My friend Marie and I were inspired to write a letter a couple of years ago to the City of Copenhagen with a long list of good ideas that Copenhagen should consider in order to cater more to cyclists and brand cycling better.
As fate would have it, Marie is now working at the City's Bicycle Office and I'm a senior consultant but one of those ideas was inspired by a photo sent to me by David Hembrow in Holland. David writes the A View from the Cycle Path blog - a must read.
Anyway, garbage bins for cyclists. I blogged about it a year and a half ago. Raised up and tilted towards the cyclists, offering them a better hit ratio.
I recieved this photo from the Bicycle Office the other day. There are right now a handful of prototypes of a tilted garbage bin along some routes aimed at cyclists who have problems aiming.
Brilliant stuff although to be honest, I think this prototype design needs some improvements. It could be mistaken for a garbage bin that was bumped by a car and bent. It should be higher as well.
Like in many cities there is a design manual for all City inventory on the urban landscape and this bin is a variation on the theme. In order to really hammer the point home that this is for cyclists I think the city should consider making these bins different than all the other regular bins. Brand them for cyclists. Different colour, bigger, higher and a wider opening and with the City's 'I Bike CPH' logo all over it. The City is open to ideas that there could be a target design on them to show that you're meant to aim, among other ideas.
At the moment they're testing them to see if people are better at aiming with their coffee cups or apple cores or whatever they're throwing out from their bicycles. They'll see the results in a couple of months.