Where do we go from here?
A call to action on cargo bike research
Where do we go from here?
A call to action on cargo bike research
11 APR 2024
3 MINUTE READ
WORDS: LINDSAY BROADWELL – ICBF AFFILIATED RESEARCHER
PHOTOS: REMCO KROEZE, TOM PARR, WAHU! AND TOMEK KAMINSKI
Cycling, and particularly cargo cycling, has only relatively recently started to attract much in the way of academic attention. While cycling as a whole is pretty commonly discussed in academic circles, especially around sustainability and getting rid of the dominance of the car in our lives, our towns, and our cities (and rurally too!) – the cargo bicycle specifically is a bit neglected.
Why does this matter? Well, one of the discussions in academic circles at the moment is the idea of the bicycle somehow becoming “more like a car” – and there’s not only disagreement over what that means, exactly, but whether or not it’s a good thing or a bad thing. If you follow the work of John Urry, he set out the idea that the car isn’t just a car, but a key part of an overall system called “automobility” – all the stories we tell ourselves about cars, all the infrastructure we built to let cars dominate our lives, all the other things which go into car dependency; that’s all, basically, wrapped up in automobility.
The thing is, that system doesn’t necessarily have to actually be built around the car. You could have the same basic automobility system, but instead built around bicycles instead. Sounds good? Well, it really depends on who you ask. If the critique of automobility is how much energy it uses, how many non-renewable resources it takes to run? Swap out cars for super-efficient bicycles while leaving everything else intact, and you’re all good to go!
Problem is, alongside how wasteful driving is, there’s also critique (particularly from a man named Peter Cox, who wrote all about this) that it’s basically hegemonic, fundamentally hypercapitalist – and so makes our lives worse just by existing! Swap in a bicycle instead of a car, and you still get a system which wants to impose itself on our lives – just with a bicycle instead of a car as the thing at the centre of it.
Who’s right? Does the answer lie somewhere in the middle? At this point, us academics don’t really have an answer to that. For instance, Samuel Nello-Deakin argues that we don’t actually need more technology to become sustainable, whether that’s about replacing cars with bicycles, or something else. Others don’t agree with that. If you follow along in the literature you see a fair amount of research extolling (rightly!) the material benefits of getting rid of as many cars as we can, but a lot of disagreements about how we do that and what a replacement for mass car use would actually look like.
Velomobility
Consider the cargo bike: if we’re going to take the position that “making bikes more like cars” is a good thing, and something we need to do, then we really should look at the cargo bike. A lot of drivers say they need their cars to do shopping, to carry their kids, to do all kinds of heavy lifting. This in my opinion is all fair to say, and if you ask me, making bikes more like cars in this area is actually a pretty good idea. Compared to a regular bike (two wheels, and maybe a pannier), a cargo bike can haul a lot more on it, and do so safely (my fellow Amsterdammers carry each other on handlebars, panniers, and sometimes on each others’ shoulders; probably not the safest thing in the world) – and if the cargo bike is electric, with an ease, a speed, and an efficiency that can seriously challenge cars and vans for delivery work, and many other tasks besides.
But! How do we do this? Cargo bikes, especially electric ones, are expensive, often a significant chunk of what a car would cost. Peter Cox has said he wants his idea of cycling (“velomobility”) to challenge the hegemony of the car, to challenge the hegemony of automobility. Is saddling people with a lot of debt to buy a cargo bike a good idea? No, probably not. Replacing people drowning in car payments with people drowning in bike payments is likely not the greatest idea in the world. So, how could we make cargo bikes more popular? How could we imagine a world where cycling displaces cars properly?
Cycling Futures
This brings us back to the last article I wrote, all about imaginaries, and how our imaginations may actually hold us back. Part of the problem we have in academia is while we’re discussing which approach is better, which system needs replacing, and all the rest of it, we haven’t really put in a lot of attention to possible, well, cycling futures. If we’re going to replace cars with bikes, what does that look like? Do we actually need more technology, or can we make do with what we have? What roles do we have as individuals? As groups? Where do companies come in? Where does the government come in?
All this and more is still a bit on the “unanswered” side, at least, from my own individual perspective, having (without meaning to brag) been doing a PhD around this very topic for the last year and a half. Because if we are to unlock the true, colossal scope of the cargo bike, the current gaps in research need to be plugged. I – along with the International Cargo Bike Festival – am pushing to do just that, but we can’t do it alone; this calls for a coalition.
