seoul hubb by seungdon jung from korea

A key successful factor of a bike sharing service is an accessibility of bikes from any location of a city. The recent remarkable example of bike sharing scheme is Velib operating in Paris which implements the bike stations at every 300m of streets; it means that 1500 bike stations are installed around the city, not bounded only in the city center. In contrast, the same service in Brussel which only has 250 stations in the central area has not grown up as an alternative public transportation. How does Seoul where has six times of surface area and five times of population of theirs’ Paris can provide a public bikes which can be accessible from anywhere?

HUBB is a novel way of sharing bikes adapted to the unique nature of the Asian mega city Seoul. It aims at achieving smooth transition from bikes to the other means of transportation such as bus and metro. The fundamental idea is not leaving the bikes as a solitary personal modality, but carrying the bikes by public buses operating in Seoul. By doing so, people are able to continue their journey after taking off the bus by borrowing the bikes from the bus which they ride. People who do not use the bus can hire the bikes either from buses or bus stops. After using the bikes, people can return it to bus or any bus stops in the city.

The new bike component named Hubb plays a pivotal role to realize the service. Hubb enables bikes not to exist solely in a city, but to be integrated with other bikes and to response with the urban environments. Hubb is composed of two lock shaped disks which are anchored at the each side of a conventional hub. Since the left and right disks are wedge-shaped, they perfectly fit together. Therefore, the left side disk can be locked with the right side one of another bike. The disk is integrated with an electronic rental system which is activated by facing a smart transportation card, which can be integrated with the current T-money system. Depending on a location of the initial Hubb, bikes can be stored either at the bus stops or at the rear side of public bus or even at any streets of Seoul.

Citizen will experience the public bike service which is fully integrated with other means of public transportation. By using a smart phone application, users can search the optimize modalities including bike, buses, and metro. They will be informed where and when they can borrow the bike.

Bike and bus will rebirth as a new way of transportation for Seoul citizen.