BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

OMG my mind is racing...

I bet if we could build an elevated covered bike lane with smooth ascents and descents, in the right places, we'd have more bike traffic than car traffic in those areas.

a cloud 9 ride.

The airship in the first illustration is a nice touch.

All perspective of course, but if the hill in the Toronto tunnel idea were as steep as it appears? Mayhem.

They also seem to have adapted wormholes to bike travel, perhaps an idea exchange with other solar systems?

It's all the "on-ramps" and "off-ramps" that would really limit the enclosed, elevated roadway.

The cable idea has some intriguing possibilities. You could route it near enough to some buildings to use their third story as an access. A ride-on, ride-off suspended cable bridge would require a lot of material and would be very expensive, but if you just suspend the passenger from a single cable, the materials would be a lot less expensive.

OTOH, you would need a drive mechanism, and everything I can think of would be pretty inefficient -- unless you have purpose-built carriages. You might also imagine handicap carriages with electric motors and built-in batteries.

But I'm having a hard time seeing how it would be cost-effective. How much would you voluntarily pay per trip? A dime per mile? A quarter? You'd need something like a million (or ten) passenger trips per year to pay for it, and my estimate is that the usage would be at least an order of magnitude too low.

Oh well, maybe we could steal the money to build it.

http://www.arroyoseco.org/bike/bikeway.htm

1897 - elevated toll bikeway from Pasadena to LA

I'm telling you people, Mt. Washingington zip line, to the Point. Make the burgh the coolest city on earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-Yc7lVD7k

About five years ago I had a proposal for a gondola cable car system to go from Troy Hill to Allentown, with stops at the NShore Trail, EBusway, Bedford Ave, DuquesneU/Uptown, SSide/ECarson, and Arlington Ave.

Eyeballing it on google maps, I think you've got way too much drop on the zipline -- it's probably around 400' vertical from Grandview to the Point all in only 1000'+ horizontally. It might be a little too thrilling.

Put a brake on it.

Or a counter weight.. There is apparently a double zipline from the great wall of china.. when one person goes down, it pulls the harness and rigging back up on the other line.

I rode on a zipline like system at the great wall.. It was a harrowing experience. I got the distinct impression they don't have a great number of safety inspectors there. Probably not many liability lawsuits either.

Tough to sue when you're a thin paste on a 1000-year-old chunk of masonry.