The Incredibly Cool Community-Built Bike Lane Sweeper

A bicycle-towed, electric lane sweeper is quietly changing how cities and communities keep bike lanes safe. Peter sits down with Sunshine Coast engineer and former bike mechanic Cedric Eveleigh to unpack the origin story, the design choices behind his hybrid sweeper, and the grassroots momentum that turned broom-wielding volunteers into a movement with real tools and measurable impact. 

Share this episode with your city staff or local advocates to help more people discover solutions that make everyday riding safer.

• Watch the video that got 5 million views on Instagram HERE
• See Cedric in action on the Sunshine Coast HERE
• Watch the Sweeper do its thing HERE

Get in touch at cedric@bikelanesweeper.com

Transcript

Host Intro And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, Peter Ladner, Chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Cedric Ebbelay, who is a former bike mechanic who has evolved into a manufacturer of bike lane sweepers. Based on the Sunshine Coast, he's selling these sweepers all over North America, enabling people to clean bike lanes of debris. We're going to find out why we need these bike lane sweepers, what his particular sweeper can do, how he became a manufacturer of these products, and what the future looks like for his business. Welcome, Cedric.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Thanks for having me, Peter.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Tell us about your latest bike ride.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

My most recent bike ride was actually pulling a bike lane sweeper. I recently did a little bit of sweeping as part of a recent initiative that we started called Safe Cycling Sunshine Coast, where the community is actually funding us to do some sweeping. So it's something that we're now doing in parallel with manufacturing the bike lane sweepers, is that we're sweeping as a service for the community. So yeah, I was out uh a couple days ago doing a little run to Roberts Creek and back and uh just removing debris from the bike lanes.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

How far did you ride?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Oh, to Roberts Creek. I uh I think it's like seven kilometers each way, something like that. Uh it wasn't it wasn't a huge distance. Uh you can go way longer with the bike lane sweeper. It was definitely me the limiting factor and not the sweeper.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So you're you're working, I'm looking at you now. You're in a uh manufacturing plant in Wilson Creek, which is between Roberts Creek and Seasheld. And you're in a room, this is your 3D printer room. What are those 3D printer things I see in the background?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a couple of 3D printers behind me. And uh we have a whole variety of fun tools here in this shop. And there's some bigger CNC machines and welders and CNC router and all kinds of uh bigger machinery in the bigger room um behind me. But uh yeah, this little room here has 3D printers, and I'm here because it's a bit more quiet than the rest of the shop.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

You have employees working there now?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

I currently have two employees or a team of three, and we're we're doing the bike lane sweepers plus a couple other projects. But uh yeah, it's it's really awesome having having the help. I really enjoy working with the guys and with uh building the sweepers.

From Mountain Bikes To Engineering Innovation

SPEAKER_01 2:42

So you have been enthralled with bicycles since you were a young person. Tell us about your trajectory and how you ended up becoming educated about bikes and becoming an engineer.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, well, I it all started when I was a youngster um uh when I was getting quite into mountain biking. And I was a I was a little kid starting to build these tiny jumps in my backyard, and then that evolved into mountain biking being my my passion in my high school years, and which led to me joining a bike shop. And I worked in a bike shop as a bike mechanic for a few years. Uh, did that into my into right into university when I was studying mechanical engineering, and I I went into the studies of mechanical engineering specifically because of my passion for mountain bikes, and um, and then I would often commute to the bike shop with a road bike, and I was just yeah, getting more and more into bikes. And um I deviated a little bit from the bicycle world in my master's. So after my mechanical engineering undergrad, I did a master's in engineering physics, and that was actually in uh research for develop developing a type of next generation nuclear power, which is just like that was a whole other topic. But uh yeah, it's just a type of nuclear power for for reducing waste and and the and the reducing the um the risk of accidents with nuclear reactors, and that was that was lots of fun. But um, and then after that, I went back into the the bicycle world with a focus on mountain bikes.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

You developed some kind of new technology for mountain bikes, I understand.

Why Debris In Bike Lanes Matters

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah. So after my master's, I had a bit of an existential crisis and did some some soul searching, and I realized, you know what, it's really bicycles that make me happy. So I I I decided I wanted to go back into the world of bicycles and and try to engineer some improvements to bikes. And uh I thought long and hard about the problem of derailers and mountain bikes, because it's a common problem that on mountain bikes the rear derailer gets smashed because it dangles down and is vulnerable. And I came up with an idea that that does actually solve that problem, but while still keeping the efficiency of derailers. And so I developed that invention in my parents' basement for a total of three years, building all kinds of prototypes, and uh got a patent for that. And then I I started this business. Um, and I was I I did the prototype, like my parents' place is in Chelsea, Quebec, just north of Ottawa. And so I did the prototyping there. But after I got the patent and announced the invention publicly, I was able to raise some funds from some investors, which enabled me to move to here to the Sunshine Coasts to set up shop. Um, you know, rather than working out of a basement to actually have a proper industrial shop, is really nice. And um and to start building a team to help me with the the the the adventure of developing the mountain bike drivetrain. And um, let's see here, it was a couple years into being here on the Sunshine Coast that um that I started working on the bike lane sweepers. But um, but before I even started building prototype sweepers, I was volunteering with a local group called Transportation Choices Sunshine Coasts. It's an awesome group of people. I love them all. And they organized some events where volunteers would sweep sections of bike lanes with brooms by hand to advocate for there to be more sweeping of the bike lanes. And I I went to these events um when I first moved to the coast, and uh and that got me thinking about whether there's a better way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Can you just describe uh what's the problem with the bike lanes? Why are you sweeping?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

So yeah, be it be it leaves or rocks or glass or nails, it's all of this kinds of debris can cause flat tires, which is not pleasant and can be dangerous. And also often cyclists just want to avoid debris. So when there is a lot of debris in the in a bike lane or in a shoulder, it might force the cyclist to take the car lane. It's it's a bit dangerous and unpleasant. And um, so yeah, the idea is really just to remove debris from bike lanes to make them safer and uh more pleasant to ride on.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Now I understand that track, we're gonna we're gonna get to the bike lane sweeper in a second, but I understand that volunteers from track are still doing this manual sweeping. And uh, when I was up there visiting, I I I've I began to look at it as almost a form of performance art where you're just uh making sort of mocking the lack of maintenance on the shoulders of the highway. These aren't technically bike lanes, by the way. These are we're talking about highway shoulders, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah, that's right.

Designing The Bike-Towed Sweeper

SPEAKER_01 7:03

So the cars are spitting this stuff out and the snow plows occasionally will push debris to the side. So they're still doing that, but meanwhile, you've developed this bike lane sweeper, and uh presumably now it's a team effort, and I would imagine most of the work is being done by the sweepers. Could you describe what the sweeper is?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

It's a trailer that you pull by bike. So if people have seen, you know, like kids' trailers or whatever trailers they pull by bike, it's the same kind of idea. The connection to the bike is actually a little burly hitch, which is from the company Burley that makes bike trailers. And um, but the the trailer is a custom thing that we've designed and we build, and the it has a couple of wheels and a brush, and the brush is powered by an electric motor, and there's also a battery on the sweeper. So the so it's electrically powered sweeping and it's all kind of self-contained, powers itself. It's just that this the sweeper needs to be pulled by the cyclist. So that's why, especially when dealing with hills, we recommend that the cyclists have an e-bike, um, just because of the weight of the sweeper, even though the brush is powered by the motor and battery on the sweeper. And it just does a really good job at removing all kinds of debris. And um, our our latest and greatest type of sweeper, we call it the hybrid sweeper, because it combines the functions of both push-aside sweeping and pickup sweeping. Earlier prototypes of sweepers that we built, we were building sweepers that could either push debris to the side or it could pick up debris. Like we were we were building different prototypes for those different functions. And then with some um with some leaps of thinking, I came up with a way to combine both. So we have we have one sweeper now that you pull along and you can very quickly uh switch it between the modes of picking up debris versus pushing debris to the side. And that's the main type of sweeper that we've been selling now for the past year and a half.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

There is a video, uh I mean there are a number of videos that have been done about this sweeper, but uh tell us about one that got was it five million viral relays or whatever they're calling it?

Viral Videos And Volunteer Momentum

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Views. Views, thank you. That that's right. Yeah, it was an Instagram post recently, and uh and it it's uh it's a video of a sweeper, one of our sweepers that we built in in Portland, Oregon, being pulled along by uh by a volunteer there. It's it's a group called BikeLoud PDX, and they yeah, they they purchased a sweeper from us and and they've been running it. And yeah, so a lady was just pulling the sweeper along and she was sweeping some leaves off a bike lane. And it's just very satisfying, and uh it's especially very visible when sweeping leaves because you know it's it's like visually is very clear when there isn't or is leaves, and so it's just a fun video to see to see the bike lane get cleared. It's very satisfying. And yeah, that video just the the the algorithm liked it, and a lot of people were stoked about it and commenting uh uh with support. So yeah, it uh ended up getting five million views, which is a pretty crazy amount of eyeballs. But um, that that was really fun to see. And it actually resulted in a few sweeper sales.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah, we're gonna have a link to that video and a couple of other videos in the show notes so people can see because it's very uh impressive when you see these these sweepers in action. I might also add that uh as I understand it, a lot of these sweepers are operated by volunteers from bike advocates. And Cedric, tell us, is it actually satisfying? If sweeping is a satisfying thing to do. Uh, do people find it fun to ride these sweepers and have the satisfaction of seeing those leaves one one one minute they're here and then the next minute they're gone?

Volunteers Versus Public Maintenance

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, people do enjoy it. It is satisfying, like you said. And it's just like it's not only just satisfying uh in itself, but it's also rewarding in that there's tends to be a lot of support from the community. So often when you're out sweeping, you'll have a lot of people just passing by saying thank you, or you know, expressing support in various ways. And that is really encouraging as well. Although I must say though, about the topic of volunteering, ideally bike lanes and shoulders would be maintained by by staff of municipalities and uh or you know, staff from contractors paid by the province. Like these ideally, it just would be paid staff who are operating the sweepers and doing the maintenance of the infrastructure because that's how it should be, right? Like it should be publicly funded. So when we have volunteers, I think it's awesome. But like the long-term goal is definitely to have paid staff doing this. And fortunately, we have sold sweepers so far to three municipalities who um who, of course, pay their staff to operate the sweepers. So that has been that has been awesome to have that happen. And I'm really keen to sell more to municipalities. We've also had uh one of them, I think it's a business in in Oregon where they they rent out e-bikes as their business, but uh, of course, it's beneficial if their customers are riding on safe bike lanes. They actually got a grant uh for buying a sweeper and operating the sweeper. So they pay their staff to operate the sweeper. And man, do they ever sweep a lot? It's quite impressive. Yeah, so that's a little note on the topic of volunteers. And and also on the Sunshine Coast, so it depends. Like some places there's a lot of enthusiasm for people. A lot of people want to volunteer and pull the sweepers, like in Portland, for example. But on the Sunshine Coast, it's surprising, there hasn't been too many volunteers who've wanted to sweep. I mean, there's a couple of people, uh, I'll give a shout out to Rob uh in particular who who sweeps a lot as a volunteer on the Sunshine Coast, but most people are actually not that keen about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

But let me just go back to your point, completely well taken, that why are volunteers required to make streets safe for cyclists? But when it comes to the roads, there's a lot of public money available to clean those roads for cars and trucks and buses. So uh absolutely I would agree with you that this is not a job for volunteers, however much they might like doing it and however useful they might be in getting it started. So just backing up to your municipalities, who were the municipalities who bought them?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

So far, we've sold one to the city of Pentington. They bought one, and we sold one to the city of Davis in California, and also one to the town of Carborough, uh, which is another, it's a smaller town in the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I'm I'm intrigued as a former business journalist. Tell what's your sales process? How do you reach these people? How do they come to you when they see these videos? Or how does that work?

Contracts, Costs, And Policy Gaps

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, mostly it's been people coming to us. We yeah, we we have like you uh you mentioned that that video on Instagram, like that's been quite helpful for kind of spreading the word about the sweepers. We have also tried to do tried to attend some events and certain conferences. Like the first time I met you, actually, I remember was a couple years ago at the Active Transportation Summit in in New Westminster. Um so I was there with my collaborator Pierre with uh with a couple of sweepers. Um, and I also recently attended the UBCM conference with the sweeper to try to spread the word with counselors and mayors and all that about this this new sweeping technology that we're introducing that's way lower cost than pre-existing uh solutions. So um, yes, but it's been uh definitely generally people have been coming to us, um, and that has been great.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

We're gonna get back to the UBCM in a minute, but it back to the Sunshine Coast. So first the people are out there with the brooms, and then you think there's got to be a better idea, and you figure out this you and Pierre, I should add, your collaborator, came up with the design and so on. And then you've sort of, I and in my view, you're sort of shaming the ministries, contractors, into doing a better job by having voluntary like crowd fundraising. And now you've got a side business actually going out and doing the work with the money that was crowdfunded. How much did you raise crowdfunding?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

The crowdfunding, so we're doing this initiative just on the Sunshine Coast so far, uh, which you know it's a small, like the whole area is like 30,000 people in the lower Sunshine Coast. But we um but there's a pretty solid bunch of cycling keeners here. And so far, we have 30 people who have signed up as members of the the Patreon crowdfunding for donating a small amount on a monthly basis to fund the the sweeping of the bike lanes and shoulders. And it's um so that totals the total is about a couple hundred bucks a month that we're getting. Like we're doing this as a nonprofit operation, and um, we're with how much we're we're paying the the operators of the sweeper plus a little bit of overhead. Um the it turns out that we can do about five hours of sweeping a month with those funds, about 10 kilometers an hour average speed. That's about 50 kilometers of shoulders and bike lanes that we can sweep per month with this funding from this uh the community here on the Sunshine Coast. So uh at first it was just an experiment. I had no idea if it would work, but it turns out that it does work and it's really awesome. And I really appreciate the support on the community. And on the topic though, of shaming the local contractors, I wouldn't say we're sh I don't want to say that we're shaming the local contractors because the local contractors they get a contract from the province, and the province sets the expectations for how frequently they have to sweep and maintain the bike lanes, and that's actually the core problem.

Culture Shift In Public Works

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I agree it's not the contractor's fault, but tell us what is the province's criteria? Is it one time a year, is what I heard.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, it's once a year that the contractor is supposed to sweep the shoulders along the highway on the Sunshine Coast, and the highway is like the artery road, it's like the way to that can to get around to between the different communities like Roberts Creek and Seashelton Gibson's. Um the contract tech technically calls for sweeping three times a year along what they call urban highway. So when the density gets higher, when there's a lot of uh intersections and things like that, the they're supposed to sweep three times a year. But even that's really insufficient. Like you could, with the amount of debris that goes on the shoulders, you could easily sweep once a month uh along the entire highway. The interesting thing is that they're like they currently use big sweeper trucks to sweep the shoulder. So like they have to block off the car lane and it's quite disruptive. And what we introduce is something that doesn't disrupt the car traffic at all. We don't block the car car lane at all. And it's way lower cost. It's a simple electric machine and like no fancy hydraulics. These big sweeper trucks are like half a million dollars, and our our bike lane sweepers, a couple orders of magnitude lessen cost to not only to buy, but to operate. So we we introduced this really low-cost option. And it's interesting that for the same price that taxpayers are paying now to have these big heavy equipment do this the maintenance of the bike lanes, we could do way more maintenance, like once a month, for example, uh for this, probably about the same price. And uh so ideally, the contracts that the province gives would can would take that into consideration. Like ideally, they it would take into consideration the fact that there are now lower cost options. And uh that's what I've been in contact with some people from the Ministry of Transportation about, is about in the future as these contracts get revised to consider this new lower cost option.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I want to see these sweepers. I know the city of Vancouver where I live has some little machine that goes down the bike lanes, and I think does this work? Is that right? Is that one of these half million dollar or two hundred thousand dollar machines?

Pricing, Customers, And Profit Path

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, the ones that are really compact, those bike lanes, those those kind of sweeper, compact super trucks, they tend to be more like 300,000 Canadian. But yeah, still a couple orders of magnitude more than our sweepers.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Even so, and they are dedicated for separated bike lanes that that are not part of just shoulders of highways.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

That's right. Although, even then, sometimes the infrastructure can have like tight um entrances to the bike lanes or or areas where even those compact trucks can't get in, where our bike lane sweepers can access. Like I have yet to encounter cycling infrastructure where we can't get into it with one of our sweepers.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And yeah, I understand some of even some of those big specialized sweepers, if they hit some pylons or separated concrete barriers or anything, they can't go in there. But yours will anywhere a bike can go, yours can go.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Tell us about if there's any cultural pushback from if you have a culture of people who are used to driving big half million dollar trucks and and they're sitting up in the cab and they're they're taking control of the lanes and everything. And then your option is they get down on a bike and they're off on the side of the bike lane and they're pedaling. Is that an issue for for just the culture of the street maintenance industry?

Sales Strategy And Social Media

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Absolutely, absolutely that's an issue. That's a very good point. Yeah. Uh so the yeah, the type of person, you know, who who operates the big, the big heavy equipment, you know, they tend to like their their pickup trucks and and big, heavy, you know, powerful engines and things like that. There are like you do get some some uh machine operator kind of uh public works staff who are keen about bikes. Um so recently, actually, I did a demo for the district of Saanich uh after the UBCM conference. And the a bunch of public works guys there, um, you know, like big burly dudes were riding around on an e bike pulling one of our sweepers to test it out, and they absolutely loved it. So that's Is really fun to see. Um, but in general, yeah, the culture definitely isn't super favorable to riding a bike on the job. But fortunately, we're seeing that uh we're increasingly seeing public works people and uh municipal staff are riding bikes. Like, for example, you have police officers nowadays, it's quite a common thing for them to ride bikes. Um but the on the the topic though of yeah, the the kind of culture clash, well, one solution to that though is that if the if those um those local municipalities or you know the contractors like uh Capitolina Highways on the Sunshine Coast here who get the contract from the province for the maintenance, if they don't want to hire staff or don't have the staff who are interested in riding bikes on the uh e-bikes on the job, uh what I what I would like to offer is sweeping as a service so that we could we you know we could get be subcontracted for sweeping or uh from the the local contractor here or or a cont or contracted from you know any municipality for sweeping as a service. And I'd imagine that also helps by reducing, you know, like making it less of a commitment commitment or like where municipalities can test it out. So um I haven't actually swept as a service for uh a contracted company or for a municipality yet, but uh we're technically sweeping as a service for like the local community through the crowd crowdfunding. But um, but for sweeping as a service for for municipalities and the like, um I would really like to explore that in the future, although we haven't done it yet.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

What is your sweeper cost?

Limits, Upgrades, And Reliability

SPEAKER_00 21:30

The sweeper, the the pricing depends if uh if it's a municipality or if it's a nonprofit group. So with the nonprofit kind of cycling advocacy groups, we don't make money off them. Uh like we basically sell the sweepers for what it costs us to make the sweepers. And the pricing, it depends if you're in Canada versus the US. So to give a sense of the pricing, though, at least for Canada, our hybrid sweeper. So our latest and greatest sweeper for nonprofit groups, it's 4,400 uh Canadian dollars. And then for municipalities, it's 6,800 uh Canadian dollars for the hybrid sweeper. And and that's the sweeper with everything you need to operate it, and it has GPS tracking, so you can know where you've swept, and it's just a uh well-refined machine at this point, and almost only selling the hybrid sweeper this past year and a half.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

And then somebody has to have their own e-bike to pull it.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The an e-bike is recommended. It's technically possible to pull it with a regular bike, but if you've got hills, an e-bike is nice.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Cedric, you should be making money out of this. Is your business self-supporting? Are you profitable?

SPEAKER_00 22:31

No, we're not we're not profitable with the sweepers. Like it's definitely it's definitely a functioning business that can pay for itself uh eventually, especially as the the I guess the amount that we produce increases. But no, it's we so far we've sold, let's see, in the past year and a half we've sold 18 sweepers and then we have five on order. Um, but the sweepers are are not the only thing that we're doing. So we have a couple of other exciting sort of technology development projects that we're working on. Um, like for example, I mentioned the mountain bike drivetrain earlier, things like that. Um so uh but but still I'm I I'm really excited for the sweeper business. I think it has a lot of a lot of potential and it's impactful, so I'm keen about it.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

So you have a product that's about one hundredth the cost of the capital cost of an of its uh competing alternative, which is the big truck. Every government that I've ever heard of these days is desperate to save money. Um you went to the UBC at the Union of BC municipalities to to sell this thing, you would have a very compelling economic case to make. What was the response?

Partners, Manufacturing, And Support

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Well, there was a lot of interest at the conference. It was really, it was really great to see. I spoke to a lot of like counselors and mayors and and and staffers from various municipalities from throughout BC. And yeah, ton of interest. It's really nice to see. But then there's a question of, you know, how many sweepers did we sell as a result of that? Well, so far we haven't sold a single sweeper as a result of me attending that conference. Now, I think part of that is that uh I'm not probably not the best salesperson on the planet. Perhaps I could hire a salesperson, that might help. But uh another part of it, I think, is that the the purchasing process is quite slow.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Could you just explain that when you say the purchasing process is slow, it means at a municipality in order to get the purchase onto the capital plan and so on, it takes a budget cycle or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I'm that's what I'm referring to. But still, it has been, I I must say it's still kind of disappointing that there hasn't been a sale as a result of that effort of me spending a week down there in Victoria. But it was still a really fun adventure. Um and I I didn't have to, fortunately, I didn't have to pay for a booth or anything like that because the booths are like$10,000 or something like that for the UBCM conference. Totally don't have that money. Um, and anyways, all the booths were booked up. There's a very limited amount of them for the Victoria uh instance of that conference. Uh, but I I called up the conference organizers before the conference happened. And I I won't name names, but the lady was really nice and supportive, and she's like, Oh, I heard of the biking sweepers, that's awesome. And then we were chatting and she started basically giving me guidance for how to do guerrilla marketing. And she was like, you know, well, if you if you stand outside this door at the conference center, there's gonna be a stream of you know, mayors and and attendees going through there, and uh nobody's gonna tell you to leave. So so I took her advice and I showed up with a sweeper and just stood outside that door and it worked out just fine. So that was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

You have some testimonials online from people who have bought your sweepers and really like them. Somebody in the Napa Valley, a bike advocate group there. Um what are what are some of the cities in BC that have bought your? You mentioned Penticton.

unknown 25:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Do you remember other ones who who who have them?

Funding, Investors, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Uh well, there's no other municipalities who've bought uh sweepers in BC, but um Salt Spring Island, there is a group, um uh Island Pathways, a great group of people, uh cycling advocates uh on Salt Spring Island who purchased, actually, they purchased they were one of the very first to purchase uh a sweeper from us. And yeah, they've been using it a bunch, and it's been awesome to see what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

So your market is really bike advocates at this point, because they're the most likely ones to uh get onto it and make it happen. Is that your sort of strategy that you get the bike advocates doing it? And then I don't want to use the word shaming too often, but they show an example to the more formal institutionalized cleaners who then say, uh we can't not do this given the the compelling economic case.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, I I imagine that does that does help. Like when the volunteers are doing the work, it does I guess it must shame the municipalities a little bit, but that's not my strategy personally. Like I actually focus on trying to inform municipalities of this as a as an option, as like a low-cost way of keeping bike lanes and shoulders safe. Um, and whoever you know reaches out to us and wants to buy a sweeper, we sell them a sweeper, right? So um so and it just has happens to be that it's mostly been cycling advocacy groups that have just been purchasing sweepers.

Closing Thanks And Listener CTA

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Well, I imagine because partly because of just the the sexy just isn't the right word, but the looking at the picture of this sweeper in action, it's pretty compelling and pretty fun. Like just some guys, persons riding along on a bike, and suddenly this whole lane is clean behind them, and uh the debris is either collected or or shuffled shoveled to the side, and uh almost no cost, and uh, how could this not be attractive to to people? So if you are uh thinking ahead, so far you've been lucky enough to people just to make sales by picking up the phone. Uh except for obviously you do these forays to the Union of BC municipalities convention and and so on. But uh what's your next step in making new sales? And uh do you think that you've got five in the pipeline? Is this I could see that every municipality everywhere could use these things. So Cedric, where do you where do you go from here with your sales strategy if if you haven't got orders from the people that you contacted directly at the Union of BC Municipalities convention, uh, but you have been having success by people just hearing about it through social media. What's next?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

With social media, it's been interesting because we neither myself nor my business collaborator Pierre, uh, who's in California, neither of us are very good at social media. But uh when we launched the Safe Cycling Sunshine Coast initiative with the crowdfunded sweeping here on the coast, uh local videographer Justin Surcot helped out um on a kind of pro bono basis with uh with making a video, a launch video for the Patreon campaign. And that was lots of fun working with him. And he he he helped out because you know it's great for the local community and he he cycles himself. And uh, but then that led to quite a bit of good social media content because of all the videos that he were taking. And then we were seeing a lot of uh a lot of excitement on social media, and so and then after that, there was that video in in in Portland that got five million views and led to a bunch of sales. So it seems like social media is quite helpful. So we're we're uh focusing on that lately.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Aside from the barriers of contacting the buyers through the sales process, are there any uh this is a hard question for you maybe to ask. Are there any reasons why this wouldn't work? Are there like you don't have history of how long this thing will stand up to wear? Or uh I don't know. There needs to be improvements because people have taken it and found something lacking. Are there any legitimate objections that people have that you're working to overcome?

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So on the topic of wear, though, it's it's a very low maintenance machine, and the the brush is the one big thing that does wear out over time. The brushes are actually custom made in in Vancouver, and uh the manufacturer there interestingly can re-bristle brushes. So they can take like the plastic tube and pull out the old bristles and put in new bristles, but uh it's pretty normal for these kinds of maintenance equipment to regularly replace the brush, so that's no big deal. Um and there's no fancy hydraulics or anything on these sweepers, so they're generally very low maintenance, it's just an electric machine. Um and uh in terms of the limitations, yes. So if you have a whack load of leaves that are allowed to accumulate in the fall, and then those leaves are allowed to rot into like a thick sludge, that becomes so heavy that our sweepers, the current iteration of the sweepers is not powerful enough to remove like a thick leafy sludge. Um, and I'm actually in the process of prototyping with a more powerful motor for making the sweepers more effective for that kind of debris. But uh, yeah, ideally with leaves in the fall, ideally they're swept before they're allowed to rot. But uh, as long as the the people running the sweepers kind of stay on top of the maintenance, then it it still is quite effective even in that season.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Cedric, I love this story. It's such a wonderful uh green technology, let's just say, uh locally manufactured, ingenuity, innovation, all those wonderful things we're all striving for. And I really hope you can make this pay and profitable and that you can keep it on the Sunshine Coast where I'm sure they could use jobs like yours to providing. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think is important to add?

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yeah, so I'm sitting here like talking about this this project and makes it seem like I'm the main guy. But uh, there's a lot of other people that have been really helpful and supportive in making this bike lane sweeper project happen. Like one, for example, is Pierre. So Pierre Lermand, who's my business collaborator in California, he actually uh had the original idea for the bike lane sweeper. So he's a software engineer and he was working at PayPal there in California. And and during COVID, he had the idea for the sweeper and he was building some very janky prototypes out of like you know, two by fours and and whatnot. Um, and then I came on board and designed the refined sweeper, and we've been manufacturing them here. Uh, and he's just been handling kind of the business side of things in the US uh lately and just been kind of running the business side. But um, it's been really awesome working with Pia. So, like his support and collaboration has been really cool. Um, other people that have been really helpful, of course, the the transportation choices group on the Sunshine Coast that I mentioned earlier, like the everybody involved with TRAC and also the group Connect the Coast, all of the people involved with those two groups are just awesome and have been super supportive, as has been the entire community on the coasts. Also, even with the the manufacturing, there's people that I have to be thankful for. So it was pretty early on. I think it was the second prototype sweeper that I built. I rushed to build it before the BC bike show. I actually pulled an all-nighter right before the BC bike show to finish building this prototype sweeper, and I brought it there, and it was really fun to show it. And at the BC Bike Show, I met a Justin Lemire Elmore, who runs Grin Technologies in Vancouver, which is a company that offers e-bike motors and batteries uh for e-bike conversions for the converting, you know, whatever bike into being an e-bike, and a really awesome company. And they've they do a lot of their own manufacturing, like they manufacture their own e-bike motors and uh they have some fancy equipment, such as a laser cutter for cutting flat metal parts. And uh Justin has been super kind to let me use their laser cutter, and so a bunch of the parts of the sweepers are actually laser cut at current technologies in Vancouver. Um, so I'm really thankful for Justin's support and yeah, just a lot of people I gotta I gotta thank. But uh it's been really fun so far, and I'm keen to charge ahead and continue uh making sweepers.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Who's put up the money to get you this far? Is it all self-funded out of your pocket, or do you have investors?

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Um there's a number of investors. Um, some of them are are here on the Sunshine Coast and involved in the cycling community. Uh and that has been really helpful. It's it's great that lately, like I mentioned there, the the sweeper business is like paying for itself. So that's really nice. It reduces the pressure on that front. But uh, but yeah, it's not uh it's not a cheap process to set up a manufacturing operation. So that financial support has been awesome.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Are you looking for more investors?

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Okay, we'll have your contact in the show notes, along with the picture of all of the product and some videos, and uh this is it's very fun to watch these videos and see the testimonial from the from the woman in the Napa Valley. Cedric, thanks so much, and we wish you all the best. And let's hope we can all see them soon on streets near us. Thanks so much, Cedric. Thanks for having me, Peter. You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating of whatever platform you use. You can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peter.ladner at bccycling.ca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at bccycling.ca, you know.