 |
|
Philippe Starck And Peugeot Create A Hybrid Bike-Scooter, For A Bike-Sharing Program
|
Following the wild success of custom-designed public bicycles in Paris and Copenhagen, Bordeaux will be the latest metropolis to unveil its very own city bike, by French design dynamo Philippe Starck.
A twist: It’s a bike and a scooter rolled into one.
The scooters are expected to be manufactured by Peugeot and will supplement an existing bike-sharing program in Bordeaux, which has made a point of promoting cycling. Thanks in part to efforts to limit car traffic and develop a tramway, the city has seen the number of cyclists triple in the past 15 years alone; today, more than 10% of residents commute by bike. Officials hope that a freshly designed PMV will strengthen that momentum.
Starck presented the concept, after input from the public, earlier this month. It’s only a preliminary design, so details are vague, but based on a rendering, it has big yellow wheels and standard pedals for when you want to ride it as you would any other bike. It also has a step-through frame and a platform for times when you want to zoom along, labor-free.
Starck gives the initiative some serious star power. In the design world, he is as famous for his flamboyant personality as for his flamboyant, if sometimes baffling, designs. (Of a non-functional, gold-plated lemon squeezer he created for Alessi years ago, he is rumored to have said, "It’s not meant to squeeze lemons, it is meant to start conversations.")
Bike-sharing programs have been tremendously popular in Europe and even here in North America. One drawback, though, is that they exclude residents with limited mobility (and those of us who are just mega lazy). A bike-scooter hybrid sounds like a good way to solve that problem.
