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Transportation of the Future: focus on bicycles
Introduction: As the number of people increase, town and city planners will need to be very inventive in order to keep our shared spaces from becoming more crowded and congested. Planners are placing more emphasis on mixing forms of transportation, improving public transportation capable of carrying many people at once, encouraging electric cars, and facilitating bike travel.
Travellers to China are immediately struck by the number of bicycles in the streets. The great majority of travellers use either bicycles or public transportation. Everyone profits from a "low footprint" vehicle like a bicycle.
This activity will engage students in thinking about ways in which bicycle travel in their neighborhood could be improved. They will read about innovations in bicycles and bicycle travel, and plan improvements in bike travel in their neighborhood.
Materials:
- Neighborhood Map
Classroom Management:
While you may do this activity as a class, it is more powerful when done in teams that share their ideas at the end of project.
Activity Steps:
1. Consider bike travel around the neighborhood. Where is it easy and where is it hard?
2. Imagine three times as many people biking around your neighborhood. What difference would this make?
3. Design what would have to change if biking were to get more efficient, still with three times the number of bikers. For each topic, read one or more articles about innovations in the area.
Consider changes in:
- bike design - e.g. improve efficiency by lowering resistance to air
- bike paths - e.g. build new ones where none exist
- traffic rules - e.g. allow bicyclists special privileges
- new mixtures
of roads, trains, boats and/or bike paths - e.g. allow bikes
on special train, subway cars
Community Work: Share
your ideas with your neighbors in the Commons: Good Bike Ideas
Extensions:
- Draw up detailed plans for your inventions
- Build a Solar-Powered Car using gears, wheels, a motor, and a solar cell to construct a vehicle that is powered by light. Solar car kits (pictured below) are available from K'NEX.
References:
A system for speeding up bicycles http://www.biketrans.com/
fun set of activities leads kids to think about amount of fuel being used in Hawaii. http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/activitybook/transportation.html
Read about electric bikes and other light vehicles that require little power http://www.electric-bikes.com/
See a range of bike designs http://www.electric-bikes.com/options.htm
Readings about bikes and developing countries http://www.mobility.de/brm/brm_toc.htm
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