/kv-unna/fahrradbus-im-kreis-unna.html

but they are certainly not in front :), that's right.