Did you know that with the help of used tyres and few equipment, one could create simple barriers which will separate vehicle traffic away from cycle lanes? Well its called WeCLAIM.
We have heard about various accidents which have occurred due to vehicles running over the cycle lane. Concrete dividers are not at all a safe solution since vehicles can ram onto them and cause serious risk to life. Concrete barriers are expensive too but there is a new solution to this problem, thanks to the Build a Better Barrier Challenge - a design competition which improves costly bike lane barriers used in cities across the world.
Everyone must have seen plastic poles which have been destroyed by vehicles running over them, raising a huge question of safety concern of the cycle riders moving through the cycle or bike lane. Hence the design competition which is sponsored by shared scooter and electric bike company named spin resulted in the creation of cheaper and durable dividers.
The concept was designed by Caressa Givens a program manager at Statewide bicycle organisation and Arthur TalayKo an industrial designer. The design is called WeCLAIM which is based on a traffic calming tactic.
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Caressa Givens said that “I feel like I am the tyre lady, We usually bring whole tires and just stack them up. They do work out well, they just kind of look like a junk parade.”
Spin and its parent company which is Ford as we popularly know, are connecting Givens and Talayko with Ford's internal designers to produce a more refined version of the WeCLAIM . A partnership is also expected to help them produce barriers in large scale. However it is going to be used only in the near future according to Spin.
According to Kay Cheng, Program director and city planner from 'Spin' states that “what it could do and has done is start to open up the dialogue of asking if there are other ways we can approach this design.”
Talayko and Givens have planned to create an instruction manual of WeCLAIM for assembling barrier and the instructions will be an open source which they believe could help people take their design and start making barriers themselves in a unique manner .
