Thames Deckway

River Cycleway Consortium Europe is taking cycling into the 21st century with its floating pontoon-style cycleways - that also generate renewable energy.

Their water-based floating transport infrastructure solutions use innovative human-centred design principles and state-of-the art materials and technologies to deliver next generation clean transport.

Innovations include a modular floating pontoon design (allowing the project to adapt to different urban waterway environments), renewable energy generation (including solar, wind, kinetic, and hydro), and climate and extreme weather adaptive resilience engineering.

The team are now seeking high impact angel investment to secure their IP package for a new and disruptive business model and to de-risk their product by creating a full-scale demonstrator in Dublin and developing plans for an international franchise.

The project is the first of its kind – seeking to address multiple interlinked urban challenges (including climate change, air pollution, congestion, and human health) by harnessing the untapped potential of urban waterways, such as rivers and canals.

The market opportunity and strategic need for the product is demonstrable.

Cycling is increasingly becoming the preferred transport option in cities, with the global market estimated to be worth €21.5billion.

At the same time cities are understanding that promoting cycling can be a cost-effective method of simultaneously reducing congestion, improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and promoting urban health and wellbeing.

Unfortunately, cities are limited in their ability to increase cycling as a transport option due to the lack of physical space and opposition towards developing safe cycling infrastructure (such as segregated bike lanes).

The River Cycleway Consortium Europe project addresses this problem by utilizing untapped urban resources such as rivers, canals, waterfronts and other waterways.

As a result of the innovative approach RCCE have received expressions of interest from London (UK), Dublin (Ireland), Paris (France), Atlanta (USA), and Glasgow (Scotland) for the product.