Bandera

Your "professor" has apparently never been on a bicycle as an adult, has no concept of what a "delay on bike travel" actually is much less how to grade a course project on "reducing it" and has Zero hope for tenure. Can you get your tuition $$$$ back from the On-line Engineering College of Barbados and get a real education instead?

-Bandera

livedarklions

I don't think there's a good portable tool for recalibrating the inertial stabilizers.

alcjphil

AGREE. This is a basically flawed concept. Reasons why cyclists are delayed are myriad. You cannot develop a single product to address it unless you have a database that will allow you to address the most common delays

Leinster

Not really. The project isn’t to eliminate all delays, it’s to reduce delays. So puncture-proof tires will reduce delays due to puncture repairs. They won’t address delays due to roadworks, but they’ll help.

Bandera

A series of properly timed traffic control signals set to an urban bike commuter's pace will "reduce delays" for cyclists more than any widget that be can devised.
Of course the hordes of motorized commuters we "share the road" with may disagree with that infrastructure re-work policy, but your "urban planning" course would Ace it.

-Bandera

dedhed

As stated in an earlier post, something to change traffic signals to green as needed to keep pace. Fire trucks already have this capability in many places.

alcjphil

That only addresses one reason for delays. Tire repair on the road is something that has been dealt with as long as pneumatic tires have existed. One would think that this would have been taken into account for this question. There is no such thing as a puncture proof bicycle tire unless the tire isn't pneumatic.

Bandera

Great product, except when there's more than one and the users are traveling in opposite directions it's a Chaos Generator.
Amusing perhaps for a sociopathic anarchist but also a great way to get arrested, especially if keeping emergency vehicles from getting where they need to be "without delays".

-Bandera

OmegaWolf

A portable personal tailwind would help immensely.

livedarklions

My delays would be reduced drastically if all you slow-pokes would move out of my way.

Charliekeet

This thread depresses me because there are just so many things I’d like to say to the OP about this project, but I’ve really been trying not to hang onto negative feelings and judgments...
so I’ve got nothing to add!

woodcraft

Beans?

Leinster

“Only addressing one reason for delays” would still meet the brief of the project. Per the OP, “the design brief is to "create a product that reduces delays on bike travel".” So the project is 1) identify a cause of delays, 2) develop a product to reduce that delay. The brief does not say “eliminate all delays.”

What’s wrong with non-pneumatic tires? It would reduce at least one cause of delays, and so meet the brief. Only problem being that they already exist.

CliffordK

It is hard to say. The main thing that can cause one to miss an appointment is a flat tire. Most avid long-distance commuters bring the tools and supplies to fix a simple flat.

Buying high quality modern tires are MUCH better than those from a couple of decades ago. Nonetheless, it is always worth considering whether one can build the better tire.

Sealants?

Tannus, of course, makes flat-free tires, but they come with performance costs.

For other failures. I'll occasionally get a broken chain. So far I've never broken an 11-speed chain, and the better the chain, the fewer broken chains. Most of the new ones have some kind of mushroomed pins that are less likely to break. And, I try to carry the tools and parts I'd need to fix a broken chain, or limp home.

Broken spokes are also rare. Again, I have the tools I need to deal with them.

Slipping chains usually don't stop one beside the road, but in general is just a maintenance issue, along with a host of other maintenance issues.

A zero maintenance bicycle would be interesting, but I don't believe very practical. Build the bicycle like a car, 100,000 miles between tune-ups? Spokeless wheels?

It sounds like riding a TANK.

Machka 

Does the design brief actually use the word "delays"?

subgrade

That sounds like a job for the...

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2howud

wolfchild

Three main cause of delays are: weather conditions, road conditions, traffic. Good luck trying to eliminate those.

FlMTNdude

Cant help you with procrastination. Been meaning to get around to that one myself. The other stuff sounds like it falls into the MariKondo category. I have storage set up for bike and run specific items. What your personal needs are may not be mine. I have seen some shelf/storage builds for an all in one station for helmet, shoes, bottles and misc gear in one unit. That in my house would be an additional step towards divorce.

Prowler 

In the OPs defense, this may not be such a bad assignment. If we were to apply the same concept to automobiles, a few decades ago, what might we target? Flat tires, poor starting from poor gas or water in the gas, burnt ignition points, low battery charge, broken fuel gauges so you run out of gas, over heating engines, etc. With cars and infrastructure built in the past decade or so, these issues have been almost forgotten due to products that, one by one, made cars and using cars more reliable. And, at the same time, improved performance.

Avoid the tendency to cling to status quo. "Why worry about ignition points? We have the tools to set em, even change em out on the side of the road. They're good for over 15,000 miles. What's the problem?"

Or look at electric cars: battery quality and life span, charging stations, maintenance procedures and trained personnel..........

So, from that perspective, what could be done to cycling?

BobbyG

jadocs

You should just say that you are trying to design a better multi-tool.

You need a clearly defined problem statement. A “delay” is not a problem, it’s a consequence as a result of a problem. You stated that you wanted to speed up repairs so think about what problems you are trying to mitigate.

308jerry

I would think some sort of time travel/portal would be useful. Get a flat and just go back a few minutes and swerve around the odject that gave you the flat.
For commuting, instead of the normal grind of riding to work and back. A person could travel to a national/scenic park and ride for an hour or so, then travel back to work/home.
Or a money tree, yea a money tree would sure make any delay a little more enjoyable. 😘😘🎄🎄

grizzly59

I've developed a product that eliminates bike delays due to rounding up your HR monitor, gloves, light, etc.
Introductory pricing at around $8. Still working on sloth, I'll maybe get to procrastination next week.

https://www.target.com/p/16qt-indust...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

livedarklions

A device that would make it easier to figure out if you got the object that punctured your tube out of the tire before putting in the new tube.

Darth Lefty 

There must be a million products marketed to us to solve every problem we have or just imagine we have. The question would be why don't we adopt these products? Plenty of people use essentially flat-proof tires, belt drives, gear hubs, dynamo lights. Others will prefer a bike that possesses none of these but weighs 8 kilos not 15 and is so, so much faster.