The Bakfiets development of the original Danish Long John has become very
popular in Holland, www.bakfiets.nl (UK dealer: http://www.dutchbike.co.uk/
). There's a unit at Delft University doing research into transport bikes
(I have the details somewhere but it'll take some time to dig out) which has
been quite extensive. One of the Dutch TV magazine programmes did a 30
minute feature on the research, which covered most, if not all, of the cargo
bikes and trikes on sale in Holland at the time. There used to be a link to
it on the Bakfiets website, but I noted recently that it appears not to be
there any longer.
The basic conclusion was that trikes were fundamentally unstable unless
cornered very slowly. In one case(Halfords tricycle offering) it was so bad
they didn't bother to include it in the feature. The basic problem is that,
to turn a trike, the rider has to swing the "steering bar" to the outside of
the turn, thus transferring the body weight outside of the centre of
gravity. Combine that with a relatively high load centre (the Long John's
is much lower) and there's all the necessary forces to topple over
easily...which gets worse the large the load.
Of course, with two wheeled transport bikes, that issue isn't present
(although, because of the geometry of the front wheel relative to the
basket, a similar effect can be observed in most variations on the butchers
bike beloved in Britain).
I'll see if I can dig up a link to the TV feature (although I would warn
it's in Dutch).
Cheers
John Meudell
-----Original Message-----
From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carlosfelipe Pardo
Sent: 07 January 2011 00:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cargo bike use
Bogotá (Colombia) has had considerable use of cargo tricycles since the
1980s, mostly for small packages. Unfortunately, there is very few and
outdated literature around (the most recent I have is from 1985- a
Skat-funded document called "las bicicletas y los triciclos" (in Spanish)...
Carlosfelipe Pardo
Slow Research
Cl 93A No 14-17 of 708 (Bogotá, Colombia) T/F +571 2362309 Cel +57 321 343
3727 [log in to unmask]
On 06/01/2011 06:28 p.m., Adrian Emilsen wrote:
> > Is anyone aware of towns/cities where there is a 'reasonable' level of
use of cargo bikes/trikes outside of the Netherlands/Denmark/Portland OR?
|