Cargo Bike Update 

I wanted to give a cargo bike update as the kids are bigger and we’ve changed locales.

For reference, we got our Yuba Long Tail Cargo Bike in the spring of 2016 when the kids were 6, 3 and 1. That first summer I had all three kids on the bike. It was quite a load! I think I was hauling about 100 lbs of kid. The youngest sat on the back in a Thule Yepp Maxi Easy Fit Bike Seat. The older two sat in front of him with the Yuba Monkey Bars around them. At that time we mostly used the bike to cruise the sea wall in Vancouver and visit beaches and parks.

I absolutely loved the freedom the bike allowed me that first summer. We could go farther and faster than on foot. With our Go Getter panniers we could haul everything needed for a day at the beach. As a mother of three it was a revelation for getting my brood somewhere that is usually only easily accessible with a car.

The first summer we had the cargo bike we still owned a car. The cargo bike soon took over some of the work of the car: getting us to beaches that were too far to walk to or not easily accessible by transit. When my oldest started at a school a few blocks from our house we no longer used the car enough to justify the cost. So our second year with the Yuba cargo bike we were car free with kids and the Yuba did a little more heavy lifting for errands that were farther afield.

The Family Cargo Bike is Adaptable

The following summer my oldest was starting to ride independently and that lightened the load on the bike. But he was a new rider and sometimes needed a break or couldn’t quite make it on his own steam to the destination. Cue cargo bike awesomeness. There’s a system called ‘bag and drag’ with cargo bikes where you put the tow bikes front wheel inside your pannier. *See photo below.  I add in a bungy chord for stability and boom, I’m now towing a bike. With my bike!

The tough parts of our cargo bike usage in the city were mostly with the location of the bike storage room in our condo building. Bike parking was always at a premium and not every spot fit our big bike. The bike room was on the first floor of the underground parking and behind two heavy fire doors. It was challenging to get the cargo bike out with three young kids along. In fact, I would say bike parking was our biggest barrier to family cycling.

The other reason we didn’t use our cargo bike with great frequency is that we could easily walk most places. Our city lifestyle in Vancouver was tailored to use as many easily walkable amenities and services as possible. So the cargo bike really was our fun vehicle rather than a commuter.

Riding a Cargo Bike in a Small Town

Enter our move to a small town in the fall of 2017. I actually debated even bringing the bike: there are very few sidewalks and no protected bike lanes. How would we safely ride our cargo bike here? Of course, a few weeks in I saw that we would be using the cargo bike even more in the small town.

It’s exceedingly easy to get our bikes out of our garage here. That’s one reason we are riding so much more in this small town. I just roll the cargo bike into our attached garage to put away and roll it out when we go. It’s a breeze. Hence why I used the bike to haul soccer gear to practice as you can see from the photo at the top.

We’re also riding more because it’s often too long to walk. We no longer have a walk score in the high 90s. We can walk to the kid’s school and into town but if we are doing that multiple times a day it ends up being 2-3 hours of walking a day. The family bike is very efficient for time.

The low and slow traffic here makes for easy riding. I was really worried about not having bike lanes but that was quite ignorant of me. There is a lot less traffic on the road here and driver’s don’t seem to be in as big a hurry. Calm traffic and less traffic has made me feel very safe riding on the roads with my kids.

Three years in and our long tail cargo bike is proving more versatile and useful than I expected.

The other fun or interesting thing about riding a cargo bike in a small town: everyone knows us by our bike. We’re the only cargo bike in town and we’re kind of a spectacle at times. Lots of people stop me to ask about the bike. And I often meet people for the first time and they say, “you’re that family with the big orange bike with the kids on it.” Yep, that’s us.

We have another three or four years of hauling kids by bike left. But I see us keeping our long tail cargo bike beyond that as it’s such a versatile and fun bike. I can bring the kids bike’s to school for them to ride home if they didn’t ride that morning. And the hauling capacity is really useful for grocery shopping, general errands and long days at the park. It’s also a really comfortable bike to ride for me with a more upright position and an easy set to the handlebars. So happy we took the plunge to get one of these bikes!