Designed and built by eight Dutch engineers, the world’s longest rideable bicycle is 180 feet long (55.16 meters), roughly the same length as four double-decker buses.

39-year-old Ivan Schalk had been thinking about building the world’s longest bicycle since reading about it in a Guinness Book of Records when he was a child, but he only embarked upon this project in 2018, as a way to fill up his free time. He knew it wasn’t the kind of thing he could build himself, so he sought the help of like-minded people in his home village of Prinsenbeek, which is apparently well-known in the Netherlands for its tech-savvy residents. Together, they spent about four years –  not counting the two years of interruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – working on the world’s longest bicycle, a metal behemoth that needs at least two riders.

“I’ve been thinking about the idea for years,” Schalk told Guinness Records. “The goal was to break the world record for the longest bicycle in the world. To achieve this, we took into account all the rules of Guinness World Records (GWR) when building our bicycle.”

But nailing the record was a bit harder than its creators originally thought. Their first attempt took place on June 3, 2023, but they only received confirmation from Guinness around November of last year, and it stated that the record was for the world’s longest tandem, not the world’s longest bicycle. For Schalk, it was an important distinction, because, from his standpoint, the team had respected the Guinness record rules for a bicycle.

According to the Guinness rulebook, a maximum of two people are allowed to sit on the 55.16-meter-long bicycle, one at the front at the handlebars and one at the back to pedal. However, Schalk also allowed three other people to sit on the long metal structure connecting the front and the back of the bike. They didn’t help in any way, on the contrary, they were added weight, but Guinness decided that there were too many people riding the contraption to qualify for the longest bicycle record.

The team was slightly disappointed by the original decision, but they decided to simply take the record for the world’s longest tandem and then go for the record for the world’s largest rideable bicycle as well, this time with the required two people on it. They recently got the confirmation from Guinness that they are the proud owners of two world records.

 

Interestingly, the front and the back sections of the bicycle is where the magic happens, as the long section between them is simply rented from a from a metal production company in Breda that specializes in building stages for events. After setting the record, they returned that section to the company, while the rest of the bike is going to the local history museum in Prinsenbeek.

Bicycle-related records have been very popular on Oddity Central lately, as we’ve recently featured the world’s tallest rideable bicycle, the world’s smallest rideable bicycle, as well as the world’s heaviest rideable bicycle.