Many cities, including my hometown of New York, use “street sweepers”: slow-moving vehicles with large rotating brushes and, sometimes, a vacuum cleaner. They are designed not only to whisk debris off the streets but also to wash oil and other substances that can make roadways slick.
For some time, I’ve thought there should be a bicycle equivalent of street sweepers to clear trails and paths.
(Better maintenance would help, too: Someone once joked that if you ride Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway lane, when you get to Coney Island you won’t need to ride the Cyclone because you’ve already ridden over so many humps. I could say the same for the Pelham Parkway lane, which I rode this morning!)
They say the great minds think alike. So, in the immortal words of The Brain, someone was pondering what I’ve been pondering. And that person has more engineering ability, or is simply more of a tinkerer, than I am.
