“But tradespeople can’t carry their stuff around by bike” – oh yes they can! How cargo bikes are changing the way people work
“But tradespeople can’t carry their stuff around by bike” – oh yes they can! How cargo bikes are changing the way people work
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Look, I love bikes- I ride them, fix them, dream about them, but honestly, as a former electrician I can also acknowledge that it would be severely limiting to do that job on a bike.
If you’re working on domestic then you need a few ladders, a couple of hundred kilos of tools, at least 3 rolls of different cables, and a small shop of various outlets etc. not to mention that ducking out to the wholesalers to pick up something to finish a job would take 1hr instead of 10 min.Industrial electrician would just be funny - imagine cycling across town with a 500kg variable speed drive or switchboard on your pushy..
I couldn’t do the job efficiently with a sedan, let alone something with a fraction of the capacity. Also - where does the apprentice sit?
Also - where does the apprentice sit?
They're the ones pedaling
Waiting for the day we start hauling wind turbine blades with cargo bikes!
Also, the apprentice can get a sidecar lol
As much a I hate cars I can guarantee that wouldn't work in Canada for at least half the year.
I bike commute year round, but yeah, past a certain point, the cold kills the batteries so I have to switch to a traditional bike: That would be damn near impossible with huge amounts of cargo on anything but completely flat land.
And honestly, that's only one small problem when it comes to Canada. We're huge, we're cold, and we'rereally spaced out.
I would truly love to see a viable solution for this sort of problem though. And like, in the cities I can see this being used for mail cargo and stuff, but not on a large scale.
Are we spaced out though? Obviously distances between our cities is large, but we're 73.7% urban. On par with the EU (75%) and more dense than worldwide (57%). 36% of Canadians commute <5km, 59% <10km.81% <20km.
We like to call size the problem, but in my observation, there are certain activities that require a car, and then we just use the car all the time because we have it already.
When I was in Small-town ON (population 5,000), a car was definately a necessity, you can't get everything you need in town; the bigger town was 30km, and the city was ~200km. Owning a car was a necessity, and I don't think anyone would question that.
However, we all drove everywhere. Work? Drive. McDo/Tim's? Drive. Grocery? Drive. The restaurant/bar? Drive. But the town is maybe 5sq km. Any point in town to any other point in town was <2.5km, but we all drove everywhere.
That's not a question of distance, that's a question of design and making it nice to walk of bike. The trails were rammed on the evenings and weekends (so much so I'd drive around to find parking at the trailhead 1.3km from where I lived...), so it's not like we were fundamentally opposed to, or incapable of, walking/biking/whatever.
The next city closest to me is over an 8 hour drive. My city has a footprint bigger than Vancouver at over 300² KMs. Yes, we are spaced far apart, especially when comparing us to the USA which is where most of these things tend to be marketed. When you add the mountains and bone chilling temperatures I can say with relative certainty that cycling packages and equipment around the city all year round is absolutely not feasible. Even in Edmonton or Calgary this wouldn't work in the winter.
I personally don't own a car, I walk and transit everywhere, and your experience and observation are limited. I'd like my electrician to show up with all of his fingers.
Of course my experience and observations are limited. I've only lived 10 places in Canada.
On weather, when I lived in Yellowknife, it was easier, faster, and cheaper to hop on my bike; than to plug in for 30-120 minutes, idle for 15, and then drive. But that's obviously a pretty compact place. So it's probably more condusive than a southern city like Edmonton. And there's no major hills or mountains to speak of.
Not every place is going to have the same solutions; but a big number of cities can get a lot of trips done with improve transit.
The point is that we need to be doing things to reduce vehicle trips. If bicycle trips are only viable for 7 months a year, that's 7 months less vehicle trips.
If you can only do 50% of you to errands without a car, that's 50% less errands. We have a culture around driving everywhere, and we need to break considering other trips trips are alternatives to driving. Trips where we are driving should only be the ones with no viable alternatives.
And yet you argue all my points that this isn't a good solution for us. I never said it wasn't good for elsewhere. I get the point and I'm on board with reducing driving- and trust me I do my part, but you are never going to get a busy tradesperson riding their cargo around in January. If a solution is only going to work when the weather is perfect it isn't going to convince anyone who has to actually haul around the stuff to switch and that's the biggest hurdle to jump.
I'm sure this would be great in lots of places where it isn't below zero for over half the year.
Definitely more viable in big cities, but until we get solid state batteries that don't get messed up by extreme cold, it's a moot point anyhow.
Maybe if someone develops a warp drive for bicycles it'll become viable away from places like Toronto lol
It's not about speed it's about protection. People need to be warm and safe while traveling between jobs.
Warm can be done easily enough with the right clothing, but yeah, safety is another matter.
Warm clothes can only go so far, you have to still be able to move. Workers need a heat source to replenish themselves, not just to bundle up. To wear all the necessary clothing to keep myself warm for a 45 minute walk adds 15 minutes on to the walk because of how much it bogs me down.
Obviously every situation is different.
When I was in electrical we'd take the truck to the site on the first and last day, and park the tool trailer sat in situ. The rest of the days we'd pile in a berliner (sedan), which still gave us wheels if we needed to grab something. I'd bike if the site was close enough.
As the apprentice, I sat in the back of the Berliner, and on a milk crate between the seats in the truck.
berliner (sedan)
People still use that term where you live? 😳 That's like, old, real old, it used to be a horse carriage and then was used for early cars. Haven't seen it outside a museum until now.
Québécois term. It specifically refers to a 4 door with a trunk that extends past the passenger area.
I'm pretty sure we use sedan in the rest of Canada.
Love it (I'm from Berlin)
I think it depends on the work that you are doing. I'm currently working as a journeyman and the most I need to bring is my hand tools. If you need to carry more the company will likely give a vehicle, but the vast majority of people drive their personal vehicles only to transport themselves and their hand tools.