Am I the last person in the western hemisphere to find out that the pedicab, known in Far East since the 30s as the cheapest means of city transportation, has made it big in the urban US? After 11 years on the streets in the Big Apple, there are enough of these bicycle-drawn passenger vehicles to rile the City Council into regulating them and banning the ones with electric motors. The spoilsports. The New York horsedrawn carriage and taxi trades are complaining that pedicabs cut into their business without having the expense of licenses and insurance.

Pedicabs are also beginning to tote tourists in downtown Portland, OR, Denver and Ft. Lauderdale, as well as in Spain, Denmark, England, Israel and Canada. Most carry two people, but there’s a four-passenger pedicab being operated in Phoenix. They’re even emblazoned with advertising, like taxis and buses.

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Denver Business Journal – by Tom Locke Denver Business Journal

In the old fishing villages on the southeast coast of Spain, the streets are narrow, the parking is atrocious and the tourists are plentiful.

But for tourists who are too tired and sweaty to take another step under the hot Spanish sun, there is relief, thanks to a little Broomfield company that is bridging the walker-automobile transportation gap with something called a “pedicab.”

On a recent morning in March, a dozen or so yellow pedicabs lay ready for shipment to Spain in the small warehouse of Main Street Pedicabs Inc., a company that has championed pedicabs for more than a decade under the leadership of its owner and CEO, Steve Meyer. “We’re not only building pedicabs, we’re building a pedicab industry,” Meyer said.

Meyer said he stuck with pedicabs while others might have given up because he and his wife, Ruth Vanderkooi, simply love the business. And that’s even though they make less than they would if they were fully employed somewhere else, he said.

Meyer has a background in urban planning, and sees himself as sort of a champion of an alternative form of transportation that can add excitement and utility to boring cities dominated by automobiles.

So, thanks in part to supplemental income earned by his wife and to real estate development projects on the side, Meyer has persevered in the pedicab business and figures he’s easily the biggest pedicab manufacturer in the United States.

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