filed under: Pedicab News — Pedicab @ 12:32 am April 16th, 2008
By David Montero, Rocky Mountain News
The short stretch of sidewalk opposite the Hyatt Regency Denver is an uneven, crumbling mess – as if an active fault line were running beneath it.
David Kennedy steps near it and motions all the way up to an alley, where the curb is a pulverized mess of rubble.
“This,” he said, “is a definite hazard.”
Farther down 15th Street, Kennedy is at it again. Two empty, mauve flower pots sit right in the middle of the sidewalk. He shakes his head.
And then there’s the sign at the corner of 15th and Arapahoe streets. It juts out of the corner, with a metal frame below that a blind person could miss while swiping a cane.
Few people notice them as they walk by – joggers easily diverting their path to avoid the obstacles. But Kennedy is paid to notice what others might miss.
The 51-year-old is the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee’s disability rights advocate for the Democratic National Convention. He has spent the past few weeks making sure the city is ready for the contingent of disabled people coming to the city for the party’s convention in August.
Teenage polio victim
The problems that Kennedy finds must be fixed at the expense of the city or responsible agency.
Walking with a cane, Kennedy – he contracted polio while in his late teens – has spent the past seven years in Denver working with the mayor’s office to make sure places like the Denver Art Museum and large public art displays align with provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
His mantra is simple: the more accessible things are for the disabled now, the better it is for everyone later.
“Access will be a big deal for the growing elderly population,” he said. “Cities won’t have to invest in it later by making those changes now.”
One of those making the change now is Steve Meyer.
The co-owner of Main Street Pedicabs in Broomfield, he contacted officials putting on the convention with the idea of providing pedicabs to disabled delegates .
To make sure they could get inside the pedicabs, he began installing a step that was 11 inches from the ground rather than the original 18 inches.
In addition, he began adding grab bars in front.
Meyer said his goal was to have about four pedicabs ready to greet the disabled coming off the buses and then to ferry them around to the various entrances to the Pepsi Center.
“It serves two purposes,” he said. “First, they’re environmentally friendly and secondly, they’re easy to get in and out of.”
Because security plans haven’t been finalized, it’s not known whether pedicabs or golf carts will be used within the “hard security” barrier set up by Secret Service at the Pepsi Center.
When the Democratic National Convention was held in Boston in 2004, August Longo was amazed at how accessible things were for the disabled.
And having been to the past two conventions in Boston and Los Angeles, he said the bar is pretty high.
“I’d say Boston is the gold standard and it would be hard for any city to come up to that,” he said. Longo, chairman of the disabled caucus of the California Democratic Party and who himself is in a wheelchair, noted how party officials had booklets printed up and made available in advance of the trip so disabled delegates knew how to get what they needed.
Kennedy, whose jurisdiction covers places where host committee parties will be held, said he has to check out all of those facilities as well.
And he is in the process of talking with taxi cab companies to make sure the drivers engage in sensitivity training – noting that in the past some drivers have refused to allow seeing-eye dogs into the vehicles.
Disabled delegates
The number of disabled delegates coming to Denver is not known since most states haven’t had their state conventions yet.
100 or more disabled delegates were at the convention in Boston in 2004.
* The number of disabled people arriving that are non-delegates is also unknown, though convention officials said it could be in the hundreds.
SUE STOCK, Staff Writer The News & Observer | May 12, 2007
On the surface, a pedicab is about as simple as you can get. It’s a fiberglass carriage on wheels that is hauled around by a driver who rides a 21-speed bicycle in the front. But the arrival of the vehicles on the streets of downtown Raleigh this month could mean something more than a fun way to tour the city.
Downtown boosters are hoping that the debut of the Raleigh Rickshaw Co. is another subtle sign that downtown is beginning to pulse with the nightlife that has been so elusive. These kinds of services are crucial, helping to connect downtown areas that now operate autonomously, says Nancy Hormann, president of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance.
“I’ve just spent this last weekend in Memphis,” Hormann said. “What was very cool was you could jump in a horse-drawn carriage, you could jump in a rickshaw, and you could go from entertainment district to entertainment district.”
Some say Raleigh has a long way to go before it becomes that kind of thriving metropolis.
“If the weather is nice, we have pretty good foot traffic, especially if there’s some kind of special event going on,” said Carter Powell, co-owner of the Fayetteville Street Tavern (formerly The Capital Room). “But we need a whole lot more events.”
Some signs indicate that downtown traffic is picking up.
Along with Raleigh Rickshaw, the city operates trolleys around downtown.
There are also horse-drawn carriages that offer rides on the weekend, operated by Jamie Massey, who started the service in November. The service has grown from one carriage to three, and Massey is preparing to add Thursday to the schedule.
“We can’t get our hands on horses and carriages fast enough,” he said. “It’s growing faster than we can keep up with.”
Despite the attraction’s popularity, Massey said many riders associate things such as carriages and rickshaws with bigger cities.
“You’ll ask people, ‘Did you ever take a carriage ride before,’ and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, I did it in New York,’ or ‘I did it in Boston.’ But you don’t hear a lot of North Carolina.”
Charlotte and Carrboro also have rickshaw services. Raleigh Rickshaw co-owner Amedeo Rosa said that the availability of rickshaw services in other cities led him to start his company.
“We figured that if places like Charleston had them, we could have them here,” he said.
Raleigh officials are trying to build momentum, planning a more consistent trolley service that will run around downtown every 10 minutes or so.
“That’s the biggest missing link,” Hormann said. “The goal is to have it up and running by ’08, when the new convention center opens.”
But because the convention center’s opening is a year away, Rosa said he knows it’s a risk to start Raleigh Rickshaw now. He and business partner Sean O’Neal have invested $60,000 in the operation.
“Once you have enough people downtown, you can support these businesses,” Rosa said. “I think the downtown population needs to double again before you get the critical mass for true urban living. But it’s coming together.”
Working only for tips right now, Rosa and O’Neal are putting all of their money into buying more rickshaws. Raleigh Rickshaw operates five pedicabs, and there are five more on order, along with plans for 10 more by the end of the summer. “I hope to break even by September,” Rosa said.
In the meantime, the company is making what money it can by charging drivers fees to lease the rickshaws each night, ranging from $10 for weekdays to $75 for special events. The drivers keep any tips they earn.
Raleigh Rickshaw is also selling advertising on panels displayed on the buggies, though Rosa declined to say how much the ads cost.
“I see them as rolling billboards,” Rosa said. “I want to have a downtown guide with menus from restaurants and information about clubs. We could even do special packages, like date nights.”
Though they are just getting started, the rickshaws are a good sign for downtown Raleigh, said Doyle Hyett, whose HyettPalma firm specializes in helping cities boost their downtowns.
“I think that’s encouraging to see that entrepreneurs are venturing out there, trying some new and different things,” Hyett said. “There’s obviously a lot more parts to the story than that. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Those are small things, but small things add up over time. Everything can’t be a convention center.”
Raleigh’s toughest challenges moving ahead are likely to be attracting street-level retail shops and homes for middle-class people, Hyett said.
“Most of the first line of retail that you attract to a downtown in the early days is small, independent businesses,” he said. “But in the business of downtown revitalization, you’ve got to sometimes be satisfied with small victories.”
Staff writer Sue Stock can be reached at 829-4649 or sue.stock@newsobserver.com.
Apr 19th 2007 | DENVER, LONDON AND NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Regulation threatens a booming business with, er, a cyclical downturn
AP
A PEDICAB borrowed from a friend for a conference on pedestrianisation in 1990 got Steve Meyer pedalling what is now a fast-moving business. Hoping to liven up the often-deserted streets of downtown Denver, his hometown, he bought two of the bicycle taxis. But they did not work very well, so he started building what has since become the industry standard, with 21 gears, hydraulic brakes and so on. His firm, Main Street Pedicabs, now caters to rising demand both in America and abroad.
Alas, regulation in two of the biggest markets for pedicabs threatens to puncture Mr Meyer’s upbeat mood. Last month New York’s city council voted to impose onerous rules on the hitherto unregulated pedicab industry and to limit the number of pedicabs to 325. A protest prompted Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, to veto the new rules, apparently out of entrepreneurial fellow feeling for the pedicab drivers, but the city council is likely to override his veto, perhaps as soon as next week.
Pedicabs first started operating in New York in the mid-1990s, but their numbers soared from around 100 to over 500 after they featured in an episode of Donald Trump’s business reality-television contest, “The Apprentice”, in 2004. For the sort of fit youngster who wants a flexible job—many drivers in New York are actors or students—it pays well: $300 on a good day, though typically half that. The cost of entry is low, perhaps $4,500, compared with $400,000 for a yellow-taxi medallion.
Pedicabs are under attack in London, too, where an estimated 400 operate. Transport for London, a regulatory body, is reviving its controversial claim that pedicabs should be regulated as “hackney carriages”, like the city’s black cabs. Chris Smallwood, chairman of the London Pedicab Operators Association and boss of Bugbugs, a 60-strong pedicab firm, says treating pedicabs like black cabs would impose unbearable costs on the industry. He has helped to draft an amendment to a bill now before the House of Lords that would introduce lighter pedicab regulations.
There is striking agreement between the pedicab trade groups in both London and New York that some sort of regulation is needed, not least to deter rogue operators. But current proposals seem to serve the interests of motor-taxi drivers, who want their rivals off the road.
The irritation is that pedicabs do not compete much with motor-taxis, say Messrs Meyer and Smallwood. Pedicab journeys tend to be the short trips that drivers of gas-guzzling taxis hate most. Pedicabs’ main competition is walking, says Mr Meyer, who points out that if New York’s 12,000 yellow cabs were replaced with pedicabs, “there would be a lot less congestion”. Here’s hoping that politicians on both sides of the Atlantic cast their votes for pedal power.
The Cayman Islands now have their own new rickshaw cab business, called Wheels PediCab Service.
“Environmentally friendly, well-equipped state-of-the-art rickshaw bicycles are a new way of getting around Seven Mile Beach and George Town,” said owner and operator Brian Barnes.
“I have no set route, and go wherever the passenger wants to go. They are well-equipped with signals, break lights, headlights, even seatbelts.”
Mr Barnes thought of the idea two years ago, and made his first application in September 2005 to import the rickshaw bicycles.
“The first two are here, and there are more on the way,” he said.
They can also be used for special events, such as weddings, private parties, parades, etc and they are also available for advertising and branding,” he added.
Mr Barnes also said businesses can advertise on the cabs, by ‘branding’ them with companies’ or products’ logos.
“It’s something new to Cayman and people use them right now in big cities such as Denver, New York, Florida, Las Vegas and Victoria in British Columbia, which is where I first fell in love with them and rode them to earn spare money, when I was going to school there,” said Mr Barnes.
People will be able to locate the cabs in and around the Seven Mile Beach and George Town locations.
For contact information people can phone 947-2222 or visit the company’s website at www.CaymanPediCab.com or email christopher@caymannetnews.com.
I’ve seen the future of short-haul public transport in Oxford, and it’s got three wheels. Oxford’s cycling community is abuzz with talk of the new bicycle-rickshaws, or pedicabs’. You may have seen them gliding around the city centre, ferrying overdressed students to and from college balls, but I hadn’t seen one until yesterday.
They’re a tricycle with a solid 85kg chassis, highly-geared and with fancy brakes. The ample seats happily accommodate two corpulent passengers, and back at their Jericho garages, the carriages can be swapped for pick-up modules for doing deliveries.
You need to be fit to ride a laden pedicab, and bizarrely, it’s probably easier if you aren’t a cyclist. I’ve just ridden one and it was weird. Whereas on a bike, you lean into a corner, on a pedicab, you stay bolt upright – in fact, leaning into a corner makes no difference whatsoever. “They’re great fun to ride and it’s nice being able to chat to passengers over your shoulder,” says Ted Maxwell, the founder of Oxon Carts. Ted’s thigh muscles doubled in size over the busy Christmas period and he’s never felt more tired than at the end of New Year’s Eve, but he and his riders love it.
Ted got the idea while holidaying in Scandinavia last summer. “Bicycle-rickshaws are an integral part of the transport system in several Nordic cities. I thought: Why aren’t they in Oxford already?’ Oxford is flat enough and it has the cycling culture,” says Ted. The entrepreneurial history undergraduate began to put out feelers last autumn. “Of course it’ll work,” was the unanimous and obvious verdict. Although 11 years ago Erica Steinhauer’s bicycle-rickshaw business failed, Ted is convinced that times have changed. So convinced, in fact, that he before he knew it, he’d set up Oxon Carts and imported five £2,000 pedicabs from the States.
A typical pedicab journey is the five-minute hop with your suitcase from the train station to High Street or with a heavy purchase from, say, Boswell’s to Jericho – even up Headington Hill “if you ask nicely!”
Pedicabs offer the journeys that you can’t make by bus or cab through our congested medieval streets. They’re doing cabbies a favour, too, as these short but traffic-snarled journeys earn cabbies the least.
Pedicabs in Oxford tick all the boxes: no need to worry about CO2 emissions or diesel fumes. Having access to cycle lanes and short cuts means they’re much quicker than a taxi. They reduce congestion and they’re a peaceful ride for passengers and pedestrians alike. In all, pedicabs are a win-win proposition for the city.
Local businesses are already using them for deliveries large and small, and you can book a private-hire service on 07747 024600 or www.oxoncarts.com Unfortunately, due to hackney carriage licensing complications, they can’t yet act as hailable on-street cabs. However, Oxon Carts see their future as plying the streets and customers want the freedom to hail a passing pedicab, so getting a taxi licence is the next step. Gird your loins for the three-wheeled revolution.
Main Street Pedicabs, Inc.™ has been perfecting the design of human-powered vehicles since 1992. Available in pedicab, truck, and delivery van configurations, each vehicle shares the refinements gained from Main Street's fleet operations in Denver, Colorado and of our customers. The Boardwalk Pedicab™, Classic Pedicab™, Broadway Pedicab™, Billboard Bike™, Pedal Pick-Up™, Pedicabvertising™ and all trademarks and logos appearing on this website, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Main Street Pedicabs, Inc.™ or their respective trademark holders. Price and availability subject to change without notice. We are a proud supporter of all green initiatives that contribute to reducing our carbon footprint.
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