Pedal Harder For Affordability

An artist built a modified Citi Bike that uses a GPS module and an ESP32S3 to actuate the front brake with a servo, varying pedaling resistance based on the rent burden of the neighborhood being ridden through. The goal is to give riders a physical, experiential sense of housing affordability disparities across a city, translating abstract statistics into a felt sensation. The project calibrated the resistance changes to be noticeable but not abrupt or unsafe.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/pedal-harder-for-affordability. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.