Pedal power by New Latin America

Please find below the judging results for your proposal.

Semi-Finalist Evaluation

Judges'' comments

SUBJECT: Your proposal in the Climate CoLab

Proposal: Pedal power

Contest: Transportation

Thank you for your contest entry. We appreciate your willingness to share your ideas and also the time and effort you put into developing a proposal and submitting it to the contest.

We, the Judges, have strongly considered your proposal and found that it contained intriguing elements; however, we have chosen to not advance it to the next round of competition.

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Keep up the great work. We hope that by working together, we all can create solutions that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

2015 Climate CoLab Judges

The proponent should have presented a careful estimate about the expected amount of electricity produced. I remember the old days, when the electricity of the bicycle light was generated by the cyclist. This was a significant pedalling effort for just a few Watts required for powering the light! The astronomously large number of more than 8,000 MW is hard to believe, why MW/yr? (W is power, i.e., energy per unit time; something is wrong here)

While these types are bike schemes are common, we like the idea of giving users more information about their activity, and more importantly having them generate electricity while using the bike. A number of details need to be fleshed out though. How and when would the bike generate electricity? Would this only be when the bike is going downhill or coasting, for example, or all the time? If the latter, we would imagine it would increase resistance somewhat, which would make cycling more difficult and therefore less attractive. Usage may then be somewhat lower than other cities have seen. If electricity is generated only while going downhill, or coasting, the benefits would be reduced. Also, what levels of usage do you assume for the numbers you generate? It may be inappropriate to translate uptake of the scheme from other cities that are less hilly than La Paz. Apart from expected usage of the scheme, the amount of electricity that is likely to be generated by the bikes under different circumstances needs to be quantified in more detail in order to understand the merits of the proposal more fully. Where do you get the numbers you quote, and under what circumstances do they apply. We would imagine this is particularly important for an application in a hilly city such as La PAZ.

The ideas of bicycle sharing and dedicated lanes for their use is widely implemented in varying degrees in many cities in the world. If the authors could bring these best practices in Latin America, it would certainly be a very positive contribution to the urban transportation system potentially easing congestion in those cities.

If the bikes are electrified to help with the steep hills in some of these cities then even better but this would add significantly to the project costs.

The authors suggest that one novelty they propose is that the cyclists would "generate" electricity as they ride.
This part is unfortunately not technically feasible as the human power is already pushed to provide the 150-200W required for locomotion that producing even a few additional W makes the effort more daunting as those with an old style wheel generator and light know all to well.

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