cargobikecoop.org

Woo-hoo! After a successful flurry of fundraising, we're in shape to start making decisions about what bike(s) we want to start with. With that in mind, a few of us got together last week to test ride some different types of cargo bikes. We experimented with four arrangements: a recumbent trike with trailer, a chopper bike with trailer, a giant electric-assisted front-loaded cargo trike, and a smaller conventional front-loaded trike.

We started by testing our pal & member Ron Richings' recumbent trike & trailer combo. While we haven't specifically considered picking up a recumbent (that's a bicycle that you recline to ride, as in the picture attached), we have done a lot of thinking about how bike trailers might fit into our fleet.

Riding with the trailer was a breeze – there was almost no learning curve at all. And loaded with somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds of lumber, you could hardly feel it, even when making your way up a steep hill.

Riding the recumbent with the trailer attached also gave us some valuable insight into the strenghts of trikes. Their three-wheeled designs mean extra stability, which can be very helpful when you're riding fully-loaded uphill. (You can actually stop without falling over!)

The next setup we tried was a chopper/trailer combo, both built by our friend Donald. Testing this setup was fairly similar to testing the recumbent/trailer combination, but with one important distinction: the low gears and added stability of the recumbent trike made it much easier to ride on a hill, which is a big deal in Vancouver. Riding on flat surfaces was very easy, though. Again, you could hardly tell that you were hauling anything at all.

We were surprised and impressed with the performance of both the trailers we tested. Trailers are simple, intuitive and versatile. We're almost certainly going to pick up a few in the not-too-distant future. 

After the trailers, we all headed down to E-bikes on Main Street to check out an electric-assist cargo trike that they keep for store use. After a short tutorial on the electric assist from the friendly Zev, we each took turns riding the trike, both as drivers and as cargo. 

Even with the electric assist off, we found that there was a bit of a learning curve to this trike. It was front-loaded, and the entire cargo area turned with the handlebars, which took some getting used to. Taking corners was quite tricky at first, loaded and unloaded, although we eventually got the hang of it and even started making some fairly tight turns with advanced one-handed maneuvers. Still, I'm not sure any of us ever got *entirely* comfortable piloting it over the half-hour or so we tested. 

Once the cargo area was fuly loaded (usually with two adults side by side), the electric assist became pretty darned handy. Riding any bike with 240+ pounds on the front is tough on any terrain, but it becomes downright challenging when you try to take on even a modest hill. That's where this bike really shows off. When the hill gets too steep, you can pull on the throttle a bit to give your legs a break while you make your way up. It takes a few minutes to get accustomed to the electric assist, but once you get the hang of it, it's a great feature. Just don't use it to crash your cargo into any trees or bushes, like I did. 

Overall, I'd say we were really impressed with this trike. It can carry huge loads (up to 500 pounds!), and the electric assist makes it very useful for hills. The learning curve was pretty steep, though, which is a bit of a concern for us as we consider our first purchases for the coop. Still, we're definitely not ruling it out!

Our final stop was with Omar from P.E.D.A.L. to try a more conventional non-electric front-loaded cargo trike that he owns.

Out of the gate, his trike had far less of a learning curve than the electric assist version we tried before. In part this was because the steering was radically different: instead of turning the whole cargo area, turning the handlebars caused the front wheels to pivot underneath the cargo area, which was far more intuitive. The narrow front wheelbase did make the bike a little bit tippy, but otherwise, it was very simple and straightforward to ride. It currently has only one gear, so we couldn't take it up any serious hills, but we still got a fairly good sense of the bike from riding around the parking lot.

This trike, as it turns out, is actually not a trike at all, but a fairly simple unit that attaches to the headtube and frame of any bicycle. While an attachment like this is probably too complicated and involved to lend out on its own, it can be used on virtually any bicycle, which means we could potentially set it up on a mountain bike frame with very low gears, for instance. Pretty intriguing!

This was the first of our test sessions, and it was extremely informative. We didn't make any firm decisions, but we certainly learned a lot: we like trikes (for stability), we like trailers (for versatility and ease-of-use), we like low gears. We have a couple more test rides scheduled for the near future, which should put us in pretty good shape to decide what bike(s) we want to start with. Yay cargo bikes! Yay cooperatives! Yay!

Thanks to Ron, Donald, Zev and Omar for being so helpful and accomodating. You are stars.