Tokyo’s cycle parking problem solved

Cycles are a popular form of transportation in Japan. However, they can take up a lot of public space when parked. Japanese construction company Giken has come up with the answer; its Eco Cycle is an anti-seismic automated underground storage system. Buried eleven metres below ground, Eco Cycle has a capacity of around 200 cycles and each one takes around thirteen seconds to store. Users attach a sensor to their cycle, which alerts the Eco Cycle centre that a cycle is on its way. The user then rolls the f
August 9, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Cycles are a popular form of transportation in Japan. However, they can take up a lot of public space when parked.

Japanese construction company 7445 Giken has come up with the answer; its Eco Cycle is an anti-seismic automated underground storage system.  Buried eleven metres below ground, Eco Cycle has a capacity of around 200 cycles and each one takes around thirteen seconds to store.

Users attach a sensor to their cycle, which alerts the Eco Cycle centre that a cycle is on its way.  The user then rolls the front wheel into the opening of the parking machine, stands clear, and pushes a green button. In about eight seconds the bike is pulled into the kiosk and a robotic lift stores the cycle. To retrieve his cycle, the user simply waves his card over a sensor and the robotic arm pulls out the bicycle and brings it back up in approximately thirteen seconds.
Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • StreetLight Data maps future
    February 20, 2019
    Laura Schewel of StreetLight Data talks to Adam Hill about the importance of measuring what you do – and about how paint will remain perhaps the most important piece of technology in the city planners’ armoury for a decade to come Transportation is dangerous, responsible for 30% of global cargo emissions today. Some experts believe that it will be responsible for 80% by 2050. And that’s before you even get on to the safety question - just ask tech entrepreneur Laura Schewel. “Transportation is getting wo
    Read More
  • Joining old and new in Canada’s Highway 407
    June 17, 2016
    David Arminas visits Canada’s Highway 407 ETR to see how the concession is working and hear about new arrangements for the roadway’s extension. The Toronto region is North America’s eighth largest metropolitan area and its roads become notoriously congested. In 1997 Highway 407, a 68km concrete toll motorway which skirts the northern edge of Toronto, was opened and initially operated by the province and CHIC - a consortium of four leading Ontario-based companies. Finance came from the Ontario Financing Auth
    Read More
  • Do buses need subsidies in congestion charging areas
    June 20, 2016
    David Crawford takes a look at the debate surrounding bus subsidies. Subsidies for public transport are a well-known and frequently-used policy tool directed at reducing the high environmental and social costs of peak-period traffic congestion. But at the end of last year the Swedish Centre for Transport Studies published a working paper entitled ‘Should buses still be subsidised in Stockholm?’ This concluded that the subsidy levels currently being applied in Stockholm could be nearly halved by setting bus
    Read More
  • Smart parking at London Underground
    December 17, 2014
    Transport for London (TfL) is to implement a ‘smart parking’ system at 31 of its off-street car parks that support key locations across the London Underground network. 1,500 of Smart Parking’s RFID-equipped SmartEye vehicle detection sensors, linked via SmartLink data transmitters into the company’s SmartRep management application, will be installed across TfL’s off-street car park network. The five-year agreement, which will include the provision of equipment, maintenance and hosting, will enable car pa
    Read More

Highlighted Content