Interesting North presentations by James Boardwell and Toby Barnes plus an all-too-short chat with Tom Armitage in the pub after the event prompted me to rescue this post from my blog’s permanently-in-draft folder. I’m not sure it’s finished yet, but make of it what you will.
Originally it was going to be a sober and constructive service design account of my experiences on London’s cycle hire scheme: a tale of how my most regular London trip takes precisely 30 minutes and 19 seconds thus costing me an extra pound; of how the supply of bikes to major train stations at rush hour could make or break the scheme; and of how the chosen shade of blue now evokes a Pavlovian pedalling response.
But then I fell into reading the story of a different mode of urban transport, every paleo-futurist’s dream machine, the Personal Rapid Transit system. Specifically, on the recommendation of a colleague (thanks to that person, you know which Matt you are :) I got a copy of Bruno Latour’s 1993 work, ‘Aramis, or the Love of Technology,’ which traces the ill-fated 18-year journey of a guided transport project.
It’s a gem of a book, part documentary, part ethnographic meditation, part fictionalised romance of technology, a post-modern retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where we cannot tell if the monster is the creation or its creator.
“It’s typically French. You have a system that’s supposedly brilliant, but nobody wants it. It’s a white elephant. You go on and on indefinitely. The scientists have a high old time…”
Aramis was a prototype at Orly Airport in the early 1970s and a network planned for southern Paris in the 1980s. It was made up of moving pods, each carrying a few passengers, which could link up electronically to form ad hoc trains along busy routes then disband as they headed for their various destinations. The idea was that you’d hop on, take a seat, select your destination, and be whisked straight from A to B without having to change at C, or even wait a few minutes at D, E and F while other passengers boarded or disembarked.
In addition to the application of a revolutionary new motor, Aramis relied on “non-material coupling” by which its cars would travel packed together as if in a train, yet contactless…
“Aramis, the heart of Aramis, is nonmaterial coupling. That’s the whole key. The cars don’t touch each other physically. Their connection is simply calculated.”
I half-remember seeing Aramis on Tomorrow’s World. It was definitely the transport of the future, or at least of a future, the one depicted in books with titles like ‘The City of the Future’.
Ultimately the technology proved too complex and the political will too weak: the project was canned in 1987, having swallowed up half a billion francs of research and development costs and half the careers of some fine engineers along the way. All that we’re left with is an object-lesson in institutional inertia, a warning of how big businesses and governments can waste a fortune when they become too fixated on the technlogical solution at the expense of the user need.
But it struck me that in a funny way the French did get their Aramis. Because before London got its blue bikes Paris deployed Vélib’, a network of cycles for hire from docking stations dotted around the city.
And looking at the requirements (not the solution) that Latour discerned for Aramis, Vélib’ matches pretty well:
| Requirement | Aramis | Vélib’ |
| no transfers | On board software determines the most efficient direct route | Rider gets on bike at start of journey and gets off when they get where they’re going |
| no intermediate stops | Cars peel off from train to drop passengers at station, so other pods can continue uninterrupted | Rider stops only to buy a litre of milk or something. Other riders are not affected |
| passengers control the destination | By pressing a button at the stop or in the car | By steering with the handlebars |
| passengers don’t have to think | They trust the car’s navigation computer to take them where they’re going | They achieve a dream-like state of flow while following a well-marked cycle route |
Watch the bike lanes of Paris or London in the rush hour, especially on a strike day. Cyclists link up subconsciously to form ad hoc trains along busy routes then disband as they head for their various destinations. The bikes don’t touch each other physically. Their connection is simply calculated. Yes, I have seen the future, and what it lacks in non-material couplings and variable-reluctance motors, it makes up for with a basket and a bell.
We don’t notice these things though. As James Boardwell so smartly put it in his Interesting North talk, we’re unable to picture something as simple as a bike playing a role in a radical vision of the future.
In this respect the pushbike is like Frank Chimero’s tiny horse in the Apple Store (as referenced by Toby): we’re too busy looking at the new shiny to even register the glaringly wonderful.
What really fascinates me about the cycle hire schemes, however, is the way they turn the bike into just a small part of a bigger system. To the hardware of gears and chains and brakes are added official and unnofficial services that multiply the bikes’ utility.
- The access control systems and kiosks at each docking point…
- The mobile apps that help users find a bike to use and a place to leave it…
- The route planners that tell them the best way from A to B (without a care for C, D, E or F)
- The GPS apps that records data trails for future reference.
These things may not be as obvious as Trondheim’s spectacular escalator (and I’d vote for one of these up Chapeltown Road) but they are real nonetheless.
Aramis’ body may have long since been scrapped, but its spirit lives on in the emerging software of the city.
