Saturday, 23 January 2010

Other blogs of interest relating to transport schemes

The winners of the Copenhagen bike design competition:
http://greenideafactory.blogspot.com/

San Francisco Street blog:
http://sf.streetsblog.org/

Copenhagenize:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/

FOR THE LOVE OF BICYCLE CULTURE

[Images from Copenhagenize]

Other transport schemes in the UK and Europe (Secondary research)

Car Shares: London and UK
www.streetcar.co .uk
Where is it ? London and UK

All the convenience of your own car but without the cost and hassle.

Streetcar has cars parked in a dense network of dedicated spaces across London and several other UK cities, typically within a few minutes walk of your home or work. You can use one for as little as 30 minutes or as long as 6 months.

They are reserved online or by phone, and can be collected and returned 24/7 using one of our high-tech smartcards. Our fleet is made up of brand new Volkswagen Golfs and Volkswagen Polo BlueMotions. There are also some vans if you need to move bulkier items.

The cost of your usage is based on how long you have the car and how far you drive but unless you're a heavy car user, the annual cost of Streetcar will be dramatically less than owning a car and with lots of the hassle of car ownership removed

Bike share: Copenhagen

With growing popularity across Europe Copenhagen is one of many countries promoting a bike sharing schemes for their public.

THE CITY BIKE AND COPENHAGEN

The city bikes in Copenhagen are world famous. When you tour the city you notice, that especially tourists love riding the city bikes. Some even regard them as the major tourist attraction of Copenhagen! But don't get surprised, if you see an officially looking clerk on a city bike on his way to the office. The copenhageners themselves do sometimes use "bycyklen" as a quick alternative to cars, busses and taxis, when they want to get around in City. The city bikes are Copenhagen! This is emphasized by the fact, that a city bike was the official gift from The City of Copenhagen to the American president, when he visited Copenhagen in 1997. Bill Clinton recieved a specially designed city bike called "City Bike One". The city bikes are also a story about our town. They tell you that Copenhagen City is a little big green town, in which you easily get around. The cool yet funny design of the city bikes illustrates our playing approach to city-life.

City bikes give jobs!

"Bycykelservice" maintains the city bikes. "Bycykelservice" is a departement in the rehabilitation agency of Copenhagen. It trains around 30 rehabilitees. During a 6 month-training program the rehabilitee qualifies for a job on normal conditions. The program is a succes. Around 80% of the rehabilitees get a job afterwards, mainly as lorrydrivers or bicycle repairers.

Environmental

To encourage even more citizens to use their bicycle for transportation, The City of Copenhagen systematically expands the net of bicycle lanes and routes. Hence, you can get faster around in City by bicycle than by car or bus!

FACTS

We have
- 2.000 city bikes
- 110 city bike-racks in City
- 1 bicycle repairshop only for city bikes
- 4 mobile city bike-repairshops - for reparations on the spot

Interesting: recent bike design competition:

http://www.cphbikeshare.com/winners.aspx

The winning entry for a new bike share system for Copenhagen must adhere to the City’s primary goals for the future development of the city. The goals are that Copenhagen must be a sustainable and dynamic city and a city for everyone.
More specifically, the design competition is the first step towards Copenhagen implementing a new bike share system that is...
- an attractive product for the city's guests
- an indispensible piece of the transport puzzle for train passengers
- a faithful friend in an hour of need for Copenhageners
- easily integrated and implemented in an existing city
- unique, elegant and attractive
- robust.

WINNER: Lots design, Kouchy & Partners, Green Idea Factory

Day One: Research on the High street in Redruth

[Image: talking to people about their views on transport in the Camborne, Redruth and Poole area]

For the first day of research myself and Jo Flood visited Redruth Highstreet to get people's views about transport in Redruth and surrounding areas. Due to it being a (very) windy day we struggled to get people's attention despite our giant wooden board and the offer of Foxes Glacier mints for a few minutes of their time. Despite this a few braved the windy weather in true Cornish fashion to have a quick chat with us about their views on transportation. The majority of people were users of public transport and owned their own car. They agreed on the lack of car parks as well as the inconvience of buses. We didn't recieved many answers which we didn't expect and the majority considered how unreliable the buses were, as well as how timetables had to be planned round if public transport was being used. Nevertheless it was a good start to gain some insight into a select user group of people who at the time were shopping, going to the bank or post office or going to work.

On with day two where we interview the businesses along the A3047

Live | Work

www.livework.co.uk

Website of Live|Work who we are working for on DOTT project Road works

Friday, 22 January 2010

Workshop day

Whilst working on the 'Road Works' project, I have been involved in mind mapping exercises where ideas are sketched and concepts dreamt up. Following are a selection of photographs (taken by Moryl Mamie) illustrating a workshop day. The day was productive and exciting which resulted in feeling like a good day work had been done. Ben Reason of Live | Work introduced us to a way to communicate ideas through drawing onto printed illustrations to create a mind map of ideas which were then sorted into categories. I found it particularly useful as a new way to communicate and sketch my initial, rough ideas without too much consideration to detail; it was a quick, pacy exercise to illustrate our ideas which helped them to develop into something more. In addition I found this new way of designing effective as it helped us to think quickly and bounce ideas off each other. The exercise allowed us to visually communicate the light bulbs of ideas above our heads!