Cargo Bikes: The New Station Wagon

Written by Boston Biker on Jul 08

This article from the Wall Street Journal is behind a paywall, but here is a taste.(link should last another couple days).

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ON A RECENT SUNDAY, Brandon Jones, a 44-year-old fund manager at 9W Capital Management, traveled from his home in downtown Manhattan with his wife and two children to meet friends for brunch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They were heading to Reynard, the popular restaurant in the neighborhood’s fashionable Wythe Hotel, where Manhattan-bound Town Cars regularly idle on the street outside.
Cargo Bikes by the Numbers

But Mr. Jones did not drive. Nor did he take the subway. Instead, he piloted his two children via the deck of his Yuba Mundo, a so-called “longtail” cargo bike. (His wife rode her own bike.) Picture a mountain bike, but with a stouter frame and smaller wheels, stretched out and lowered in the back. “We actually beat our friends who drove back to TriBeCa,” Mr. Jones said. While Mr. Jones does garage a BMW BMW.XE +2.57% X5 SUV, his car rarely sees daylight within the city limits. Rather, for daily trips like the mile-and-a-half commute from TriBeCa to his children’s school in Greenwich Village, he simply hops on another kind of SUV—one that actually includes a bit of sport.

I have wanted a cargo bike for a while now. For large grocery runs, and getting things like plants and pies from one place to another (don’t laugh, I move a lot of pies around).

I have been seeing a lot of moms and dads with cargo bikes full of kids lately, and while I personally don’t think that is what I would store in my cargo bike, it does make me think we might be witnessing the kind of mode shift to pedal power that so many have been talking about for so long.

I think that if most peopled owned a cargo bike, and a commuter bike this world would be just about perfect (if they rode them of course). Throw in a road bike for a little weekend fun, and you got yourself a two wheeled utopia.

I have been eyeing a couple different cargo models for a while, I am torn between something like a cargo trailer, so I could use an existing bike and for easier storage, or just going for it and getting a extra cycle, or long john. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Tags: awesome, cargo bikes, WSJ
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