My name is Cedric Eveleigh and this is my first post here. When I moved to the Sunshine Coast in Canada in April of 2022, I started volunteering with a local bike advocacy group called Transportation Choices. One of the many things that they do is run events where volunteers sweep a section of a bike lane with brooms to advocate for more frequent sweeping by our local government. While sweeping with a broom at one of these events, I had the idea to attach a powered sweeper to a bike. I then googled this idea and discovered Pierre’s invention. At that point, Pierre had already built proof-of-concepts bike lane sweeper that were covered in this article. I contacted Pierre and expressed my interest in manufacturing bike lane sweepers and helping with design since I’m a mechanical engineer with a business that already manufactures bike parts. Pierre was keen and we hit it off right away.
The photo above is one of the many bike lanes on the Sunshine Coast in dire need of sweeping. It’s not only that debris is unpleasant but also that it causes a loss of traction. And it gets even worse when the debris causes flat tires. Cycling would be safer and more widely adopted if we had better cycling infrastructure, both in the form of protected bike lanes and bike lanes that are free of debris. About the debris, the challenge is that bike lane sweeper trucks are extremely expensive. This motivates me to make our bike lane sweeper, which will be a lot more affordable and accessible to municipalities, bike organizations, and others.
While Pierre demonstrated a new eco-friendly and practical way to sweep bike lanes, there was a need for improvements to the manufacturability, durability, and user experience of his proof-of-concept sweepers. In the past year, I had several video calls with Pierre and our friend Roger to discuss sweeper design ideas. These discussions culminated in a design ready for fabrication. At the end of September, 2023, Pierre came over to my workspace on the Sunshine Coast for a weekend to help with building a version #2 prototype bike lane sweeper. This photo album is about the construction of that sweeper, and it shows the many refinements that we’re excited about.
The photo above shows the 3D model that I put together. Some of the main improvements in this design are an electric motor integrated into the brush core, improved brush suspension, wireless on-off, adjustable-height hitch connection, and removable bins for dumping debris. You’ll learn more about these things in the following photos.
These are most of the parts that go into the sweeper, although there have been changes since this photo was taken.
My friend Derek helped us with his CNC router to precisely cut the side panels. The sweeper has an aluminum frame, and some parts of the structure were made of wood for easy prototyping (the wood parts will be replaced with a more durable material in the production version of the bike lane sweeper).
Pierre figured out the electronics and came up with a great way to integrated an electric motor into the brush core. Using one of the several 3D printers in my workspace, we 3D printed the black part which is an adapter to connect the motor to the brush core. Pierre also set up a wireless receiver so that the sweeper can be turned on and off from the bike’s handlebar.
I built the aluminum frame with a combination of manual machining and TIG welding. I had experience with TIG welding steel, and I learned to weld aluminum only one week before these photos. TIG welding is amazing – with what is practically a mini lightning bolt, you liquefy metal and manipulate it to join solid metal parts together.
The first photo above shows one side of the suspension system that maintains constant brush pressure – this is an important feature for the sweeper to work well. At first thought, a sweeper should be a simple machine, but there are a lot of key little things like this that make it work in the real world.
In our bike lane sweeper, the motor is built into the core of the brush. The motor is heavy, so without compensation in the suspension, there would be a lot more brush pressure on the motor side. In the process of improving Pierre’s brush suspension idea, I came up with a way to compensate for the weight of the motor. Here, you can see Pierre weighing the brush so that I could calculate how much to compensate.
This is the mechanism that I came up with for adjusting the height of the connection point to the bike. The sweeper should be at a specific tilt so that the rubber lip at the front of the sweeper is at the right height from the ground. However, the connection between the sweeper and the bike is at the rear axle of the bike, and the height of this point varies depending on the bike’s wheel and tire size. Our adjustable hitch makes the sweeper easily adaptable for the different bikes. Also, the hitch on the bike (the part that’s bolted to the rear axle) is an off-the-shelf part for Burley bike trailers.
The video on the left is from when I took the the sweeper for a first parking lot test without the brush spinning. It was an exciting moment to experience how nice the sweeper feels when pulled. Right after this, we had to book it to Sechelt for Pierre to catch a hydroplane to Vancouver International Airport on his way back home to Sunnyvale, California.
The Sunshine Coast is a 40 minute ferry ride away from Vancouver, and hydroplanes are a fun alternative to the ferry. It was great to finally meet Pierre in person and to share such a fun weekend of fabrication.
On busy work days, I test the sweeper at night. I modified the sweeper to work with two bins instead of the three buckets that were originally planned. After short sweeping tests and making tweaks, the sweeper was ready for a longer distance test. In the video on the right, I departed for sweeping all the way to Sechelt, 8km away. On my way back, I counted ten loads of debris that I collected off of our bike lanes and dumped in ditches. We’re planning to use compostable bags in more urban environments.
The first video above shows how the sweeper is a nice size for getting around on bike paths. The second video gives an idea of what it’s like to dump debris. It’s not the cleanest job, but it’s satisfying work that’s great for the community, making bike lanes safer and more enjoyable. We’re making some final refinements to this sweeper prototype before giving it to folks in Portland for testing in an urban environment.
