Friolzheim, 28th April 2017 – City Deputy Mayor Martin Killinger, School Director Jürgen Schwarz, and Otto Wöhr GmbH Directors Jens Niepelt and Wolfgang Frölich formally opened the Bikesafe bicycle parking tower at the Rutesheim Education Centre. Now up to 122 additional bicycles can be safely housed at the school. The Friolzheim manufacturer of car parking systems and the Rutesheim Education Centre teamed up for this project in 2016. Installation of Wöhr’s first fully automatic parking system for bicycles began during the summer holiday, and is now ready for use. Pupils and teachers will be able to use the bicycle parking system at no charge for five years.

With its intelligent bicycle parking system, Otto Wöhr GmbH provides a solution for cities, municipalities and communities to help make cycling more attractive as a means of transportation, and the storing of bikes safer and more practical. The Bikesafe by Wöhr creates 122 additional parking spaces in the eight levels of the approximately 11.80-metre-high tower, on a base area of just approx. 37 m2. In this way it provides a compact, theft-proof housing of bikes with minimal use of space.

Around 2,100 pupils attend school at the Rutesheim Education Centre. It is easily accessible by bicycle due to many bike paths. Today, around 400 bicycle owners use the available covered parking areas on school days. Jens Niepelt, Director of Otto Wöhr GmbH, explains: “We are very happy to have this nice reference project in the immediate vicinity of our company headquarters. We at WÖHR have been successfully involved in smart parking for automobiles for over 50 years, and shall naturally continue do so. But with Bikesafe, we have now opened a new, additional chapter to show that we can also cleverly stack smaller, lighter, two-wheeled vehicles. And we want to show that this works with our fully automated Bikesafe. We hope that it will encourage even more pupils to bike to school.”

Two pupils of the Rutesheim Education Centre showed how the fully automated parking procedure works by demonstrating the storage and retrieval process. Ferhan Cokgezen, responsible for the operation of the Bikesafe: “All popular types of bicycles, from e-bikes to pedelecs, can be safely stored in the Bikesafe, saving space. Storage is fully automated.” The user, at street level, places the bicycle in a wheel track in the transfer area. The park tower automatically takes in the bicycle, and the gate closes. The bicycle is then transported upwards and stored above, inaccessible to others. When the bicycle is retrieved, it is ready for pick up in approx. 16 seconds. The user operates the system with a personal chip, issued by the school upon registration for the Bikesafe.

“With this ‘green parking’ pilot project, Otto Wöhr GmbH lends support to the City of Rutesheim’s commitment to good bicycle infrastructure”, says Wöhr director Jens Niepelt. The city’s flagship project for sustainability and environmental awareness is sponsored by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. Creation of bicycle parking facilities is eligible for subsidies of up to 50%, depending on the federal state. The new technology for parking bicycles safely and with as little space as possible was first presented at the BAU 2015 World’s Leading Trade Fair for Construction. It offers cities, communities and private developers an intelligent solution for the problem of ever-shrinking space – not only in high density areas.