During those golden autumn days and cycling through the woods I curse at every barrier which was installed to restrict cars, vans and those abominable quads from driving through the woods, but in effect forces a harmless cyclist to dismount and, forcing their way through underbrush and muck, to evade the obstacle.

Therefore I propose that all those barriers should be replaced with a new design which horizontal bars with a gap in the middle in the form of an upturned "U" or a cricket hoop, about 1 m wide and 1 m in height - not wide enough that a car could pass, but allowing pedestrians, hikers, cyclists and even riders (on small ponies) to stay on the path and on their means of transport while passing through the barrier.

This would reduce the average cycling time to the nearest city by at least 3 minutes, resulting in 3:14 hrs, approximately costing 2.100 € (replacing 7 barrier bars with the new design). In comparison, the new subway line in southern Cologne reduces travel time about 6 minutes and cost about 2 billion €. So my proposal is about 1 million times as cost efficient as some alternatives.
-- Toto Anders, Nov 01 2015

cement bollards http://www.google.c...h?q=cement+bollards
cement bollards [popbottle, Nov 02 2015]

Baked: traffic bollard https://en.wikipedi...rd#Traffic_bollards
[notexactly, Nov 09 2015]

Baked: bus trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_trap
these also discriminate based on width of wheelbase [notexactly, Nov 09 2015]

Bike trails are nice. I went on one bike trail in Georgia.
-- travbm, Nov 01 2015


She must be a big lady.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 01 2015


^ Only on the inside, like most of the women of the Tardis clan.
-- FlyingToaster, Nov 01 2015


I believe we have these here in the US, but I have no proof and it's Sunday, and I'm too lazy to search, so you...get a bun, by default.
-- blissmiss, Nov 01 2015


I just noticed that I can vote for my own proposal. But then I revoked my vote to get a more "objective" picture. This may have been futile, though.
-- Toto Anders, Nov 01 2015


Keep your car behind the fences at all times so your car can frolic in the fields and play and graze like wild antelope on the African Steppe. Cars often display strange mating rituals and have massive displays of male domination for mating with female cars. The male cars often attact a mate in their natrual enviroment by reving the engine up higher. Queitly the car stocks it's prey of riding lawn mowers to drain it of precious gasoline and lubercant.
-- travbm, Nov 01 2015


Do an image search for cement bollards. They will let bikes through, but stop most 4 wheeled vehicles.

When cast around or locked on a metal fence post they are almost vandal proof.
-- popbottle, Nov 02 2015


Are these barriers perhaps intended to stop dirt bikes as well as quads and cars?
-- ytk, Nov 02 2015


Perhaps not widely known to exist, but horse gates on trails are already constructed in this manner. Permits pedestrian, equestrian, bicycle and foot traffic while wholly blocking autos and making it massively inconvenient for motorcycles.
-- normzone, Nov 02 2015


// stop most 4 wheeled vehicles.//

... but not three-wheeled ones, like steam road-rollers, MUHWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
-- 8th of 7, Nov 02 2015


@popbottle: Cement bollards are no solution. Now and then there will be a legitimate car or lorry driver seek entrance, e.g. loggers. So the obstacle has to be easily removable.

@normzone: I found diverse gates for humans in cattle and horse fences (even a thing called a "Kissing Gate", but none of those designs would allow a cyclist to pass withouth dismounting.
-- Toto Anders, Nov 02 2015


Oh. My bad. Well, a skilled mountain biker could theoretically get over a horse gate without dismounting some statistically significant part of the time, but the failures would be painful.

Street bikes, not so much.
-- normzone, Nov 02 2015


But on the sort of trail or path used by horses and pedestrians, mountain bikes are going to predominate over street bikes, shirley ?
-- 8th of 7, Nov 02 2015


[8th], I know how you feel about horses, so it will probably come as no surprise to you that I've had knock-down drag-out matches with horses who refused to cross a horse gate.
-- normzone, Nov 03 2015


My regular bike commute for several years involved a long public 2 downhill 2 lane road ending with a traffic bollard-blocked bridge. Going between then at 35 MPH or so was a rush, and in defiance of the odds, I did it over 1000 times without screwing up.
-- CraigD, Nov 15 2015



random, halfbakery