The cargo bike is the most important single invention of our time, as I explain in my Opa Fiets book. It’s doing more to change the look and feel of our cities than anything since the invention of the automobile.
A cargo bike is not a recreation device. It’s a tool for getting around. For many urban families it’s the second car. In denser cities it’s the only car.
Just as important, it’s mom’s car. It’s how she gets the kids to school, and how she gets her shopping done. It’s how she meets her friends for coffee while getting her exercise.
I came to understand this over the weekend, when I attended a memorial ride for lawyer-cyclist Ken Rosskopf, whose Bikelaw practice has defined bicycling advocacy throughout my lifetime. About 200 cyclists, most of us fully clad in spandex, gathered outside the Hagen-Rosskopf offices in downtown Decatur to share coffee, fruit, and pastries, to tell stories, and to meet up. Then the vast majority shared a 25-mile ride to Stone Mountain and back.
It was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, mid-70s, almost cloudless, no wind. It was just the kind of day Ken would have loved, a perfect send-off.
But recreational cyclists will never make Atlanta less car centric. A single conversation summed it up for me. I mentioned to a fellow cyclist that I have yet to have a major accident in almost 44 years of cycling in Atlanta. “You will,” my new friend said. “It’s just a matter of time.” The others in our little group nodded sagely alongside him.
I didn’t like that kind of math. I want new math. Cargo bikes deliver new math.
The Math of Cargo Bikes
If just 1% of those on the road are on bikes, it’s easy to ignore us. That’s why folks like Ken (and me) always rode zipped-up, tricked-out and with an eye out for danger.
But if 10% of those on the road are on bikes, and if most of those are mothers or shoppers or commuters, then a city will start building infrastructure to support them. If 20% are doing it, then the way they enforce the law will change.
That’s what is happening. Bike paths like the Atlanta Beltline now attract development, thanks to the E-Transport revolution. In addition to e-bikes and cargo bikes I regularly see scooters and e-motos, e-trikes and one-wheelers.
Big destinations draw people from 50 miles away or further, so football and baseball stadia think of cars first. But there are now bike valets at the Benz, and when a city councilman was struck coming home from a game on his e-bike it was a big story.
Cargo bikes create a virtuous cycle for cycling, for E-Transport of all kinds. Lithium ion is turning a niche market into a mass market. More traffic fits on two wheels than on four, so life gets easier for car drivers, too, as E-Transport takes hold.
Cargo bikes are cheaper to run than any car. They’re quieter than any motorcycle. They don’t pollute, except at second-hand (depending on where their electricity comes from).
A Different Deal
The number of recreational cyclists has also risen with e-bikes. I learned at Ken’s memorial that he also rode an e-bike in his later years. He switched for the same reason I did, to make the rides we did when we were younger possible again.
But cargo bikes are a different deal. Women aren’t getting cargo bikes for 25-mile rides on a Sunday. It’s three miles to the kids’ school, maybe two miles to the grocery, and a two-mile roundtrip for dinner. Safety is expected.
Increasingly, it’s being delivered, at least inside the city of Atlanta, by bike lanes and dedicated paths. Atlanta understands the only way to become a true city, as opposed to a glorified suburb, is to support cargo bikes and other forms of E-Transport. Speed limits are being reduced. Car drivers are being taught, through experience, that they don’t have the urban streets to themselves anymore.
I only wish Ken could have seen more of it.
