Sometimes parking your bike can be a blood sport in urban areas and often you find the only place to lock a bike is to a chain link fence, causing a whole day’s worth of worrying. In densely populated urban places, bikes are often stacked like crazy, blocking doors, sidewalks etc. Well, welcome to the Bike Tree. In Tokyo, for about $12 a month US, you can get an electronic tag fitted to your bike that allows you to use the service. Simply pull up to the Bike Tree entrance and the Bike Tree does the rest. Reminiscent of a crazy dry cleaner cloth sorting apparatus, the bike tree carts your bike to a safe hinterland storage area to be retrieved later. Some lockers hold up to 6,000 bikes. Way cool. The vid is a little long, but it’s worth it.
[via Guardian UK]