Future Bike

LONDON, LIKE MANY large, modern cities, is at a standstill. There are only so many cars and buses that will fit on the roads. The answer? Brand new concept designs of course!

London Garden is a hybrid bike/scooter which folds up to fit into specially designed buses and taxis. Designed by Marten Wallgreen and friends from the RCA, the multi-purpose vehicle is engineered to work in harmony with the city around it. You even pay for you bus ride with the energy stored in the bike, whereupon it becomes the actual seat you sit on inside the bus.

The problem is that the team’s design is complete after stage one: Shut off car access to Central London. Do that and regular bikes can peacefully exist alongside the buses and taxis (it’s London: You can’t ban taxis). Instead of trying to achieve the impossible task of selling everybody the same bike, convincing the bus company to retrofit its vehicles and telling cab-drivers they need to upgrade their cabs yet again, all you need is a pot of paint to make some bike-lanes in the now empty roads.

Still, not everyone agrees with us. The design won the prestigious SeymourPowell award for Future City Mobility. We still think our pot of paint is better, though.