The Busycle is 15 person 100% passenger pedaled vehicle.  The Busycle, a traveling public art project under development since 2005, runs solely on the energy of its passengers. All passengers are required to pull their weight and pedal in their seats. The pedal power then moves the Busycle from destination to destination. The Busycle’s public life involves experimental public rides that travel down city streets, where story telling is of the essence.  It is our goal that by bringing art and technology clearly into the public realm and as near to the community as possible (what could be closer than riding an art project down the streets where people live and inviting them onto the art?), we will begin to stir a dialogue about the current and universal issues from which the Busycle has grown, while creating a forum for people to pause and enjoy.

Context

The concept of the busycle responds to the role that transportation and top down approaches to decision making play in defining where and how we live locally, as well as how we interact globally.  Transportation can be an indicator as to how much power people have within their own lives, as well as in politics and policy. Transportation can serve as a litmus test for issues ranging from environmental racism to global politics.

The Busycle does not attempt to be the answer to major ecological or socioeconomic questions, nor does it attempt to even be a practical technology.   Yet what it does do is serve as the antithesis to top down approaches to decision making that tend to leave many in the margins and have left us in our current predicament. It is everything that top down is not.  

The Busycle has created spontaneous community.  It has grown from the ideas and sweat of over 50 volunteers.  It has been built from the waste products of our society, with the majority of the vehicle made of re-used materials.  The Busycle will be pedaled by anyone who is willing.

The Busycle requires individuals to use their own will and physical strength to come together as a group to go from point A to B.   Starting and ending points are ones that they control.  By bringing the intersection of art, technology, and activism to the street, the Busycle asks the public to literally participate in a small movement.

How It Happened

In the summer of 2005, Artists Heather Clark and Matthew Mazzotta were awarded an artists residency from the Boston (Roxbury)-based Berwick Research Institute’s Public Art Satellite Program.    Over a four month period, to help design the project, we formed a small online research community made of experts from the U.S., as well as the Netherlands and Australia.  We also elicited research support and construction volunteers from almost 50 Boston-based participants. The 100% volunteer crew/design team who are the heart of this project is an eccentric mix of individuals including a former software engineer and MIT alum who left his desk job to pursue his dream of opening an industrial arts club (Sparqs, where we built the Busycle), a professional French horn player with a passion for bio-diesel, a pedicab mechanic/local renowned junkyard dog, the founder of the first American team of the television show Junkyard Wars, MIT professors, staff, and alumni, a pastry chef, a midwife, a machinist, a teenage robot enthusiast, and teachers. We also received donations from groups ranging from Boston bicycle shops to junkyards.

Working together and using almost all found or recycled materials (ranging from office chairs to steel bed frames) we created what we call the Busycle.  This vehicle began as a 15-passenger van stripped down to its chassis.  Its engine was replaced by 14 customized recumbent bicycles, one driver’s seat and an elegant gearing system.