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The only Shweeb system at the moment is at Agroventures in Rotorua, New Zealand, where riders can race one another side-by-side over a circuit.
Photo: Shweeb

We talk from time-to-time about making cities more bicycle-friendly. That’s not easy to do in major urban settings, as streets are already tightly laid out and there often really isn’t the room to put in bike lanes, short of taking lanes away from cars (not a bad idea, but not practical in many instances).

But what if you could put the bicycle riders above the traffic?

Possible applications for Shweeb https://shweeb.com include riding high above the traffic. Gees, hope those pods are really well attached to that monorail. Shweeb says the wheels are locked inside an enclosed track.
Rendering: Shweeb

That’s the idea behind Shweeb, a pedal-powered monorail pod system that elevates riders off the road. Shweeb is a bastardization of the German Schweben, meaning “hang” or “hover.”

An Australian named Geoffrey Barnett got the idea while teaching English in Tokyo and being frustrated at not being able to ride his bike to work in that city’s extremely crowded streets.

Google thinks his idea has merit and awarded him $1 million for research and development.

The pods make bike riding easier, because there is lower wind resistance. Shweeb asserts, “On firm, flat ground, a 70kg man requires about 100 watts to walk at 5km/h. The power required to move a Shweeb along a rail at 20km/h is only 33 watts.”