The bride stood out against the backdrop of Central Park: The temperature was in the 50s, yet she had nothing more on her torso than a lace bustier. Below, her dress was as voluminous as an inflated parachute, dragging as she hobbled along the path. I was gliding along comfortably in the back of a pedicab, with plenty of room next to me on the seat. So I offered her a lift.

The look she gave me was not gratitude. After a few more friendly entreaties, the groom caught up to us. “She doesn’t want to,” he said. With that, they turned off the path and she hobbled onward, juggling various hems.

I was stunned. Did she just reject my chivalrous offer? Could I possibly look that weird? Then I thought: Oh wait, she’s seen the video.

If you have not caught it on YouTube or the evening news, the video shows a pedicab driver getting into a brawl with a taxi driver on Broadway, and it has given pedicabs — already viewed as suspect — an unwelcome moment in the spotlight. In June, one got into an accident after crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, where pedicabs are not allowed in the first place. By the time a Fox 5 cameraman caught the pedicab driver hurling a garbage can at the taxi driver, the whole fleet was in for a whupping.

Now the City Council has passed a law requiring all pedicabs — there’s no reliable figure for how many are on the road — to be inspected and registered by Nov. 20. “Pedicabs have been for too long acting like they rule the streets ahead of any other mode of transportation,” City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr. told The New York Post.

Having never thought to ride one — any more than one of those ridiculous party bikes (which probably are fun if you’re drunk enough to get on) — I had to wonder, could pedicabs really be that bad? Worse even than buses, the oblivious, lumbering bullies of the city streets? So I spent a few days being driven around on three wheels, and even on occasion taking the handlebars myself. Let’s just say I do better in the back than in the front.

The drivers who congregate at 58th Street and Seventh Avenue said they were delighted someone was finally going to regulate their business. They take their jobs seriously, and say people who don’t should be kept off the road.

Bernard Treanor, a driver for six years, has an impeccable pedigree: He trained with George Bliss, an industrial designer, who started one of the city’s first pedicab companies in 1995. “We were all actors and musicians,” said Mr. Treanor, who recently appeared in an independent film and is writing a novel about Central Park. “We needed to do this so we could hit our auditions.”

Today, many drivers are recent immigrants who rent pedicabs by the week (around $200 in summer, as low as $80 in January). Before, “the only thing in these guys’ way was maybe, like, a random goat,” he said. “And now they’re guiding a family through Times Square?” It’s turning police officers, who used to cheer him on, into enemies, he said.

I felt a little silly the first time I climbed into the back seat, but despite the autumn chill I warmed to it quickly. As with riding a bicycle, you see things at that pace that you can’t see from a car, and you get to put your feet up in a way you obviously can’t while walking. If your driver is full of interesting historical information, great, sit back and learn. If not, tell him to shut up (but apologize with a tip).

After a few rides, I persuaded a driver to let me try. It’s hard to keep the wheel straight, and during turns I kept thinking it was going to tip over, as a bicycle might. (A girly shriek ensued.) Of course there’s almost no way to tip over: the vehicles are solidly balanced on three wheels, with a lot of ballast keeping them that way. Especially if your driver hops in the back, as mine eventually did, then invites his friend in, too. By that point I was laughing too hard to go very far. I got no tip.

More seriously, it’s about as green a conveyance as anyone is ever going to find. But what do the tourists who typically ride them care about keeping our streets and our air clear? Perhaps, I started to think, pedicabs are being wasted on their passengers — and perhaps that is part of the reason they’re largely reviled. What if New Yorkers exercised eminent domain and reclaimed these overgrown tricycles for our own daily use?

To lead the way, I tried hiring a pedicab to run a few errands: dry cleaning, deli, the basics. Fine. But when I thought about visiting Aunt Frances at Mount Sinai Hospital, I found that at about $1 per minute or per block, what would be $15 in a taxi would be a trip to the A.T.M. in a pedicab. Fail.

I turned to Mr. Bliss for guidance. “The goal when I started this was that the pedicabs would actually be less money than a yellow cab,” he said.

He began that experiment downtown, where he thought people would be open to the idea, but he found they were too self-conscious to ride in a pedicab. It worked for a while in Midtown, but today, he said, sounding melancholy to the point of despair, the dream is dead.

“The pedicab industry itself became self-marginalizing,” he said. “It became more and more tourist oriented, less transportation oriented. We need drivers who are educated, fluent in languages. They need to be ambassadors to the city.”

We also need stricter regulation of the fleet, he said, and electric-assisted pedicabs — which he developed with a state grant, but the city does not allow. In short, we need the city to decide that a fleet of law-abiding, low-cost vehicles that consume no gas, is in everyone’s interest.

Take that to its logical conclusion and you get people commuting by rickshaw, exchanging newspaper sections with the guy in the next lane at a red light. Kids picked up after school by a parent on three wheels who has already stopped for groceries. A bride in Central Park accepting a lift from a pushy but well-meaning stranger. Wouldn’t you like to live in that city?

It seems a lot of people would say no.

In 2007, a city councilman was quoted in the Village Voice saying that pedicabs caused pollution by increasing congestion. Perhaps he’s right; perhaps pedicabs and cars cannot coexist in Manhattan. Maybe it’s not safe to have three wheels darting in and out of four-wheel traffic. Maybe the time has come to make a change. How about we get rid of the cars?

On a bad day, cycling in London feels like dinosaurs versus mammals. You, the warm-blooded cyclist, may ultimately inherit the earth, but until then you run the grave risk of being squished by a lumbering, petrol-fuelled sauropod. You have the acceleration, the visibility, the manoeuvrability; they have the weight, the momentum, the airbags.

There are good days, of course, when pedalists and petrolheads give way to each other in a haze of goodwill. But they are rare. So it is with some trepidation that I approach BugBugs’ Holborn Viaduct lock-up. My task is to give one of its pedicabs a test-ride; and pedicabs – as their operators prefer to style these latter-day rickshaws – are the SUVs of London’s bike scene: big – maybe too big – and apt to provoke extremes of opinion.The Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA), for example, hates them. “Whilst the third world is doing all it can to lose the last of these degrading pedal-powered contraptions, some unscrupulous operators are clogging up the streets of the Metropolis with the same slow, traffic-halting bikes,” it says on its website. It claims that pedicabs charge rip-off fares and are fundamentally unsafe. To prove this last point, a video clip shows a yellow cab ploughing into a hapless crash-test dummy astride a pedicab; it’s unclear who the menace is here but the animosity towards pedicabs is clear.

In the event, my test-ride proves to be confrontation-free. This is largely because Friedel Schroder, BugBugs’ owner and my instructor in the art of pedicab-riding, refuses to let me on to the main road. Instead I am confined to a short stretch of Shoe Lane by the lock-up. Schroder, a trim, crop-haired 40-year-old in fleece and jeans with just the faintest trace of a German accent, is big on safety. Before they can go out on the road, BugBugs’ riders must be trained up to National Cycling Standard Level 3 and need to have a grasp of pedicab mechanics. Passengers are asked to use the inertial seatbelts that are standard on the newer pedicabs, which may seem a bit excessive but it does send out reassuring signals.

Decidedly not sending out reassuring signals is my right foot, which, Schroder informs me as I swing my leg over the saddle on first mounting, has connected with the shins of my imaginary passengers. Suitably chastened, I start pedalling and I’m off.

“Watch the front wheel,” Schroder tells me, “where it goes there the rest of the pedicab will go.” This seems obvious but is good to know, given the metre-plus-wide passenger platform clunking along behind me. Schroder’s advice turns out not to be strictly true: as I try to do a U-turn, I skim the front wheel past the kerb but the rear wheel hits it. I have to put the bike into “reverse”, pushing the front wheel backwards with my foot.

After a few more turns up and down the road I feel like I’m really getting the hang of it. Schroder, ever safety-conscious, urges me to keep my fingers poised over the brakes – hydraulic at rear, simple cantilever at the front. It’s a bit tricky to glance at what’s coming behind, because of the passenger canopy: I either need to stand on the pedals or crouch down to see through the transparent rear panel. I’m also self-conscious about not repeating the error that every two-wheel veteran apparently makes on a trike: leaning into corners. On a bike, turning a corner feels like a kind of controlled fall; on a trike you need only to steer.

The pedicab is a less responsive ride than a bike, of course, but it doesn’t feel sluggish, even when Dan, who’s come to photograph proceedings, gamely agrees to be my passenger. And this machine, the US-manufactured Main Street, in New York taxi yellow, is only the Ford of pedicabs. The BugBugs fleet also boasts the Audi – the German-made Velocab – and the Rolls-Royce, the Bath-made Cycle Maximus, yours for £4,000.

Their common virtue is that, aside from manufacture and shipping, they all emit zero carbon, as Schroder cheerfully points out. They are, he says, the way forward for cities striving to cut carbon, or cope with resource constraints (Schroder is involved in a scheme to get cargo versions of the pedicab on to the streets of Gaza).

He also diligently rebuts the LTDA’s arguments against his beloved trikes, and observes, with sly diplomacy, that cabbies are skilled enough to be able to negotiate his machines without difficulty. Talks with Westminster council about official pedicab ranks appear to be bearing fruit; and no, he insists, fares aren’t a rip-off. They are more than a cab, certainly, at about £5 per person per mile, but that’s because of the muscle power involved. As for safety, Schroder points out that it’s a crucial part of the training you receive when you hand over your £140 for a month’s pedicab hire. BugBugs is also pressing for industry regulation, including a licensing system.

This is, Schroder says, a career option suited to those who have to work around other commitments, such as studying, or who need money to travel. There’s more than a hint of the backpacker hostel in the agreeably shabby common room by the entrance to the BugBugs lock-up, with its collection of grimy sofas, iMac terminals and well-thumbed paperbacks.

The rest of the lock-up is a truly impressive chain of barrel-ceilinged vaults stretching west towards Holborn Circus, one of those unsuspected spaces that London surprises you with from time to time. It houses not only Schroder’s fleet, some 47 of the capital’s (by his estimate) 700 or so pedicabs, but also other operators’ machines. All are tipped up on their back ends to save space, rank upon rank rearing up: a taxi driver’s subterranean nightmare. To Schroder, it’s a zero-carbon dream come true. “I love this to bits,” he says.

As I leave, in the early afternoon, BugBugs’ workers are starting to arrive and to pedal their machines into the teeming streets. It seems a convivial enough operation, although I’m glad to be hastening back to my snug office. Later in the day, oil is a snip at $37 a barrel, and the following day a climate scientist warns that the environmental costs of global warming will be more severe than we have so far supposed. I wonder if evolution is on the pedicabs’ side.

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.

Main Street Pedicabs is promoting their vehicles as being the greenest alternative: no emissions, no fuel to buy, no oil changes…Their pedicabs cost under $4,000, with $1,200 for an electrical assist unit.

I always secretly admired the daredevil bicycle messengers who zipped through city streets in San Francisco when I worked in the Financial District. But now they have another option: they can slow down a bit, bone up on local lore and take tourists on tours around Fisherman’s Wharf.

Maybe one day we’ll see pedicabs in cities like Mazatlan, Iztapa, La Paz…anywhere cruise ships land regularly. Instead of taking a taxi, the cruiser could climb into a pedicab and get a pleasant ride down the malecon where all the shops and restaurants are. Mexicans are ingenious at converting bikes to load-bearing vehicles with everything from refrigerated boxes for ice cream to little trailers attached to them. Why not cabs? A couple of foam seats, a canopy to keep off the sun, and off you go! (NOTE: None of the examples I saw had seatbelts, but I think they’re a must.)

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.

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.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

“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.

Content provided courtesy caymannetnews.com.

View this article.

BROOMFIELD – Main Street Pedicabs has grown in fits and starts since Steve Meyer founded the company 14 years ago.

Based in this northern suburb of Denver, the company has turned out about 1,000 of its pedal-powered taxis throughout the years. But the rickshawlike contraptions have become a familiar sight in more and more downtown areas around the globe – most recently in Manhattan’s bustling, traffic-clogged Times Square.

Meyer, 52, hadn’t intended to start a business when he first bought a pedicab from an acquaintance in Aspen. But when he had trouble getting replacement parts for his hobby vehicle, he soon found himself trying to build a better one from scratch.

“I always kind of had a vision they could be used in America, but I didn’t know I was going to be the guy to do it,” said Meyer, who spent the early part of his career doing market research and planning for developers.

Initially, New Yorkers seemed reluctant to be seen in pedicabs. Like self-conscious teenagers, some requested they be dropped a block away from their destinations.

A spate of publicity has helped to spur acceptance.

A bright-yellow model is featured prominently on the cover of the Fodor’s New York City 2006, a guide to the city.

Contestants pedaled them a few months ago on NBC’s weight-loss show, The Biggest Loser. An appearance on The Apprentice two years ago helped to fuel interest.

But Main Street Pedicabs has grown in a number of directions from its manufacturing roots. Selling advertising space on the back of the taxis has become a significant part of the business. And Meyer is a co-owner of several pedicab-operating companies around the country, including Mile High Pedicabs in Denver.

“I make more money operating a pedicab than making one,” he said.

“The business works for us because we’re involved in so many facets of it,” Meyer said Tuesday in his newly expanded office, which still smelled strongly of a fresh coat of green paint.

Meyer gets help from his wife, Ruth Vanderkooi, when she’s not tending to her family medical practice. Otherwise, he has just a few full-time employees who assemble the pedicabs one at a time in space above the company’s offices.

As Meyer sits at his computer, he sees a call coming in from Tel Aviv, Israel, where he has been talking to someone who wants to buy a couple of the pedicabs for his own personal use.

Individuals increasingly have been buying the pedicabs to use in town or to get around islands where parking is scarce.

The pedicabs start at $2,900 but can cost as much $5,000 with all the options. They are built like mountain bikes, with 21 speeds, and have a cushioned carriage in the rear for toting passengers.

Meyer, who grew up in Boulder, said he is often questioned about whether he pursued pedicabs because of environmental concerns. But he insists his main motivation is “improving the quality of life” in cities. “I’d rather promote something than list all the things I’m against,” he said.

In Denver, pedicabs tend to operate on nights and weekends, during ballgames and other events that require people to walk several blocks from parking areas or light-rail stops.

“They add a real vitality to downtown,” said Tami Door, president of the Downtown Denver Partnership. “People like it because it’s fun. Downtowns should be fun.”

Ed Oliver, who is Meyer’s partner in the Denver pedicab operation, said he often drives a pedicab around the Pepsi Center parking lot, offering free rides during events. In most cases, passengers wind up tipping him at least $5 a ride.

“People hate walking across parking lots,” Meyer said.

With a new St. Louis Cardinals ballpark set to open in April, a budding pedicab operator awaits her order from Main Street Pedicabs.

“We want to get a business started just to and fro,” said St. Louis resident Jill Saettele, an avid cyclist who found Main Street Pedicabs on the Internet. “The parking (at the new stadium) is very limited, so they’re doing shuttles. This is the most fantastic opportunity.”

The pedicabs have caught on most in urban environments, but have also captured the attention of an array of communities with a shortage of downtown parking.

Meyer initially thought Aspen might be a good market. “But nobody who would drive one could afford to live in Aspen,” he said.

A new customer from Crested Butte picked one up Monday, with hopes of building a following in the ski town.

Long Beach, Calif., is about to get a fleet of pedicabs for its downtown.

“It’s part of the overall eclectic experience we’re trying to create,” said Kraig Kojian, president of Downtown Long Beach Associates, the improvement district for the oceanfront community. “We don’t have seasons, so people can enjoy the experience throughout the year.”

Main Street Pedicabs

• Home base: Broomfield

• Founded: 1992

• Products: Bicycle-powered taxis selling for between $2,900 and $5,000, with all the options

• Markets: Urban areas such as New York City, Denver, London, Paris and others

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.

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Content provided courtesy manhattanrickshaw.com.

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