I am, once again, wondering why tricycles, in the sense of full grown adult sized cycles with two rear wheels (with or without cargo) are not normalised.
They somehow feel like they shouldn't need as much engineering as it's pushed on to build cargo bikes, and they would be something I wouldn't mind using myself, rather than risk my life due to being barely able to balance a bike.
@flameeyes I feel like many manufactures of recumbent bikes are Germany-based, so you might get some more results searching for "Liegerad" which is the most common term here to refer to recumbents…
@eliasp I wonder if that influenced or is influenced by infrastructure.
The reason why I said "normalized" is because I have only looked at tricycles a few years ago because I was told to consider using the cycleways they're building around me — and I got reminded of it as they're doing work to open a new piece of Cycleway 9 not far from me.
At the time, some of the cycleways appeared to be narrower than most tricycles. And none of the cycle parking options would fit them anyway.
@flameeyes for us here, I think the influence goes both ways. Even though we have many very narrow roads, especially in the old town district, it seems to work mostly well and we also have many cargo bikes with similar (or sometimes lot more) space requirements.
@eliasp yeah I wonder if the fact that cargo bikes are becoming more common, means that I could reconsider the option. I haven't really cycled at all since feeling like I risked my life on the obnoxious turn at College Green in Dublin.
I'll take a look at what the infrastructure looks once we find our next place :)
@flameeyes With two wheels, you can go slow -- with three wheels you have to (because you cannot lean into a curve). Plus three wheelers need more space.
@Sweetshark is that meant to be a negative, when going around town?
I'm not saying "ban two wheels", I'm saying that I'd rather take the tradeoff of going slow, and still having an option, rather than "You get to choose between four or two, or you'll walk because neither group likes you" that seems to be the case now.
@Sweetshark that's the thing — no I don't want car-like, or I would go… well, car-like, or even car. I have considered getting a Twizy before I left Italy, and honestly I'm saddened that's not more common to this day. But that's not what I'm looking at.
I'm looking at all of the amount of "healthy" options, and thinking it would be easy to make it more inclusive… by not telling people wanting a trade-off to go away.
@Sweetshark yeah it looks like you folks may actually have a decent amount of options there! — Now I'm envious, because i would totally want to be able to do this in London 😢
@flameeyes@Sweetshark one of my Dutch friends brought his reclining tricycle to London. The bike lanes are less wide here, making it less practical with the current state of bike infrastructure in London.
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