Cargo-bikes

In October 2017, UPS and Mayor John Tory held a press conference to announce the launch of a UPS pilot project to determine the feasibility of replacing delivery trucks on some of the company's Toronto routes with cargo bikes.

Most likely this half-baked scheme is not much more tha a publicity stunt to show how enviromentaly friendly UPS is trying to become.

Mayor John Tory said deploying cargo bikes could help “traffic nightmares . . . . It’s time we take a look at something like this, because it’s being done in Frankfurt, in Vienna, in Hamburg, in Rome.”

What? Cargo bikes in Vienna? Rome? Don't look to Europe John, look eastward towards Asia.


Mr. Tory, posing on a stationary bike, on a flat surface and carrying no load makes it look like driving one of these would be fun and that the city would welcome lots and lots of cargo bikes.

John Tory said: “Assuming the pilot is successful and it gets rolled out … having these downtown, (it) will be a lot easier to find a place for them on a side street than would be the case with one of those great big trucks that are the way we’ve done things in the past.”


Here is a basic cargo tricycle. Looks a little ratty but hundreds—dare I say thousands—of this kind of workhorse is just the thing needed on Toronto's busy streets.


Now here is a lean machine that looks just like a plain version of the fancy high-tech model that UPS bought. However, this time-proven performer is for sure far, far cheaper to buy and easier to maintain.


Well Mr Tory; do you truly think that scratching out a living by getting up early every day and carrying heavy piles of newspapers on top of your bicycle through the city streets is "fun"?


I don't think this re-cycler is living the good life either. I hope he doesn't get clipped by a car.



Toronto drivers, backed up and moving forward at a walking pace—in their thousands of air conditioned cars and trucks, will—to a man—be delighted to be stuck behind hundreds of cargo bikes as their operators strain to push them up hills at a slow, but environmentally-friendly walking pace.

Pilot project?
Why not skip the Pilot Project all together and announce that Cargo Bikes is a sure-fire success and is now an important part of "Transit City"™.

Then make a few phone calls to a few Chinese scrap yards and we can re-use tens of thousands of discarded cargo bikes that were going to be recycled.

Send them all to Toronto. The shipping address is:
Mayor John Tory
City Hall, Toronto, Ontario
Ship them: COD

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