Cambridge - the city where children go to school in a plywood box

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

The city where children go to school in a plywood box


Nobody knows exactly how many cargo bikes are out there but more than 500 of just one brand have been sold in Cambridge

There's a new kid on the school run block - the cargo bike. And in one particular university city, parents are eagerly embracing them.

"Initially the kids thought it was magic - now it's just part of the furniture."

Dr Sara Lear is the proud owner of a "box bike" which was designed in the Netherlands in the late 1990s for ferrying children around.

While most are two-wheeled, hers is a three-wheeled model used to transport Dan, aged eight, Susie, six, and five-year-old Jim on their two-mile (3.2km) daily trip to school in Cambridge.

"They like taking friends for rides and they like that it saves them the legwork, the lazy worms," she joked.

The box bike has a large wooden container between the handlebars and the front wheel. It is a descendant of the cargo bike, which has an illustrious history as the delivery vehicle of choice for butchers and bakers for more than a century.

Collectively known as "bakfietsen" - Dutch for box bikes - there are now a variety of versions on the market costing £1,500 or more.

The twist with the modern-day box bike is that children have become the cargo.

[Bmblbzzz]

Not sure if that's particularly news. Or at least not particularly Cambridge news. There's one I see regularly in the High Kingsdown area of Bristol, along with a Christiania trike used for taking two kids to school on St Michael's Hill(!) and a curious Italian model in which the kids sit at the back. That last one attends Bristol Grammar School, which I suppose all goes to support the idea that these bikes are used by posh people. Maybe that's why the Beeb focussed on Cambridge?! 

[froome]

Well they are used by those who can afford them - they're not cheap, but far cheaper than running a car, and far better for the children and for the environment.

I see one now and again in Bath coming down the steep hill I live on.

They make good sense in Cambridge, though personally I'd rather see children riding their own bikes.