Hello everyone and welcome to Issue #23 of Cargobike Culture!
We’re back after a summer hiatus and I’m feeling rested, recuperated and ready to tell you all about what’s new in the cargobike world.
IKEA’s non-flatpacked cargobikes
A few weeks ago IKEA opened a new store right in the middle of Copenhagen. It’s one of their new ‘City Stores’, which as the name suggests, puts smaller shops closer to residential population centres.
What caught my eye in the promo materials were the cargobikes (obviously).
Shoppers can borrow a cargobike for free to take their shopping home. According to the website (in Danish), the store has 20(!) for people to use.
The rental isn’t being run by IKEA, but via Danish startup FreeTrailer who provide short-term car trailer and cargobike hire via an app.
Shoppers can borrow a cargobike for free for 3 hours, though when you get into the details it’s a little more murky. Registration for each booking costs 35 Krone (about €5), optional insurance is 49 Krone (€6.50) and an extra 3 hour rental costs 99 Krone (€13). And if you return it late, that’ll cost you 500 Krone (€67) in fees. So as with everything in life, always read the fine print.
Interestingly, you don’t have to shop at IKEA to get a ‘free’ cargobike for 3 hours. On the FreeTrailer site they’re pretty explicit that anyone can use them as they have no way of knowing where you shopped.
FreeTrailer’s target market for their rental bikes are young people in cities who don’t (or can’t) drive, and can’t take a bed frame home on the bus. That’s such an important point. I choose my cargobike over a shared car because it’s cheaper, easier and more fun. But if you don’t even have that choice, a cargobike is the perfect answer.
Of course, this only works if you can safely cycle to IKEA. And I’ll hand it over to Not Just Bikes to explain how that’s so easy in the Netherlands, and I assume equally easy in Copenhagen.
Amsterdam’s garbage cargobikes
Dutch newspaper Parool (paywalled) reported on how Amsterdam has introduced a new fleet of cargobikes to collect waste from resident’s homes. Residents in the test neighbourhood can make an appointment via an app for their rubbish to be collected via the cargobike.
Amsterdam’s got a big rubbish problem. Whilst much of the city uses underground waste containers, that’s not possible in the old, narrow streets of the inner city. Currently, residents put their waste out in piles at specific times of the week, but it doesn’t take many people to not follow the rules for things to get pretty disgusting, pretty quickly.
Cargobikes were chosen because they’re much more suited to navigate the narrow, busy streets of the test neighbourhood. And a traditional garbage truck takes three people to operate, so three cargobikes uses the same people hours.
The bikes themselves look to come from the wonderfully Germanically named Radkutsche. And if you were wondering, a fully equipped garbage bike will set you back about €10,000.
And if you’re a super keen bean and want to know more (I know who you are), here’s a neighbourhood page I found about it, here’s the letter residents got about it (in English) and here’s the council webpage about the scheme.
News
Back in Copenhagen, this weekend is the Annual Svajerløbet cargobike race which I imagine is as much fun as it sounds. Surely the real hack here is to take part in an IKEA bike?
Some good news from Boston (the American one) who launched a new cargobike delivery pilot program. And bad news from NYC who are proposing some new laws which would outlaw some very common cargobike setups.
Austrian cargobike manufacture Gleam Technologies declared bankruptcy at the start of August. The first of many perhaps? The cargobike market is getting increasingly crowded with a lot of manufactures offering very similar products. Makers are going to have to find new ways to stand out in order to compete.
My hot cargobike summer
How was your summer? Did you take a picture of every cargobike you saw? Why not? Here’s some of mine from Utrecht and Cologne.
The somewhat dismantled bike above was our very own Audrey who decided that 8000km was when her front bearings would explode and need replacing. So that was a fun few days for me. And the last photo is our weekly shopping trip I did on Monday, because how awesome is it that I can fit all our shopping in a bicycle?!?
James is (still) running a marathon
Next April I’m running the London Marathon in aid of Mind. Mind is a mental health charity in the UK who do crucial work campaigning for healthcare services, whilst also offering direct help and support to those in need. As regular readers know, this is an issue close to my head heart and I’ve set an ambitious £2000 target.
If you’d like to donate to my efforts, you can do so on my JustGiving page.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!