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Bikes are great and all, but as more people start cycling instead of driving, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to create new slabs of empty asphalt on which to park bikes. A better solution is Japan’s Eco Cycle Anti-Seismic Underground Bicycle Park. Instead of paving large swaths of the ground, it stores your ride vertically underneath it.

The bicycle park is just about 23 feet wide, Inhabitat says, but it can hold 144 bikes on a magic underground spiral. It works automatically, too.

Watch it in action, as bikes are “sucked into these machines and drawn deep into the depths of the earth.” The key action is around 1:30:

[youtube http://youtu.be/pcZSU40RBrg%5D

Also, it’s much, much harder for anyone to steal your bike when it’s secure underground. Although we’re still hoping for a James Bond chase scene in the bike storage space.