LEGO Bicycle Culture

You'd expect LEGO, being Danish, to have featured the bicycle amongst their products. There are no bicycles in my boy's 10 kg pile of LEGO - a potpourri of Lego spanning 35 years and including the new stuff, my childhood lego and my little brothers, too - but I've seen them before. So a little googling brought me to this nerdy website listing sets that include LEGO bicycles. I slapped a number of the photos into the graphic above and included a couple of images I found on the internet.

My favourite is at bottom left. A petrol station shop. A cyclist pedals calmly away carrying an ice cream in one hand and fresh flowers in her panniers. She is glancing over at a motorist who can't control his vehicle and who, it appears, forgot his change. I like the contrast.

Above there is Café Corner, with a bike parked out front, of course.

Two of the shots feature merchandising for the German Team Telekom from back in 2000. The Tour de France is [has been] such a major cultural event in Europe for so long and Germany is one of LEGO's biggest markets so no surprise about this merchandising marriage.

At the bottom right are a collection of Community Workers featuring three bikes, including a cop and a fireman on bikes as well as two mechanics.

I've probably posted this before, but if you go to the Danish Legoland, you'll see Copenhagen Cycle Chic in brick form.

And you'll see LEGO's hommage to me. :-)

7550 New Bike Parking Spots at Copenhagen Central Station

For all of Copenhagen's badassness as a bicycle city, there remains one thing that the City still completely sucks at. Bicycle parking at train stations. At Copenhagen Central Station there are only about 1000 bike parking spots. Danish State Railways can't even tell us how many spots they have. They're not sure. Even in Basel they have 800+. In Antwerp they have this . Don't even get me started on the Dutch. 12,500 bike parking spots are on the way in some place called Utrecht . Amsterdam has a multi-story bike parking facility, floating bicycle barges round the back and are planning 7000 more spots underwater . Even at the nation's busiest train station, Nørreport, the recent and fancy redesign failed miserably in providing parking that is adequate for the demand . Architects once again failing to respond to actual urban needs. It is time to remedy that. Here is my design for 7550 bike parking spots behind Copenhagen Central Station. Steve C. Montebello i...

The Race for Lithium for Electric Cars and Bicycles

Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia. Photo: Ezequiel Cabrera/Wikipedia The coming boom in batteries to electric cars and Lazy Bikes (electric-assist bicycles) means a boom in batteries with which to run them. A new race for natural resources has begun. Enter Lithium, the world's lightest metal. For 150 years it's been nickel and lead that have been used in batteries but the advent of lithium technology has allowed for a revolution. Longer battery life, lighter batteries in our laptaps and mobile phones and iPods. Lithium weighs 1/20th of what nickel and lead do. Lithium is also used in anti-depressive medicine, ceramics and nuclear power. With all this talk of electric cars and bicycles, the demand for lithium is on the verge of exploding. Lithium is the new oil. Enter Boliva. This developing country sits on at least half of the world's supply of lithium, most of it in underground salt layers beneath the world's largest salt flats in Salar de Uyuni , in south-west Boliva. Betwee...

Traffic Safety Orgs Speak for Themselves - Not the Rest of Us

Classic traffic safety organisation narrative. "Stop cycling". By Stephanie Patterson With Mikael Colville-Andersen In the diverse world of traffic planning, advocacy and various movements for liveable cities, there is an odd group of outliers who broadcast conflicting messages. While “traffic safety” organisations seem like a natural part of the gallery and of the narrative, upon closer inspection they exist in a communication vacuum populated exclusively by like-minded organisations. There is little correlation with those organisations who advocate cycling, pedestrianism or safer streets. The traffic safety crowd are in a world unto themselves, with little or no accountability for the campaigns they develop or the messaging they broadcast. They are often allied with insurance companies who clearly take comfort in working with others who embrace scaring the population at large through constructed fear . In many ways, they are a classic subculture, with strong hints...

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