Kolelinia is a high-wire for bikes, a skinny, suspended cycle-lane which lets riders glide over traffic, flying above the streets. It is amazing sci-fi, and is either a brilliant, forward thinking idea or the most ridiculously stupid traffic scheme yet concocted.
The Kolelinia consists of two parts, both suspended high above the street. The first part is a gutter in which you ride, a half-tube channel that keeps your wheels from falling off the thin track. The second part is a guide cable that runs alongside the rider at handlebar height. You attach a tethering device to your handlebar and it runs along the able like a safety line on a boat, with a neat mechanism to let it pass right over the supporting poles. In theory, this should work.
The Kolelinia isn’t meant to be a full length bike route. Instead, it is a way to pass problem junctions, or to offer a high-rise tourist route. But the flaws are many. First, if you have ever ridden your bike too close to the curb, almost touching the sidewalk, you’ll know that the bike feels very unstable. You need a little wiggle room to the right in order to turn left — the bike needs to be tilted slightly underneath you to shift the center of gravity into the turn. The restrictive gutter wouldn’t allow this.
Second, your handlebar is also fixed, another wobble-inducing nightmare. And if you do hop the track, or if you just freak out and fall off your bike, you will be headed quickly road-ward as the bike dangles above. A safety cable would stop you actually hitting the pavement, but I can think of easier ways to spend a commute.
We suspect that the scheme is doomed. Not that we don’t like it. Flying over cars would be awesome. Is’s just that this doesn’t appear to be the way to do it. A real flying bike on the other hand…
Kolelinia sky-bike lane [Kolelinia via Urban Velo]
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