Whoever said the best ideas are the simple ones has another exhibit to add the case for their argument. This technology and a telephone combine to create a hugely exciting development for planning cycle lanes in cities across the world.
The city of Wiesbaden was proclaimed the least bike friendly city in all of Germany by the country' national cyclist club.
In response, the Wiesbaden-based creative agency Scholz & Volkmer along with two German artists created a drawing robot called Radwende.
It would trace the paths of bike riders, creating a map of those routes favoured by cyclists and where bike lanes should be placed for maximum benefit and to create a bike-friendly city.
“It's a beautiful and rich city, with lots of large SUVs and luxury cars, but riding a bike is only for the fearless, there is no culture of respect to cyclists,” explains Scholz & Volkmer chief executive Michael Volkmer.
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“The machine and art piece is a new way to promote biking locally.”
The robot is hanging inside Wiesbaden’s Museum of Fine Art at present.
Each day, it draws a new portrait by tracking one bike rider in the city through a connected iPhone app.
The app can track everyone who'd like to use it in real time. But the robot traces the path of just one person, drawing his or her journey down the city streets, with lines growing thicker and thicker where people ride the most.
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The robot may be making art, but it also creates a very clear diagram of just where in the city bike lanes are most necessary.
“The nice thing is, every drawing looks different and has small stories to tell,” Volkmer explains. “People actually find their own specific tour within the layers of lines.”
The art project, which sells the drawings of the cyclists’ routes, is a fascinating mix of environmentalism, activism, capitalism, and good old urban planning.
But it also prompts the question as to how much big cities could learn about their citizens if they enabled opt-in GPS tracking; allowing citizens to share their daily commutes and recreational trips.
Of course, there’s probably an even more efficient way to learn where bike lanes are needed the most: mapping where bikers get hit most often by cars.
The clip that explains it
The heat map of where bike lanes should go emerges over time as all of the participating cyclists' rides are mapped in and the favoured routes clearly present themselves.
The phones and app on them are key for recording the route they are brought on by the riders taking their usual journeys around the German city of Wiesbaden
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