Bike lanes are supposed to be a bicyclist’s best friend — but not if they’re covered in dangerous debris.
“For all the protected bike lanes and for all the good that they bring us, there’s a lot of debris that’s pushed into them by cars, traffic, maybe even normal street sweepers,” said Marc Thompson, a local cyclist who helps run bikedenver.net, a Discord chat community.
Bike lanes, he said, often are littered with broken asphalt, glass, rocks and more, which can damage tires, injure riders and discourage use.
The Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is in charge of cleaning bike lanes. The department has two bike lane sweepers, which look almost like a miniature version of the vehicles that clean residential streets once a month (the same ones that give you a monthly parking headache).
Bike lanes downtown are swept twice a week, according to DOTI spokesperson Nancy Kuhn, but the rest of the city is on a far less consistent schedule — crews “aim to sweep the rest” of protected bike lanes once a month.
The city currently has funding for a third lane sweeper. But the bike advocates want the city to go further.
“More often than not, it seems like perhaps an afterthought,” Thompson said.
A bicycle-powered solution
Thompson and other members of the Discord want to take matters into their own pedals and have their own solution — a bicycle-drawn street sweeper that sucks up debris, which they hope to operate themselves.
They hope to purchase a sweeper from an engineering duo from California. The duo, doing business as the succinctly named Bike Lane Sweeper, designed a pull-behind trailer that uses an electronic brush to sweep debris into a container. The trailer can be pulled by a bicycle and also features GPS-tracking to show what lanes have been cleaned.
The technology has been adopted by bike communities around the country, including Portland and Napa.
The BikeDenver Discord hopes to fundraise $4,500 to purchase the trailer. The group, which is also registered as a nonprofit, also is angling for a city grant to help.
By comparison, the city’s Dulevo D.zero² mini streetsweeper cost $221,000 back in 2018, although it is presumably a lot more powerful.
Thompson said they’ve already heard from cyclists who would be happy to help tow the wagon.
“It’s about giving back and trying to lead by example,” he said.
Paolo Zialcita
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