A new school cycle
Toronto families discover the convenience and versatility of cargo bikes to get kids to class
Chris Williams’ Mongoose Envoy cargo bike is the family vehicle of his dreams.
He bought the $450 longtail cargo bike on sale from Costco last year and, inspired by designs he’d seen around his Little Portugal neighbourhood, quickly got to work customizing it to accommodate the needs of his family of three — Williams, his 4-year-old son, Tyler, and Tyler’s mom, Stephanie Town.
Williams fashioned a seat using two old skateboards to create one long bench for all the passengers and covered it with durable, waterproof cushions — made from camping mats. He seats Tyler in front of him — the child’s feet rest on a peg made from a carbon fibre hockey stick clamped onto the frame — leaving “the back clear for an adult and groceries,” he says.
The family uses the bike for treks to Toronto Islands and grocery runs, but its main purpose is to transport Tyler to school.
“(School is) only two blocks away, but he loves the bike so much that he requests it,” Williams says.
With increasing traffic woes such as congestion and limited parking making school drop-offs a challenge, more Toronto families are considering cargo bikes to head back to school. When children are too small to bike separately from parents, cargo bikes offer an efficient opportunity for the family to bike together.
Williams works as a handyman and is an adept tinkerer, but he insists that the modifications he made could be accomplished by anyone familiar with basic bike repair.
The most impressive addition to his bike is an electric-assist motor that gives the vehicle a boost of power for longer rides and steep inclines.
William conceals and protects the motor’s battery pack with perforated sheets of aluminum. Snow netting over the rear tire prevents cargo and passengers’ legs from interfering with the spokes of the
bike and bags can be secured to the sides with bungee cords.
All in all, Williams spent just under $2,000 on his bike project and says off-the-shelf equivalents would have cost him triple the amount.
Eric Kamphof, general manager at Curbside Cycle on Bloor St. W., has seen a steady increase in cargo bikes sales since the bike shop began importing them in 2006.
“In the last two years, it started to skyrocket,” Kamphof says. He has sold about 90 cargo bikes so far this year and expects to sell115 by the year’s end, fuelled by the back-to-school season.
“We get a real bump in sales in early September.”
Curbside specializes in the box-style cargo bike inspired by Danish and Dutch designs, which are more approachable for less-experienced — or lesshandy — cyclists.
The box-style models seat up to four children, or 120 kilograms of cargo, in a front-end box. Nihola, which is made in Denmark, has a box made of Lexan plastic. “It’s the same material used to make hockey rinks,” Kamphof says. Babboe, from the Netherlands, specializes in boxes made of marinegrade wood. The boxes of both models have been tested to absorb impacts of up to 40 kilometres per hour.
For beginner cyclists or those concerned with stability, Kamphof recommends a threewheeled design that requires no balancing when stopped.
For moderately experienced cyclists, he suggests a twowheeled design that mimics the handling of a traditional bike without the weight and drag of an additional wheel.
“The lack of stability is only happening at slow speeds under five kilometres (per hour),” Kamphof says.
In the Beaches, Velotique specializes in the long-tail design akin to Chris Williams’ Mongoose. In the six years that owner Rob Bartel has run the bike shop, he’s seen an uptick in the popularity of cargo bikes for family use, especially those with electric-assist motors.
Annex resident Daniel Suss purchased a three-wheeled Nihola from Curbside last summer. Since then, it has become an integral part of his family’s day-to-day routine. His son, Harvey, just entered Grade 1. His school is a five-minute walk east from their home while his daughter Lily’s daycare, at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, is a 15-minute walk north.
With the Nihola, Suss can complete the circuit in under 10 minutes by bike, compared with a 30-minute journey on foot.
At a starting price of about $4,000, cargo bikes are an investment, says Kamphof, but they have a good resale value.
“When you compare it to a vehicle, it certainly starts justifying the price tag,” says Suss, whose wife, Ji-Hae Kim, jokes that the Nihola is Suss’s car.
“He goes everywhere with it,” Kim says.
The Suss-Kim family bought the rain tent option, which also shelters the kids from cold winds and snow.
“We use (the bike) all winter,” Suss says. The three wheels offer further stability over ice or otherwise slick conditions. “There’s no worry about slipping and falling.”
Riding a bike with passengers is different than when cycling alone, Williams says.
“You have to think ahead a little bit further,” he says. “The braking takes longer and the acceleration takes a little longer, so you don’t want to be relying on accelerating out of a problem.” Suss prefers to ride on laneways and quieter streets. Streets with bike lanes are no problem either. On roads without a separate lane, the bike is too large to ride beside cars and the curb so he follows the traffic and “acts like a car.”
But once they’re out on the town, both Suss and Williams say they get admiring stares.
“(It happens) every time I leave the house with it,” Williams says. “It really does get a lot of attention.”