Cities across the world are starting to pay more attention to the role of the bicycle in creating sustainable urban environments. Encouraging cycling can reduce the strain on public transport provisions, minimise congestion and pollution, and improve the health of those on two wheels.
However, if more people choose to cycle, new challenges will emerge in how we run our cities. If your commute to work is more than gentle exercise and the building you work in has no showers, personal hygiene throughout the day can be a problem. And if the city you live in doesn’t provide adequate parking facilities for cyclists, finding a secure location to store your bike for 8 hours can also be a challenge. These issues, while simple enough to overcome, deter some from adopting the bicycle as their main form of transport.
With this in mind, Australian bicycle parking company Penny Farthings created the Green Pod – a high quality facility for cyclists containing secure space to leave your bicycle, a changing room, lockers and a shower. Units can be customised depending on the needs of the area or venue they serve.
Penny Farthing’s Mark Rossiter says:
We see parking to be one of the major obstacles between cycling becoming a major transport mode. Recently some governments have started investing in large scale centralised cycle centres with capacity for 200+ cyclists. We believe small scale decentralised parking is better because is makes the facilities closer to users and improves point to point journey times (and they don’t build one car park in a centralised location- because it is inconvenient). With better infrastructure, such as the green pod, we hope to make cycling as a transport mode easy.
The Green Pod is powered by solar panels on the roof, contains LED lighting activated by motion sensors, grey water treatment units, and timed showers. It operates a self-cleaning system, meaning maintenance costs are reduced.
UK-based Cycle Pods have a similar approach, creating an innovative portfolio of bicycle storage solutions to offer cities, companies, and schools a solution to their bike storage challenges. Their flagship product is the cyclepod. By storing bicycles in an upright manner, 8 bikes can be secured in a 2 metre diameter. Two locking points for each bicycle will satisfy security-conscious cyclists.
A modular equivalent has also been spun-off from this product. Called the Spacepod, this variation comes in different shapes, allowing a bicycle park to be built along walls, around corners, or back to back. More suited for organisations looking to install bicycle parking for their employees, the Spacepod has corporate users including The Guardian and KPMG.
The Streetpod allows bicycle parking in a more traditional horizontal manner. It secures both wheels with only one lock by docking the front wheel in plastic casing, and providing a metal bar for the rear wheel and lock. Whilst this design is more visually intrusive, only needing one lock is advantageous to cyclists. Unlike traditional bicycle parking facilities, no concrete foundations are required to secure these devices to the ground. Their larger form allows for simple securing with screws. Cyclepods are also a fully carbon neutral company – from the products they produce to the office they inhabit – and this range of designs is made from 100% recycled or recyclable materials.
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