Sure, it looks a bit like you’re carrying a toilet seat around. But this new folding backpack bicycle makes personal transport more personal than ever before.

Chang, an entrant in the International Bicycle Competition, has revealed to the world a 12 pound, 2 foot long pedal powered people mover.  On top of that tiny size–at which point you can carry your bike almost anywhere–he’s designed it to be folded up into a backpack-sized container.  There’s already no good excuse to not bike when you can–it seems that Chang is taking away all of the bad ones, too.

There are some issues, however–primarily, that the bike is made of plastic and only looks like it could support anorexic cheerleaders and hardcore marathoners.  Seriously, Lance Armstrong got personalized carbon fiber (that retails over 7k), and we have to ride around on PVC pipes feeling like the floor is going to come out from under us at any point?  It’s counterproductive to clean transit to raise the price of a bike in a backpack to automotive levels, but a little aluminum or titanium in the frame would be nice.  Just to feel like we won’t break it by looking at it.

Of course, for the moment, that’s all we can do–this is the two-wheeled equivalent of a concept car at one of the big auto shows; it looks hot, everybody wants it, there are minor flaws to work out before production, but it may or may not actually get made, because the real reason it exists is to push creative limits, not bring a new product to market.  Besides, folding bicycles already exist.  Certainly we can’t top that with a slick design and increased portability…

More Reading:

The Backpack Bicycle for Ultra-Portable, Potentially Dangerous Transportation (Gizmodo)
The Dangerously Flimsy Bicycle Backpack for the Extremely Confident Cyclist (Tech Digest)
Bicycle Infantry (Wikipedia)