The Shweeb | A human powered racing pod circuit
The Shweeb is New Zealand’s newest adventure activity and world first overhead monorail pedal powered race circuit. The faster you pedal, the faster you will finish. The Shweeb is located in Rotorua within the Agroventures Adventure Park in New Zealand and the core market is very broad; from four to 89 year-olds. Google was also positive about the idea and submitted an investment of one million dollars. A great monorail circuit for an adventurous nature reserve.
The Shweeb
The Shweeb is best described as a pedal-powered pod attached to an overhead monorail. It is an exciting, dynamic ride where riders experience up to 60 degree swings on the curves and soar high and low over the undulating terrain. Riders lie back in a recumbent position for maximum comfort and minimum aerodynamic drag. The hard wheels on the track reduce rolling resistance, and as riders click through the seven gears they get up to high speed (over 70 kph) with little effort. Racing can be either against the clock or another rider. Two Shweeb pods can also be joined together for tandem racing.
The Shweeb was conceived by Geoff Barnett who grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. After graduating University he moved to Japan to work in education. Watching and experiencing the near immobile traffic of Tokyo Geoff soon dreamed up the idea of cycling over it. The name ‘Schweeb’ was conceived after an internet search found a picture of the German Schwebebahn, or ‘hanging railway’.
In 2008 Google launched a project called 10^100 that called for ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible. Google evaluated 154,000 ideas submitted by the public and came up with 16 groupings of ideas for the public to vote on.
When ‘Drive innovation in public transportation’ turned out to be one of the five winning ideas, Google set about finding an organisation, company or individual to help bring that idea to life. Naturally enough it was a Google search that brought Shweeb to their attention, and ultimately led to Shweeb becoming one of a very select group to capture the imagination of the 10^100 advisory board and share in the $US10 million worth of investment funding that Google committed to the project.
Website: Shweeb
