Bordeaux citizens design bike for city-wide rental scheme

The City of Bordeaux has crowdsourced the design of its Bike of the Future for its public bike rental system.

We’ve seen the crowds chipping in to design everything from credit cards to new fashion collections, and we’ve seen a number of city-based bike rental schemes. Combing elements from all of these, The City of Bordeaux recently asked its citizens to design the Bike of the Future for its public bike rental system. The City asked residents to submit their ideas for a new bike design through the official City of Bordeaux je participe micro-site, with more than 300 respondents taking part. Designer Philippe Starck was then brought in to translate the numerous suggestions into a single concept. The final design, unveiled at the second Cyclab event in Bordeaux in February, is a silver and yellow bike-scooter, with a foot panel placed in front of the pedals to enable users to safely push start the machine. Peugeot has now been contracted to put the bikes into production before they become part of a city-wide rental scheme. The aim of the project was to give citizens an input into a service they will be using themselves, with the final bike reflecting their concerns over ease-of-use and safety. Government departments elsewhere: could crowdsourcing ideas from local residents improve your services?