A few years ago while I was teaching entry level environmental science as part of my doctoral program, I had students yet to reimagine/redesign Denver as a sustainable city. There were the standard designs that groups put together, the occasional radial pattern that I vaguely recalled from my urban planning class as an undergraduate, and some pretty unique ideas.
The last time I engaged students in this exercise I had one group in particular that struggled to free themselves from the car-centric way of thinking that seemingly dominates American society. After some prodding, they came up with some ideas that required no capital costs, but changes in behavior. Namely, they proposed turning excess (by which I mean when there are 3 or more) lanes on a road into bike lanes. This is not a new idea. New York has experimented with this. Another group wanted to expand on it and add mini-bike repair stations every so often along the route.
It was not until riding to work on the bus the other day, and peering out the window at a transfer point, that I saw anything like this in the real world. There, in the bus shelter area, was a bike station vending machine, the Bike Fixtation (see the image associated with the post for the actual machine I saw). I couldn’t determine from where I sat what was included, but I’d surmise that it had extra tubes, sealant, tools perhaps, maybe water, and assorted other supplies for bicyclists in a bind. I don’t believe any of those students relocated to Minnesota, but I’m glad to see there are like minded individuals out there. I’ll miss teaching, but I love seeing ideas like that put into action.
[Image source]
