Desiring Machine

Ran across this interesting piece of biking infrastructure from Trondheim Norway. The Trampe Bike Lift. Basically a simple road level lift that you place your foot on and ride to the top of the hill. The city of Trondheim has spent about 3.2 million over the last 20 years to implement this infrastructure much to the delight of the 90% biking population.

This seems like a great piece of technology to implement in Seattle on key hills. Would make biking much more feasible in the city. And it is relatively cheap. Mayor Nickels says he is for reducing green house emissions in the city. Surely with all the talk of spending billions on viaduct tunnel replacements, special trolley cars that go half a dozen blocks, and new bridges to the east side, the city and county could spend a few million making the hills less burdensome for bikers. Build the infrastructure and the people will follow. The Burke Gilman Trail is great. Why not more of this around the city? Seattle is dense enough that we could easily make getting anywhere in the city on a bicycle nearly as convenient as a bus ride.

I live on the north side of Queen Anne near the Fremont bridge. Sometimes I need to go into work on the other side of the Queen Anne near the Seattle center. Generally I would take a bicycle but the Queen Anne hill is such a bear to climb that I end up driving the short route and paying for parking. Waste of gas and waste of parking meter fees. And driving around the hill is a little out of the way when I am in a rush. But with something like the Trampe Bike lift installed it would be a snap. And in Capitol Hill and many other areas of the city a bike lift could really make biking practical around this city. Now if we could just do something about the rain. Actually it is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.