Bike Lane Street Sweeper
Designed and manufactured by Bill Stites, this pedal-powered Bike Lane Street Sweeper was spotted in Portland.
If you’ve read about the UPS cargo trike, that was designed by Bill too. Here’s a very early version of it I saw in 2010.
As Bike Portland tells the story, like many of you, Bill was tired of having to ride through the slippery leaves that often block or narrow many Portland bike lanes this time of year. So he built his own sweeper.
Bill’s sweeper creates a clear path about 36-inches wide by pushing debris to the curb. He estimates he could make them available for about $1,500 a piece (the heavy-duty brush-heads alone are $200 each). With a modified hitch that could attach to more types of bikes, perhaps neighborhood associations, local tool libraries, and other organizations could purchase one of these and loan it out to volunteer sweepers.