PPW

The VEIL 25 year vision sees great changes to the way we move around our cities and neighbourhoods. Private cars are not as practical, or as widely used, as they once were. Exploring this theme led to investigations of cycling and how the cycling experience might be improved to be more enjoyable and convenient. Bike Tubes are one solution in this domain.

The Bike Tube urban transport strategy provides for dedicated enclosed bike-ways attached to the existing car-based freeway network. The infrastructure that once privileged the automobile (at great cost) is now re-invigorated, providing a medium distance commuting facility for human and battery powered bikes (and possibly, trikes).

The Bike Tubes provide separate bike lanes that utilise the road structures and air-rights of the freeway network (leaving a single lane for the reduced vehicle traffic). The ‘tube’ provides protection from the rain and cold winds in winter and the hot sun in summer. They peel off at key entry and exit points on the freeway network and connect to the secondary road network, providing very fast and convenient travel paths for bike riders. Bike tubes can be developed as a ‘tolled’ system using RFID tags.

CWP is a development project and can be initiated now.

© Chris Ryan VEIL University of Melbourne. 2007

In responding to the current and future demands for water within a city such as Melbourne we are already witnessing a change of paradigm about the engineering of water systems. Strategies to reduce demand, by technology and behaviour change, are complemented by new approaches to supply based on a distributed systems approach. This recognises that fresh-water is a distributed resource and that there is a significant energy cost to moving water around. The new distributed system approach encompasses greater reuse of waste water, but treatment of waste streams also has an energy cost. In the context of action on global warming any expansion of the water supply that adds to CO2 production creates a problem.