Brooklyn Whole Foods to deliver by cargo bike
We already know that many US families are embracing the cargo bike for car-free transportation. Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that businesses are getting in on the act too.
Instead of using vans to run their delivery scheme, the Whole Foods store on Third & 3rd in Brooklyn—which already features impressive sustainability credentials including climate-friendly refrigeration, solar arrays and wind turbines, and a rooftop farm—has partnered with cargo bike specialists People's Cargo to develop custom-built, electric assist delivery bikes complete with cooler and solar panel for recharging.
The reason I find this so exciting is that, as the German government's backing for bike-delivery has shown, cargo bikes represent an ideal transportation tool for many urban businesses, replacing vans that are as inefficient as they are space-consuming. And because they are on the road day in and day out, they also provide a highly visible billboard for the utilitarian benefits of bike culture. (As we know, visibility matters when it comes to biking.)
It's also promising to think that businesses that embrace cargo bikes will now also have an incentive to make their own facilities more bike-friendly, and perhaps even to raise their voice for city-wide bike infrastructure too.
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