Originally Posted by
xoalaska
Josh's post on Henry's blog caused a major s*storm, mostly because he negated the value aspect of longtails.
His shop, My Dutch Bike, is very cool and is located on Market St. in San Francisco. His uber-nerdiness about cargo bikes and what's best is at odds with the many Xtracycles that float down Market daily.
Those people voted with their pocketbooks.
Here's a comment Henry (the owner of mydutchbike) posted under Josh's guestpost (on Henry's blog):
Originally Posted by henry
It seems like a couple commenters are implying that I dislike or don’t see the value of longtail type bikes. In fact I have nothing whatsoever against longtails and have even tinkered with developing one. I’ve decided however that this format will always be a niche player in our home market. Why is that?
1.
Longtails are undeniably handy but they can’t really do so much that a sturdy regular bike can’t do. With a little creativity and perhaps discomfort you can occasionally carry a large house plant, a contrabass or a
gas powered generator (just saw that ride by) on a city bike. This morning I saw a woman riding her (old) bike with boyfriend sidesaddle on the rear carrier holding the handle of a wheeled suitcase bouncing along behind them. Without making a game or show of it how much more does one really need to bring along?
2. Longtails have been shown to make fine kid carrier bikes, but don’t offer a combination of features to make them particularly attractive for the dutch family.
You can carry two or three kids but so can more normal bikes which are cheaper and fit in bike racks. Compared to the popular bakfiets the longtail can’t carry little babies and can’t keep the kids warm and dry, both critical to young families dependent on their bikes in a northern European climate.
3. The handling and braking dynamics of a good longtail are certainly better for hilly terrain than a bakfiets (or a crappy Dutch bike for that matter) but there are few hills here.
4. There are actually Dutch longtail type bikes here but they predate Xtracycles and modern longtails by three decades. The main reason to ride a longtail type bike here is to carry twins thus they’re called “tweelingfietsen”. I wrote about them here:
http://www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2009/...ets-twin-bike/
While I haven't ridden an Xtracycle, despite all the eloquent arguments, pictures, and pocketbook voting I'm still not convinced that there's anything I could carry with a Longtail that I couldn't carry with a non-"cargo bike"...especially if that noncargo bike is my recumbent (the fastest, most tour worthy,
and best load carrier in my stable):
or one of my folding bikes:
As you might guess from my choice of bicycles, I generally don't think most people make the best choices when voting with their pocketbooks for regular bikes and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were making the wrong choices again regarding their cargo bikes. A longtail might be able to carry a lot of well packaged weight (ie 50 lb sacks of rice)...but I think the reality is that most heavy well packaged items would be better carried in multiple trips (in other words, really big loads are better split and loads which can't be split aren't very amenable to longtails). Besides, I'm really intrigued by the idea of having passenger assist and I don't see any way to implement it with a longtail.
Where the popularity of longtails does weigh in
for me is when considering Long vs Short Johns. If the advantage longtails have in frame weight and stiffness is really that important/useful than Short Johns should give the best of both worlds. Sure Longtails (to be consistent with the cargo bike hierarchy they should really be called "Shorttails") are cheaper, but if you still need to buy or rent a car for certain occasions (out of town friends visiting
with a baby?) then how much are you really saving? $600 won't buy you too many car rentals.