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Comment by jablan | Hacker News Reader

I am constantly saddened when seeing people carrying lots of stuff on crappy mountain bikes. How come mountain bikes have become so popular that they are so much more ubiquitous than all other kinds of bicycles? A (crappy) suspension fork is nowadays cheaper than (any) rigid fork, yet heavier, less durable and harder to maintain. Why there are so few cargo bicycles? Why don't Chinese frame makers make them? Cars would be so much easier to replace if cargo bikes were more affordable.

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I think it's for the same reasons as why SUVs and crossovers have become popular. They have a rugged appearance that seems to signal an ability to go anywhere and a readiness for any situation and any terrain.

And just like SUVs and crossovers, most of them spend 99% of their time on asphalt.

I agree that we need more practical bikes and cargo bikes.

Cargo bikes are a bitch to squeeze through or store tight spaces. I'd love to have a cargo bike but I don't see how I could store it without moving out to suburbs into a house with a big garage/shed. But then I wouldn't need cargo bike anymore...

And pseudo-mountain bikes handle crappy pavement and rubbish on the streets much better. MTB-like bikes with rigid forks is where it's at though.

In many places, apartment buildings have indoor (or at least fenced / roofed) bike storage.

Yes. And that bike storage would be full in no time if people started putting cargo bikes in there en masse. The beauty of bike parking is they're lightweight and easy to put in a very very compact manner. Cargo bikes take up space of several bikes and require much more space for manoeuvring.

You went from the personal to the general :) I suppose for the en masse case for an apartment building, communal trailers might be a solution?

A rack with panniers and/or a backpack works good enough in 9 out of 10 cases. For the rest, some sort of bigger motor vehicle is likely to be significantly better than cargo bike.

The only good use I could see is carrying 2 toddlers to school. But that's a very specific situation for a short span of time and in the end it's very rare. Looks damn cool in pics though!

I have both a homebuilt bakfeit-style cargo bike and a bike trailer [0]. The cargo bike works great for carrying smaller loads, but when it comes to carry large cargo like furniture or building supplies, I find the trailer more useful.

[0] - https://www.bikesatwork.com/store/product/96a-bicycle-traile... (disclosure: my wife and I manufacture these trailers)

Depends largely on the style of the cargo bike. Our local IKEA offers (free) cargo bikes, and previously they had much more useful cargo bikes [1] which they replaced with basket-style ones and now it's of no use for bigger loads. Anyways, yes, trailers are great, but for some reason still not massively produced.

BTW now I looked at your (very rich) offer and noticed you don't have any trailers intended for transporting children. Is that not a thing in the US? Most of the bike trailers I'm seeing over here in Europe are for hauling kids.

[1] https://hamburg.adfc.de/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_f22ikea-c_...

Cargo bikes like this one* have become quite popular in Denmark, there are loads of them in Copenhagen. There are also other models, but this one is probably the most prevalent.

*: https://velohouse.dk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Light-8.jpg

Yep, and if I'm not mistaken they cost 1500€+, compared to normal bikes which cost 10x less.

Bike trailers are also the bee's knees, if you only need to carry stuff some of the time. Plus it's a cheapish additional expense, not a whole new bike investment, if you already have a bike.

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