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Bike Lane Sweepers (2021)
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoWhy would anyone actually want to solve a problem?
- kvdveer 3y agoMaybe because they want the bike lanes to be safe? Of course, this should be a municipal task, just like it is here in the Netherlands. However, when municipalities don't care about cyclists, volunteers might pick up the slack.
- krisoft 3y agoMy understanding is that they are making this product with the view that municipalities will buy it to clean the bike lanes with. The relevant quote: "Lermant is convinced that his company, Bike Lane Sweeper, will offer a needed product to cities in clean wherever a bicycle might be traveling."
- metabagel 3y agoOr volunteers > He stresses the large size of the potential market since the price is low enough for bike clubs and individuals to purchase. And, perhaps obviously, municipalities will find the economical nature – and perhaps the ability to leverage the pool of operators to include volunteer or paid bicycle enthusiasts with a vested interest in keeping bike paths cleaned.
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoNo, I just meant in general. I just let my problems build and it's much easier than actually solving them
- svantana 3y agoOne could say that if you don't want it solved, then it's not an actual problem.
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoI guess I don't have any problems then
- Faaak 3y agoI really thought about doing the same. On top of bicycling, I own a renault twizy which is a really small electric car. I wanted to attach a sweeper on it because the bicycle lanes around me are always full of debris. I found out that it's quite complicated to buy the "commercial" brushes for the sweeper, and thought instead of using a small pressure washer to sweep away the debris into the border. Anyway, never had the time, but hopefully this winter I'll try to do something
- matsemann 3y agoWhile lots of cycling routes here in Oslo are "prioritized" when it snows, and it works fairly well, some times snow from the road instead gets pushed into the bike lanes. If you report that, nothing happens. My idea is to have a snow plow on a bike and push it back into the road. Then someone might care..
- sokoloff 3y agoIt seems like any amount of snow that would impede biking would be more than enough that you couldn’t push it back to the street with a bike. (We used to run a private plow truck and it would use a surprising amount of fuel in a 10-hour day of plowing.)
- matsemann 3y agoYeah, probably true. But the concern often isn't the snow itself, it's when it later freezes. Then it's too late to plow it, and the rugged and uneven slippery surface is impossible to bike on.
- matsemann 3y agoThat whole webpage ( https://www.worldsweeper.com/ https://www.worldsweeper.com/ ) is so oldschool web. Love it.
- walthamstow 3y agoWhat a cute idea. A lot of the bike lanes in my part of east London are covered by trees, which is wonderful for shelter from the sun or light rain, but in the autumn they become full of leaves which get rained on and turn into sludge. All over London we have these mechanised sweepers of a similar type to the link below which are very narrow and can fit down most two-way cycle lanes, some one-way ones and also down narrow paths in parks. https://www.aebi-schmidt.com/en/products/schmidt/sweepers/mfh-550/ https://www.aebi-schmidt.com/en/products/schmidt/sweepers/mf...
- baz00 3y agoRound me, the other side, it's Fastgas bottles.
- tetris11 3y agoA lot of bike lanes near my old part were covered in glass every saturday morning after the city goes nuts for its weekly boozefest. Thank the gods for the sweepers who work the early morning shifts.
- Angostura 3y agoHello from Leytonstone.
- hahamrfunnyguy 3y agoAs a cyclist that uses my bikes for recreation and transportation, keeping cars out of the bike lanes is really my top concern. This is really cool, but it's honestly a pristine bike lane is a very low priority compared to getting protected bike lanes. I've never really seen debris in the road/bike lane as being a problem, at least around here.
- rob74 3y agoI tend to agree for almost all debris, except broken bottles...
- aziaziazi 3y agoBroken bottles are a real problem but good quality tires saves you a lot of flats. Not saying you can drive carelessly on any debris but a 30€ vs 10€ tire will be day and night. The Schwalbe Marathon Plus are the best known reference in this field. In my experience ”durable” tires from others brands are sometimes great and sometimes crap. Also a regular bike checkup should includes tires checkup to remove the debris stuck in the rubber. Those can “move” and get you flat in the future.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoMarathon Plus are great, but they're not the most supple of tyres. Tubeless is a great solution for preventing punctures (especially sharp thorns left on roads after trimming of hedges and bushes), but it can be a faff to set up until you know what you're doing and the tyres are more expensive. You also "need" compatible rims to run tubeless unless you fancy a ghetto setup.
- duopixel 3y agoI bike in Mexico. I usually get a flat patched with the bike mechanic for $1 USD and they do it in less than 5 minutes. They check the tire throughly to find the source of the puncture. More often than not they pull out a piece of metal debris from the tire (like small pieces of wire or nails). If the roads are cleaned, it will be a person with a broom doing it, which is why metal debris stays on the shoulder of the road instead of being suctioned by a mechanical cleaner. Would good tires still save me from these punctures?
- robbywashere_ 3y agoBike lanes create jobs!
- ochoseis 3y agoIt would be awesome if they could put the sweeper in front of the bike somehow. Imagine getting a flat from the broken glass you’re about to sweep up.
- snowAbstraction 3y agoThat would be cool. Otherwise, sweepers will need both extra robust tires and to be ready change flats.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoIf it goes in front, it'd either have to not have a pivot or the steering would need to be drastically changed.
- lukas099 3y agoCould it work like one of these front-loader tricycles? https://www.worksmancycles.com/frontload.html https://www.worksmancycles.com/frontload.html
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoYeah, that looks like it would work. That's the kind of thing that I meant by a drastic change to the steering as that's now got two wheels at the front.
- agumonkey 3y agoI often wanted to try this, even for non bike lanes, especially on hills where gravity would do the job.. the sweeper could even serve as additional brakes from friction. There should be an online board for biking initiatives :)
- schaefer 3y agoAs a recreational rider, I would love to have this for personal use on the home trail. What a fun was to make a positive impact on a public space. Instead of tragedy of the commons, how about a little stewardship of the commons.
- dvh 3y agoIf I remember Cody's lab video correctly, road sweep is decent platinum ore (6.7g per ton)
- samuell 3y agoGreat idea! Even though we have pretty great cleaning of the bike lanes here in Stockholm, it often happens that sometimes pretty large rocks and gravel find their way out into the bikelane, from some road construction, just the side of the road and what not. If you're cautious you can just avoid those, but for elder bikers who can't do quick maneuvers or are cycling at night, especially if gravel and bigger rocks are found in curves, my feeling is that it can be potentially quite hazardous. Seems I'm one of very few (if any) who are constantly stopping to kick away such stones and debris, but it would really be better with a systematic way to keep lanes clean.
- francisofascii 3y agoDisappointed this wasn't a story about vigilante tow trucks, sweeping parked vehicles from the bike lanes. :)
- hedora 3y agoI’d settle for vigilante maintenance trucks that trimmed branches, confiscated trash cans and swept the lanes. Edit: and also confiscated orange “share the road” and other construction signs that block the bike lane.
- hedora 3y agoThis is a great idea, but I’m not convinced it would work in the SF bay area. There’s a statewide mandate to reduce commute miles (note that the metric is not commute time, or commute pollution), and most cities have implemented this by introducing punitive light timings and removing car lanes. To make the latter politically acceptable, they usually add “bike lanes”, which have complicated concrete barriers lining them, and are painted with solid green paint that is slick when covered in wet leaves. Ignoring the obvious problems (the barriers would, at best, bend a rim if you swerved into them), they don’t aren’t designed to be possible to sweep, so they’re frequently too dirty to ride in, and many areas have stopped reliably trimming encroaching tree branches. (Sometimes, they convert car lanes to “bus lanes”, which are just normal lanes, but bus services are incredibly infrequent, so the lanes sit idle 99% of the time. Ironically, those lanes seem well maintained.). The upshot is that now bikes get to share one fewer lane with cars than before, for a given number of commuters, drive times are much higher, fuel economy is much lower, and (based on breathing the non-cabin-filtered air when riding my bike) air pollution on city streets is much higher. Of course, covid helped them meet their metrics, so there’s also a looming property tax and commercial real estate crisis.
- algas 3y ago> They aren't designed to be possible to sweep, so they're frequently too dirty to ride in This seems like exactly the problem that would be solved by a bike-pulled sweeper. Could you elaborate on why that wouldn't work?
- JambalayaJim 3y agoIt is foolish to measure the usefulness of bike lanes or bus lanes by idle time. I see lots of people make this same mistake. These transportation methods are inherently more space efficient than personal vehicles. Also, as a cyclist, I’d much rather be in a separated bike lane as opposed to directly behind a car and breathing in fumes there.
- bunabhucan 3y agoOh man, Boulder CO has bike path snow ploughs. https://www.dailycamera.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HeavySnow_CLG0812.jpg?w=1280 https://www.dailycamera.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Heavy... After a big storm with feet of snow the neighborhood roads can become impassable to regular cars while the bike paths are bone dry.
- t3rabytes 3y agoThese are great for sidewalks, too.
- throw7 3y agoNeat. I wonder if you could drop the battery and run off a dynamo hub or two?
- meristohm 3y agoI'm so happy to see this! I daydreamed and sketched plans for such a device about fifteen years ago (angled, staggered static brushes to push broken glass to the curb, mounted just fore of the rear wheel in one case, but I considered a collector, too), and if I ever live in a city with bike lanes again I'll gladly pull something like this around now and then.
- zwieback 3y agoThis is great, like many others I've dreamed of a device like this. What I really want is a sweeper ahead of my front wheel, though.
- drivers99 3y agoDenver uses mini street sweepers for the protected bike lanes, which are just small versions of the same type normally used for the street: Picture at the bottom of the page. https://www.bortekpwx.com/bike-path-lane-cleaning-sweeping/ https://www.bortekpwx.com/bike-path-lane-cleaning-sweeping/ Product page (I notice some of the pictures are in Denver) https://www.bortekpwx.com/product/dulevo-dzero%c2%b2-electric-mini-sweeper/ https://www.bortekpwx.com/product/dulevo-dzero%c2%b2-electri...
- loeg 3y agoThis article may be (2021) but if you click through to https://bikelanesweeper.com/ https://bikelanesweeper.com/ , there is a September 2023 update: https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/24/portland-will-be-testing-ground-for-new-bike-lane-sweeper-trailer-378550 https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/24/portland-will-be-testing...