Pedicabs and politics
Easy Street <service <at> easystreetrecumbents.com>
2011-11-03 02:22:52 GMT
I could use some input. This is a bit offbeat, but probably interesting
to lovers of workbikes.
Being a tourist town, Austin has a lot of pedicabs in it. I like
pedicabs, as I like it when people use bikes for practical purposes, and
I like big workbikes/trikes in general. Like many, I'm leery of
"pedicabs" which are large trailers (always without their own brakes)
whose gross, loaded weight far exceeds that of the mountain bike and
rider towing it by the seatpost. Known trailer crashes include
jackknifing when the bike brakes during a turn, seatpost failure, or
falls when the rider is unable to climb with the load. A trailer costs
about 1/10 of what a new, purpose-built trike does but it can be leased
out at the same rate as a trike pedicab, so they are flooding the local
market, hurting operators (not so much owners/lessors).
Most cities with pedicabs don't allow trailer pedicabs, but Austin
hasn't set such rules yet. The city is in the process of revising all
its pedicab laws in response to the explosion of cabs downtown and
around the University of Texas football games. This has set off a lot
of internal politics in the industry as the tricycle-pedicab companies
(mostly small independents, a few medium sized operations and one big
company) are trying to get the city to restrict the use, or at least
growth, of trailer-pedicabs.
The most compelling argument for the public is safety. The problem
making this argument is that since so few cities allow trailer pedicabs,
there is very little data. Pedicabbies working on the streets see
trailer crashes, but the drunken chuckleheads dumped on the street
aren't much interested on police or ambulances. I heard a report of a
passenger's broken arm (trailer jackknifed stopping for a surprise
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