Tokyo's Kasai Station gets robotic bicycle-parking contraption

[emperor]

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Tokyo's Kasai Station gets robotic bicycle-parking contraption

We've seen a couple of robotic car parking garages in the past, but Tokyo's Kasai Station seems to have found another use for the same idea, with it now employing the services of an enormous bicycle-parking contraption that can store some 9,400 bikes. As you can see for yourself in the video after the break, the system is able to gobble up your bike and pull it down into the bowels of the garage with slightly terrifying efficiency, and at a cost of just \100 (about a buck) no less -- or \1,800 for a monthly pass. No word if they've had anyone try to stay on their bike and take a ride into the beast, although we'd assume there are some sort of safeguards in place to prevent those sorts of shenanigans.

[Visitor K]

hmm.. it looks cool, but isnt it a little complicated to just get a bicycle?
there was something like this back in wakayama city's nankai station, but it was basically a giant rotating ferris wheel for rows of bike racks and the attendant had to rotate the row with your bike on it to the ground to get it out.. it took a little time and was really old and rickety, but it seems like it would take a lot less maintenance than this, and i would be willing to bet that when this thing ends up being scrapped the ancient one in wakayama will still be functional.
seems like this is just a waste of money attempt at getting people to notice the station.

[ttjereth]

hmm.. it looks cool, but isnt it a little complicated to just get a bicycle?
there was something like this back in wakayama city's nankai station, but it was basically a giant rotating ferris wheel for rows of bike racks and the attendant had to rotate the row with your bike on it to the ground to get it out.. it took a little time and was really old and rickety, but it seems like it would take a lot less maintenance than this, and i would be willing to bet that when this thing ends up being scrapped the ancient one in wakayama will still be functional.
seems like this is just a waste of money attempt at getting people to notice the station.

I'm maybe 15 minutes from Kasai and we even have politicians standing outside our station yelling through megaphones about how huge a waste of money it is and how the current Edogawa ward administration has their heads of their asses.

Not really a surprising condemnation of a ward that spends more money on their fireworks display than many of their education programs...

[Greji]

we even have politicians standing outside our station yelling through megaphones about how huge a waste of money it is and how the current Edogawa ward administration has their heads of their asses.

Do those politicians mention that this system is built, in place and producing revenue to eventually pay for itself, while these politicians and being paid for standing out there bitching about the system and Edogawa and producing no revenue whatsoever?

[Kuang_Grade]

Presumably this would also free up space that could otherwise be used for more lucrative uses than bike storage resulting in incremental revenue that could offset the unit's cost as well. But there will be alot of pissed off people when that thing breaks down

[ttjereth]

Do those politicians mention that this system is built, in place and producing revenue to eventually pay for itself, while these politicians and being paid for standing out there bitching about the system and Edogawa and producing no revenue whatsoever?

The problem is that they claim the system will not last long enough to ever generate revenue enough to cover the costs.

It's not an "over and done with" type of deal, the system has running costs (power, maintenance, cleaning, attendants, the guys and trucks who have to go through and haul away the bikes that are considered abandoned, etc.) and it apparently cost and continues to cost ALOT (some of the claims being in the tens of millions in U.S. dollars), and is not used anywhere near to capacity (this is the largest bike parking lot in the country, but apparently only 6000 or so of the spots are used and the number of bicyles parked in the area seems to have been declining every year, for a station that is one of the least heavily used in the immediate area, even the station next door, Nishi Kasai, would have been a MUCH more logical choice, being a more heavily used station with much less space available immediately near the station, one of the stations where something other than only local trains stop would have made even more sense) in addition to which even though it is not at capacity there are restrictions on who can use it monthly, you have to live a certain distance away from the station but still within a certain distance of the station(Kasai has to be your "local" station, but you can't live so close that they deem it unnecessary for you to use a bike to commute to the station), etc. etc.

The article above doesn't give you a very clear idea of just how big this thing really is. It takes up practically the underground of the entire station area. It was a huge project.