Among the experiences that make one go “Eek!,” tooling around Manhattan in a rickshaw ranks high, falling somewhere between a cab ride during rush hour and walking through Times Square after the theaters let out. Some of the bike-drawn buggies come equipped with seat belts; others don’t. You decide your threshold of thrill.

“There’s a real rush going through traffic,” said Jacob Press, a tour guide with the Manhattan Rickshaw Co., the longest continuously operating pedicab outfit in New York City. “We can always find a way through.”

I have explored the City That Never Stops by foot, bus and bike. But on a recent trip, I wanted to sightsee in a vehicle that was intimate with the urban landscape but didn’t require any energy expenditure. So I called Manhattan Rickshaw a few days before my visit and booked Press and his quads.

Rickshaws are pervasive in Asia, where the economical bicycles with big back seats jostle for space among mopeds, cars, beasts of burden and swarms of pedestrians. In the United States, they’re more of a novelty than a necessity but are a rousing ride nonetheless. Though passengers are not as vulnerable as the biker, they’re still thrust into the chaotic street scene.

“It’s a combination of entertainment and transportation,” said Manhattan Rickshaw owner Peter Meitzler, who was instrumental in bringing pedicabs to New York. “It’s fun and environmental and fills a niche.”

In 1994, he and a group of entrepreneurs brought a dozen pedicabs to Manhattan, a nervy experiment in a city so dependent on taxis. To drum up interest, the rides were free. Today, a number of companies send nearly 500 pedicabs onto the streets. The taxi alternatives, which can be hailed on nearly every busy corner, charge $15 to $40 for a 10- to 30-minute ride.

In Central Park, where I met my driver, pedicabs congregate alongside horse-drawn carriages, vying for passengers with a romantic streak. Some operators also employ licensed guides capable of pedaling, pointing and narrating without crashing.

“We cover a lot of ground,” Press told me as I climbed into the 150-pound contraption, stashing my bags in a small compartment. “In the pedicab, you can see the landscape change and are close enough to see New Yorkers in their daily life.” (Press and I vaguely discussed price and route beforehand. My only request for the 90-minute tour was to cruise through Times Square during rush hour; he balked, then conceded.)

Currently a full-time law school student, the 29-year-old New Yorker also has a master’s degree in urban planning and was keen to share his advanced-degree education. “You see layers of the city,” he said while pedaling away, his steady voice cutting through the street noise. “It’s looking forward and backward.”

In my case, I was hoping Press would spend more time glancing forward, at the oncoming traffic, than back, at me. We started with a breezy spin through Central Park, where he singled out the “Ghostbusters” building and Sheep Meadow, named for the lawnmowers of yore. As we exited the park and joined the stream of traffic, staying to the far left, Press described the passing structures, his eyes ping-ponging between me, the sites under discussion (e.g., the Plaza, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Trump Tower) and the surrounding bedlam. “We’re faster than traffic,” he said, swooshing around a double-parked minivan, then seamlessly returning to the bike lane.

Seated on a padded bench protected by elbow-high sides and a convertible canopy, I felt as if I was nestled in a cocoon and was at ease enough to give Press 90 percent of my attention. (The remaining 10 percent was busy being a back-seat driver: “Parked car on left!” “Pothole ahead!” “New Jersey plates coming at you!”)

“We’ve had fender benders, but no fatalities,” he said. Well, that was comforting.

From the Central Park area, Press cruised through Midtown and cut through the heart of Times Square. At 45th Street, he removed the top, and with clear skies over my head, I watched the giant faces of billboard models float by like clouds. At a red light, I eavesdropped on sidewalk life, listening to a couple discuss their theater options. I wanted to grab their newspaper and circle “Xanadu,” but the light turned green.

Onward we coasted, through a living documentary of landmark structures (the Chrysler Building, the New York Public Library, the Flatiron Building), complete with narrative. Press never gasped for breath or faltered for topics. He explained such architectural designs as art deco detailing and cornices. (“They make you feel so cozy and warm.”) Then he riffed on ill-behaved drivers. “I’ve given up on out-of-town cars,” he said, referring to a sedan from Maryland that cut us off. After a Jersey driver gave us the middle-finger salute, I asked him about vehicular abuse. “I’ve had coffee thrown on me,” he said, “and almost got doored.”

When we reached Greenwich Village, about 50 blocks from Central Park, Press steered us onto narrow streets girdled by centuries-old buildings. We stopped briefly to peer through the nondescript door of a former speakeasy, then hopped back into our respective seats for a spin through SoHo and Little Italy, where Press’s description of the clam pies at Lombardi’s (America’s first pizzeria) made me wonder if he was carb deficient.

Evening was now approaching, and Press started heading uptown. As we crawled through Chinatown, the smells of dinner scenting the air, Press pointed out one final attraction: the spot where he almost got smacked by a car door.

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.

That may seem a strange claim for a business that has only two full-time employees and another 10 people or so that it uses on a part-time basis. But Meyer said he outsources most of the production and does only the assembly in-house. For instance, he uses a machine shop in Broomfield, a fiberglass company in Greeley, a tube-cutting company in Golden and a welder in Denver.

Pedicabs are three-wheeled vehicles that are similar to the Asian rickshaw, with a pedaler up front and a seat that can hold two adults in back. Main Street’s pedicabs have a base price of $3,400 and a fiberglass cab, 21-speed drivetrain and differential that allows the driver to turn on a dime.

Main Street sells them to operating pedicab businesses, a few of which it partly owns, including two companies with 20 pedicabs apiece in New York and Denver.

Main Street has produced about 500 pedicabs since its inception, and its production volume has been flat in the last four years, but Meyer sees a new day dawning for the business, and here’s why:

* The weaker dollar has made his price competitive in Europe, and he believes he has the best product. By 2005, he foresees half of his business coming from Europe.
* He is looking at setting up distributorships in New Jersey, the Southeast United States and Spain, which would increase the efficiency of his manufacturing operation.
* He is pushing the marketing of a cargo-hauling tricycle with a 24-volt battery system to supplement the pedaler’s power. He sees that being used in amusement parks, college campuses and business campuses. (He also has an Pedal-Electric Pedicab, which was the type ordered from Spain.)
* Manhattan Rickshaw Co., the New York operating company in which Meyer has a half-interest, was featured March 11 on “The Apprentice,” the television show featuring Donald Trump. Teams in the show competed against each other by operating pedicab services, and Meyer sees the exposure as another step forward in getting pedicabs accepted as mainstream transportation.

Revenue from ads, drivers

Pedicab operators make money partly from leasing their pedicabs to drivers and partly from advertising on the pedicabs.

Lease rates to drivers can depend on the location and event. For instance, in a Las Vegas mall, drivers lease pedicabs from the operator for $20 a shift and don’t charge their riders; they make money solely on tips.

At the Super Bowl in Houston, pedicab operators were charging drivers $100 per shift.

In Denver, the driver pays up to $50 for an eight-hour shift, and is restricted by the Denver operating company to charging the riding customers no more than $2 per block. The city licenses both the driver and operator.

Advertising also can provide important revenue. Indeed, in the Denver operating company that Meyer half owns, roughly half the revenue comes from advertising, and about half comes from leasing the pedicabs to drivers. Bud Light has signed up for advertising four straight years in Denver.

Jason Longsdorf, a planner with the city of Denver, said the pedicabs are a “great option” and “a good civic feature.”

“They filled a very small niche that’s grown with the LoDo and baseball crowd,” he said.

And Longsdorf foresees more growth opportunity for the pedicabs in Denver as hotel density increases downtown and the convention center expands.

Longsdorf said the licensing is necessary to ensure a certain level of safety, and Meyer likes the idea of minimum standards to maintain the industry’s image.

He’s getting calls from cities that are interested in revitalizing downtowns, and he’s seeing pedicabs move from novelty-item status into a practical alternative for people who can’t walk, or don’t want to walk, a number of blocks.

“Now, I think they’re going to become part of the transportation fabric,” Meyer said.

The perfect advertising platform for the modern metropolitan area is a Pedicab. Main Street Pedicabs is the only company offering national level marketing on pedicabs. We will customize a campaign that will put you in front of your customers. Visit Pedicabvertising to learn more.

Main Street Pedicabs is the market leader and the largest manufacturer of pedicabs in North America and has ownership in operations in San Francisco, Austin, San Antonio and New York City.  We offer advertising opportunities in these and other cities by working with operators who have purchased from Main Street.

We also manufacture the Billboard Bike. Having the billboard in such close proximity to people on foot makes it a unique “point-of-sale” type of media. The same places where pedicabs are the most successful are the places where your business advertising will be most effective. Now you can have the exposure you need by advertising on a Main Street Pedicab!

Content provided courtesy manhattanrickshaw.com.

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Today, his business card reads: Three Wheeled Warrior, one of those bicycle-powered rickshaws you see all over Midtown Manhattan, especially in the theater districts.

And despite the slow economy, Mr. Rasmussen and other drivers say, business is good. The tourists are back, tips are still generous, and regular taxis remain hard to come by at rush hour and in the rain, when bike-cabbies attract impatient New Yorkers into their off-beat, three-wheeled vehicles.

Indeed, the biggest problem for pedicab drivers these days seems to be competition. A new company, Manhattan Pedicab, opened in May with 11 cabs, bringing to three the number of companies that lease the bicycle taxis to the drivers.

The largest, Pedicabs of New York, has 40 vehicles, and George Bliss, the company’s owner, estimates that there are more than 60 pedicabs on the streets, up from zero before he opened in 1995. The third company, Peter Meitzler’s Manhattan Rickshaw, also opened that year.

And there are plenty of people willing to push the pedals, which Mr. Bliss said is related to the recession. ”We’re turning people away a lot,” he said. ”People are over-qualified, and they just need to bring in some money.”

Because pedicab drivers can set their own hours, he continued, ”it’s convenient for people who are between jobs, and it’s more interesting than bartending or waiting tables.” Leasing a cab costs $30 to $40 a day, he said, and includes liability insurance.

On average, rides cost $10 to $20. The drivers negotiate a price, and on a really good night, they say, they can make as much as $400. But there are slow times, and this year business has been more erratic than in the past, said Henry Munoz, a six-year veteran.

”Last year was like this,” he said, drawing a straight line through the air with his hand. ”This year, you’re up, you’re down.” The cabs did a lot of business late last year, when they were among the few vehicles that coould get around in Lower Manhattan; today, ground zero is still a popular destination. Drivers say about half their passengers are New Yorkers, not tourists.

As pedicabs have become familiar sights in Manhattan, it has become easier to persuade people to climb aboard, said Dorothy S. Chen, 21, who has driven a ‘trike” off and on for three years, and now does it full time. But there is a lot more competition, espcially around Broadway (outside the theater for ”Beauty and the Beast” is her favorite place to find passengers). ”Now we have to do a lot more hustling,” she said.

Ms. Cheng, who describes herself as ”102 pounds, four-foot-ten and three-quarters,” is proof that size is not a prerequisite for becoming a pedicabbie.

What is necessary is salesmanship. Some of the drivers take the aggressive route. ”They’ll pull up to people and say, ‘Get in, let’s go,’ ” said Arthur J. Nichols, who started Manhattan Pedicab after years in the horse-drawn carriage business.

Others take a different tack to distinguish themselves. Richard A. Sanford, 54, a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn, was busily waxing and cleaning his trike last Wednesday before going out in the afternoon. He decorated the cab with signs, banners and flashing lights, and adorned himself with a stylish black cap and fluorescent tie.

For Mr. Sanford, a bicycle enthusiast, driving the cab is a labor of love; the same is true for Mr. Bliss, who loathes cars and designs alternative transportation vehicles. In fact, Mr. Bliss likes his current location, on Broome Street at the corner of Thompson, because ”we’re right here in the face of traffic jams on the way to Holland Tunnel,” he said. ”We make a statement that you have other options.”

Thursday through Sunday, he sells some of those options, including bikes and scooters. But since the trade center attack, retail business in SoHo has dropped off. And so, somewhat to his surprise, the now-profitable pedicab business is actually keeping him afloat.

Mr. Rasmussen, the former headhunter, also sounds surprised about his new career, which he began after Sept. 11 last year. ”It turns out I like this a lot better,” he said, waving to a former passenger flying by on a bicycle. ”All things considered, it’s been good.”
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