Working Together Makes Bikes Race-Track Fast
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.25.08
We whine often that bikes have a right to the road, but often do not have the speed and visibility to move with traffic. Now four students at UQAM École de Design have built a machine that can dominate the road like it does at the Jacques Villeneuve Formula 1 race track in Montreal in the video above. Thomas Lacombe, Nicolas Robitaille-Dubois and Nicolas Rodrigue-Trudel developed a linkage that holds the bikes into a "safe, easy to use and efficient transportation cluster." They built twelve prototypes of the linking element that ties together the front and rear axles. Nobody is going to miss you (or pass you) when you are on this rig. I love the idea of bike pools- biking alone and then ganging up together for the ride to work. Love the tyvek suits too; so aerodynamic and comfortable for biking. Part of ::EXP08, on in Montreal until the 26th of April.
Shhhhhh, it's actually the Gilles Villeneuve circuit. Jacques is Gilles' less talented son.
Looks like a decent idea. I didn't see them taking any right angle turns though. I'd love to see a video from them on actual streets, especially a downtown setting.
The question is, does it amplify your speed? ie. If each cyclist rides at 20kph, times four is it capable of travelling 80kph (or at least some multiple faster than each rider would be capable of on their own.) I'd imagine a generator would be the easiest way of utilizing that potential.
what, no helmets? :-)
Brent, I doubt it. I think this effect works for tandem bikes because you have 1.5x the material but 2x the power. In this case you have more material (to hold them together) than you started with.
However, if one person needed a quick rest, they could, while the other 3 people in the formation make up the work. I can envision some neato endurance races with that setup.