Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:31:01
Zack DeClerck
For the day rentals. One of the cases that we've seen several like many, many times with, with is often the renter lives in Boston or metro Boston, and they are someone who prefers to bike as their transportation. They are having out of town visitors coming to stay with them for the weekend or for the week, and they don't want to have to change their lifestyle or sit in traffic or, you know, be limited to the routes that the tea serves.

00:00:31:04 - 00:00:36:10
Zack DeClerck
You know, to, to have to if they want to be able to share their lifestyle with their visitor.

00:00:36:10 - 00:00:56:22
Dot Fennell
We've had folks who had cargo bikes in the shop and needed a replacement for a couple of days, and we've had folks who've had their car in the shop, or they're a one car family, and the other partner needed to be on, like a work trip out of town with that car. So we've had some really interesting use cases for those multi-day rentals.

00:00:56:24 - 00:01:27:20
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Dorothy “Dot” Fennell and Zack DeClerk from cargo B in the Boston area. We are going to be diving into this, really innovative and groundbreaking cargo bike sharing system that they have launched about 15 months ago. It's super, super exciting. But before we do that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador.

00:01:27:27 - 00:01:51:05
John Simmerman
Hey, it's super easy to do. If you're here in YouTube, just click on the join button right down below, or you can navigate over to Active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page, and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter. Okay, let's get right to it with Dot and Zach.

00:01:51:08 - 00:01:56:26
John Simmerman
Dot and Zack, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:01:56:29 - 00:01:57:15
Zack DeClerck
Thanks for having.

00:01:57:15 - 00:01:59:12
Dot Fennell
Us. Thank you for having us.

00:01:59:14 - 00:02:12:10
John Simmerman
I love giving my guests just an opportunity to introduce themselves. So please, take it away. Who wants to, start in terms of, introducing yourself to the audience?

00:02:12:12 - 00:02:14:07
Dot Fennell
Zack, why don't you start?

00:02:14:09 - 00:02:41:01
Zack DeClerck
Sure. My name is Zach DeClerk. Co-founder of CargoB, which is the first on demand electric bike share, on demand electric cargo bike share in, North America. One of a of a small handful of, of operators doing this now, and it's a model that is, you know, really thrived in, in the past, second half of the past decade in Europe and, and, we, you know, we said, well, why can't we have nice things here, you know?

00:02:41:01 - 00:03:11:24
Zack DeClerck
So, you know, I'm, I'm my neighbor up the street. Dorothy. We we started this just about two years ago, and launched about 16 months ago to the public. I'm a very small scale and had been growing since, prior to that. My background is in non-profits, in photojournalism and multimedia, and, but I always had, my hands in transportation, as an advocate, as somebody who, gets around on a bicycle as their primary transportation mode of transportation.

00:03:11:24 - 00:03:32:10
Zack DeClerck
And, when I had start having kids, I didn't want to change that. You know, I didn't want to. I didn't want to have to change, make it make that lifestyle change. Because, especially in a congested city of where, like Boston, where we live, is it is really a cheat code to be able to, enjoy your life here and, and get around and have access to different neighborhoods.

00:03:32:10 - 00:04:09:02
Zack DeClerck
And you don't have to worry about the train schedule or traffic conditions, and, and it's just a really, can take some of the more monotonous, you know, parts of life which is getting around and make it, you know, some of the more enjoyable parts of your day and connect you to your community. So, because of I, you know, I found myself on an electric cargo bike and, and, you know, so we started having these, these test ride events, and, trying to really just mostly talking to other families with young children, mostly at that time, just saying, like, hey, we do this.

00:04:09:08 - 00:04:33:18
Zack DeClerck
This works really great for us. This prevents us, you know, this helps that, some households be car light. It helps other households be car free. And, just people who are curious, who would see us in the neighborhoods, like, what is that thing, you know, and, would would come and people would bring their cargo bikes and neighbors who were curious about it would test them out, and we'd hear the same feedback over and over again.

00:04:33:18 - 00:04:57:07
Zack DeClerck
I love this, but I don't have a place to keep that. I don't have a garage or an off street parking spot, or my landlord wouldn't let me do this. It's way too expensive for a bicycle, and I think there's like an American culture shock here, because car ownership continues to get more expensive. But, there's a there's a sticker shock with, an $8,000 bicycle that some, you know, people in this country have a hard time with.

00:04:57:09 - 00:05:16:12
Zack DeClerck
And then other people, actually, because you can't finance them. It is actually financially, a challenge for, for a lot of folks to afford. And, there's a lot of other barriers to ownership. People aren't sure how often they would use one. And, you know, it just it stuck out to us is a great candidate for a shared vehicle.

00:05:16:12 - 00:05:26:20
Zack DeClerck
Just the way people who need access to car sometimes use their car. Why can't we have that for electric cargo bikes? So that then bird, cargo be.

00:05:26:22 - 00:05:37:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. Nice. I love it, I love it. Thank you. Zack. That's great. Excellent introduction in the overview of that. Now, dot, who the heck is Dot?

00:05:37:19 - 00:06:02:10
Dot Fennell
Well, Dot grew up in, Philadelphia, a city known for its streetcar culture. And I took them frequently with my grandmother, also named Dot, who never learned to drive. But we grew up in the burbs. And so I had an introduction very quickly as a kid. That people's ability to move around really switches when you go from being in the burbs to being in the city.

00:06:02:12 - 00:06:35:15
Dot Fennell
And I moved to Boston, like many people do, to go to college, and I stuck around and I was always interested in transportation. I spent the last 20 years as transportation planner, always in the space of, doing commuter trip planning, working with businesses, institutions and business districts, thinking about that space and where you're trying to help people get to work or think about their trips so that you can maximize the way that we use land.

00:06:35:18 - 00:06:59:06
Dot Fennell
And I'm also a mom to three kids. I've been a parent now for 12 years. And like Zach, when we started having children, because I already was someone that was regularly taking transit, that was riding a bike, that question and that that transition to parenthood, we didn't necessarily go to we need our car, although we are a family, does have cars.

00:06:59:08 - 00:07:25:04
Dot Fennell
We simply said we need a different kind of bike. We already had access to that sort of knowledge about biking culture and the way that we bike shifted. We eventually had a cargo bike, and as a planner, I knew that we're not going very far. On average, we're traveling for the majority of our trips, three miles or less, and these are all very bikeable distances.

00:07:25:06 - 00:07:59:21
Dot Fennell
I knew that people are already consuming cargo bikes, in very large quantities. I knew that cargo bikes were a part of mobility share in European cities. And so Zach and I be neighbors. And then my husband is also part of the team and in a very small way, as our technology expert, that we had an opportunity in Boston because the scale of the city, the innovation of the city, and just that there was an appetite for it, that why not someone needs to try this out, that there is such a focus.

00:07:59:21 - 00:08:42:22
Dot Fennell
And I'm glad to see it on cities looking at the commercial aspect for cargo bike delivery as a last mile solution, and I think it's a great place for massive holidays to be focusing. There is also an interest from is a pallet is to provide the ability for ownership through, subsidies and rebate programs. But what Zach and I are specifically doing is saying that cargo bikes, because what our vehicles are and our fleet are true car replacements that are going to be out of reach for somebody because of the size and because of the cost that specifically move towards the, the, the as needed, on demand, shared model.

00:08:42:25 - 00:08:48:11
Dot Fennell
And that's what we've been doing for the past 15 months now is putting them on to the shared market.

00:08:48:13 - 00:09:03:00
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Now, I pulled up a map, of Boston. So for the the viewing audience here, you can kind of get a lay of the land now. What neighborhood are you guys in? Are you are you based right there in Boston proper.

00:09:03:02 - 00:09:34:26
Dot Fennell
So we think of it as Metro Boston. So we are in Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington and Boston, not Brookline yet, but working on it. We currently have, Zach is at nine stations and ten bikes that are out, and we're about to expand and put out five more bicycles. The number of stations, we're we're still nailing that down because we're about to where we have a long term agreement with the transit agency.

00:09:34:28 - 00:09:42:06
Dot Fennell
And so we're just we're we're still sort of deciding where those stations will be. So you'll see a shift in that number of stations.

00:09:42:09 - 00:09:45:20
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Go ahead, Zach.

00:09:45:22 - 00:10:10:07
Zack DeClerck
Yeah. So if you basically where we're operating all falls within five miles of downtown Boston. So if you, if you took a put a pin in downtown Boston, you do a five mile radius. All of our stations fall within that five mile radius. So on the outskirts, we're in East Arlington and Roslindale and Brighton, which are, you know, two of those are Boston proper neighborhoods.

00:10:10:07 - 00:10:37:06
Zack DeClerck
One of them is its own municipality. And, really our goal now is we got mentioned streetcar and streetcar suburbs are in a lot of Boston was developed, in the turn, you know, the end of the end of the 19th century, turn of the 20th century, you know, in these streetcar suburbs, which is where a lot of the most bike friendly, kind of communities are in Boston.

00:10:37:06 - 00:11:06:02
Zack DeClerck
We started there where there's an existing bike culture. But in reality, our goal with the mBTA and with, conversations we're having with municipalities in the area is to really infill into that urban core, because right now we really only have one bike downtown. But those downtown neighborhoods, people who are familiar with, Boston might think of like the South End, back Bay, the North End, Fenway, you know, more urban parts of Cambridge like Kendall Square and Central Square.

00:11:06:02 - 00:11:37:23
Zack DeClerck
Those are really where we have the highest proportion of households without cars. And you kind of have that different demographic because of our users. Families with kids are the most likely to maybe be a cargo B user for a little while and then if they use it enough, if they have the means and they have the space and a purchasing a cargo bike of their own, which has happened, some of some recent cargo bike owners were started as cargo B users.

00:11:38:00 - 00:11:57:03
Zack DeClerck
However, in the urban core, where you have a lot of people who are in college, just out of college, and in situations with a lot of roommates with they don't have kids. These are people who, will probably continue to use cargo B to meet their cargo bike needs, because of the nature of their neighborhoods that they live in.

00:11:57:05 - 00:12:01:24
Zack DeClerck
The availability of, street space, and all of those things.

00:12:01:26 - 00:12:23:16
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. Now, we've got your website. Up here, this is the landing page for your website. The home page and you just mentioned something there that was very, very interesting. And that is, the that that relationship with the municipalities. How does that come about? I mean, are you having to negotiate these individually with each of them?

00:12:23:19 - 00:12:35:06
John Simmerman
And then secondly, the second part to that is it sounds like you've got a relationship, some form of relationship with the transit agency as well. And is that negotiated separately?

00:12:35:08 - 00:13:04:01
Dot Fennell
Yeah, it is. So we look at our partners as having shared interests and shared goals. So you have a place where there's high density, a need to solve a transportation problem, and a desire to be a good, neighbor. What we're offering is something that Mr. Pallets aren't able to offer. So, you think about it in terms of who is providing compost pickup, who is providing your trash pickup.

00:13:04:01 - 00:13:30:22
Dot Fennell
These are all banded services. We reach out to, to different nationalities. It's an ongoing process and relationship. We, you know, offer it or suggest what we can offer. And it's a negotiation. Some cities we're still talking to, other ones we were able to, based on what their needs were, lock in a agreement rather quickly.

00:13:30:29 - 00:13:45:25
Dot Fennell
So. Mr.. So Arlington, we're operating in, Boston. We will be starting a fleet program for employees, but we do not have bikes in the public right away as of yet. Cambridge and Somerville, we're still talking to.

00:13:45:27 - 00:14:14:25
Zack DeClerck
Yeah. And to clarify, we don't have bikes stationed in the public right of way, but we do operate on public streets. So when we launched our first three locations and actually first five locations, perhaps maybe in 6 or 7 were situated. The bikes are situated for round trip station on private property. So all of our agreements were with private property owners who agreed, business owners, we were really scrappy in the beginning, and some of our first stations were in friends driveways.

00:14:14:28 - 00:14:32:16
Zack DeClerck
And we're moving away from that model. But, it was, you know, the goal was the goal was to not wait until we had everything lined up, but just to get it out there to see if people would use this and and then to build from there. So we was the lowest bar bench, barrier of entry.

00:14:32:16 - 00:14:57:15
Zack DeClerck
And that actually came from advice. Thanks to Dot's planning background. We're very, you know, that we you know, we are not we we're not a tech startup background founding, you know, founding duo we are you know, we come from the advocacy world, the policy world, the planning world, the engineering world. My wife is, is, is an engineer, a transportation engineer herself.

00:14:57:15 - 00:15:28:18
Zack DeClerck
So we had those networks and it was suggested to us by some people in the public sector that, you know, if you just want to launch this right now, start with private property owners just to get it off the ground. And we had a big policy win, which was the, the, collection of municipalities that hosted the standard bikeshare blue bikes and Metro Boston, that are that RFP, the contract of that operator was coming up on an end of a ten year term.

00:15:28:20 - 00:15:53:12
Zack DeClerck
So the so just as cargo B was launching, there was an RFP out there, and we were able to talk to the people writing that RFP to add some clarifying language around cargo bikes as an exception, because there's basically, an exclusivity clause in the old and I'm getting really wonky here. So but, you know, there was, you know, there was an exclusivity clause that created a lot of gray area.

00:15:53:12 - 00:16:13:17
Zack DeClerck
And some people would say it prevented us from operating stations on the, on public land. And we were able to in the new RFP that locks in the next contract for the next ten years, carve out an exception for cargo bikes, which kind of clears the road for public partnerships for cargo. B so it was a really good timing for us.

00:16:13:17 - 00:16:36:27
Zack DeClerck
And, it's kind of thanks to Dot's background and planning and our connections in the public sector to do this, you know, thoughtfully and not just to, you know, tech disruptors, you know, putting something out there and breaking things. But, you know, we don't want to break things. We want to build things, you know? So we are breaking patterns and habits, but we also want to be good neighbors.

00:16:36:27 - 00:16:51:18
Zack DeClerck
And and these are large bikes and we don't want that. We don't want people tripping over them. We don't want our stations to be trash. So when we when we grow and when we think about where we place these bikes, we want to be thoughtful and we want to be good neighbors.

00:16:51:20 - 00:17:07:00
John Simmerman
When you when you kind of rewind and go back to the origin stories of, of the and the seeds that were planted to move forward, where were you drawing inspiration from?

00:17:07:03 - 00:17:12:13
John Simmerman
To, to launch cargo Bay? Where were you drawing inspiration from?

00:17:12:16 - 00:17:37:11
Dot Fennell
I'm. I'm thinking about what Zach just said. And now I think is is like our new motto. We're not here to break stuff. We're here to build stuff. And what we're doing is, is building upon the legacy of those who have established bike share in American cities. And so we are the first ones to put cargo bikes on bike share.

00:17:37:14 - 00:18:03:27
Dot Fennell
And it's very important that we do so in a very thoughtful way. And I think that, there have been some lessons learned that we can't just put things out and say, deal with us. I one other lesson, I think about is that being the first ones to do it, a lot of other cities are looking at us and, and and analyzing and wondering, you know, what are what are we doing and watching us.

00:18:03:29 - 00:18:35:03
Dot Fennell
So it's really important that we are thoughtful. And what I constantly go back to, and this was similar to what I had been doing in the business communities, is people having to think about how they're traveling. Because I was working specifically for like workplaces of how they get to work. So they have a transportation problem to solve. And it's very personal, and their entire life depends on it, especially if they have children, because it depends on where the kids go to school.

00:18:35:03 - 00:18:59:24
Dot Fennell
I mean, it just becomes so like difficult. And I would do a lot of hand-holding and explaining and people would see me and see this ease by which I'm able to move around, with three kids on a bicycle that can carry 300 pounds. And I'd go to the grocery store and swim, swim, practice, drop off and make all the things, and it becomes, it's like, how are you doing this?

00:18:59:26 - 00:19:28:20
Dot Fennell
And, I always try to come from a place of not judging somebody for the choices that they're making, because I know people are just trying to get to where they're going. And, I try to always lead with seeing through people's frustration because transportation can be so and like that could be political and full of feelings. And I like to enter those conversations.

00:19:28:23 - 00:19:44:07
Dot Fennell
Always seeing the glass half full silver linings. And despite where we are as we're moving towards mobility solutions that will be is here to provide a solution and when you're ready for us in your city, we're here for you.

00:19:44:10 - 00:20:06:22
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, and you kind of touched upon something that I was going to ask you eventually was that do you guys have aspirations of going into other cities and the way you phrased that? I guess the answer is yes. At some point in time, you'll be interested in opening up in other cities. I spend a lot of time in the Netherlands, and so, I have been brushing shoulders with, this company for, for years.

00:20:06:22 - 00:20:34:15
John Simmerman
Car guru. And I have to think that this was somehow on your radar, too. The experience that car drew was in, and going through. And of course, they'd actually shut down from operation. They, they declared bankruptcy and went out of business for a while, and then they were brought back. And Mobius has brought them back. I'm assuming that there were some good learning experiences from, you know, the way that was structured.

00:20:34:17 - 00:20:37:21
John Simmerman
Can you speak to that, Zach, a little bit?

00:20:37:24 - 00:21:13:28
Zack DeClerck
Sure. Yeah. You know, and Dorothy had an early conversation with some of the folks at cargo who were very early on when we were thinking about this, we talked to, friends, who are well plugged in to, you know, work over in the Netherlands and other countries in the EU. And, you know, from my understanding, the brief bankruptcy, the bankruptcy and the restructuring and then the buying out and the relaunching of Carbo Roux had a lot to do with things that just happened in business related, not demand for cargo bike share.

00:21:14:03 - 00:21:34:07
Zack DeClerck
So, you know, we never really saw that as like alarm like, oh, is this is this a viable business? You know, it's more, you know, that happens sometimes depending on your strategy for growth and how aggressive you are trying to grow your operations. And, you know, sometimes, business decisions, work out and sometimes they don't work out.

00:21:34:09 - 00:21:58:05
Zack DeClerck
I know that there was a large, public, public partnership that they were banking on that didn't work and put them in a bind. So they were able to restructure. Yeah. So I think, like, you know, we, you know, like that said, we we knew that this was something that had come to be in European cities and we want and we wanted to bring it to the US, and contextualize it around the US.

00:21:58:05 - 00:22:21:18
Zack DeClerck
There's certain things that are different about the built environment here that we have to be mindful about. And, and, you know, we're early and we get this feedback like we're early, you know, would, will, will the infrastructure for safe for safe mobility infrastructure would be better in ten more years will allow us to expand the network more effectively, more easily?

00:22:21:21 - 00:22:43:13
Zack DeClerck
Yes. But we're also in a much better place than we were ten years ago. And I think one of the reasons that I started cargo be is because we didn't want to wait. We didn't want to wait for the city to do it. We didn't want to wait for the big bikeshare operators to do it. We just wanted to, to just to just do it because we knew that there was an appetite for it.

00:22:43:15 - 00:23:19:12
Zack DeClerck
And it'd be kind of that if you build it, they will come, you know? And the thing about launching something like Cargo Be is it can be done much more quickly than, you know, going after the whole public process of redesigning infrastructure, which is become more complicated in our federal environment in the US. So, you know, one way to improve safety and mobility, with our existing infrastructure is to is to capitalize on, you know, the roots and neighborhoods well-served by that infrastructure that we already have and just get more people biking.

00:23:19:15 - 00:23:54:06
Zack DeClerck
You know, there's power in numbers, there's safety in numbers, and, we're already seeing that. You see the, the the market for cargo bike, electric cargo bike ownership in the US and certain U.S. cities has absolutely exploded. But they're just, you know, they're just so many barriers to ownership. And, you know, we just we knew that the joy and the kind of like the life hack that this was for us, and we saw it when other people would get it and they'd be like, I don't even think it could be this easy to get from this neighborhood to that neighborhood at that time of day, you know, with my kids, with my

00:23:54:06 - 00:24:02:27
Zack DeClerck
groceries, with whatever. And, just giving people access to that was something that we just wanted to, to go and do.

00:24:03:00 - 00:24:08:29
John Simmerman
Great. Anything to add from the, the learning from, Carter Rude to Ruby?

00:24:09:01 - 00:24:35:06
Dot Fennell
My now six year old had a fantastic time, and I'm gonna. I might not do this properly. Utrecht. Yeah. No, I think it. What's great about it? It is quality vehicles. We use the same ones, urban arrow. So, like, very quality. But not precious. Can, like, withstand weather. We do have similar weather or whether we have a little bit more rather than they do.

00:24:35:08 - 00:24:53:04
Dot Fennell
And it's simple. Walk up, scan and go. I mean, what else do you want? And really focused on no barriers because there are so many. The life is full of barriers. Let's let's like remove them so that you can use these things. Because the use cases are endless.

00:24:53:06 - 00:25:11:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned it. The threat, that is in fact one of their target cities that they have relaunched. And, and what I loved about the website there, I hadn't visited the website in some time, but this morning when I went over there, I loved how they talked about it was truly a beloved service.

00:25:11:12 - 00:25:47:10
John Simmerman
It really was. The people that I know that live there, good friends there, and colleagues. They just love that flexibility of being able to, you know, check one out and go and know that there is sort of sprinkled around the neighborhood in the community, and be able to do that. We'll keep our fingers crossed that y'all are continue to make advances of being able to, get these deployed in a thoughtful way within the public realm so you don't have to just rely on them hanging out in, on private property.

00:25:47:12 - 00:26:10:11
John Simmerman
But what a wonderful thing. And I'm just I'm, I'm sitting here marveling at the urban Arrow and the flexibility of these bikes, bikes and and these cargo bikes and what they can do. And, yeah, you can throw stuff in there. You can have people in there. It's just and you you mentioned it earlier, you just throw the whole family in there and and off you go.

00:26:10:14 - 00:26:35:19
John Simmerman
It's just I love this concept too, of, just empowering people. And you, I know you you know exactly what I mean by this. And I do have a, long tail cargo bike myself. Is it in genders? Curiosity? People start asking about what is this? How are you? Where did you get this? And, and and how does this work.

00:26:35:21 - 00:26:48:21
John Simmerman
So it I think people there's this pent up demand of need and there's a curiosity of, oh, maybe this will work in my life to.

00:26:48:23 - 00:27:12:20
Dot Fennell
So I do have a follow up comment to that is that from talking to bicycle manufacturers, that are the do business on both sides of the pond that in the U.S we're very focused on long tail sales. We have a high, high frequency of long tail sales. But there so in Europe those companies are trying to sell long tails.

00:27:12:22 - 00:27:49:25
Dot Fennell
And then here in the U.S. we're trying to sell back feet because I sell a whole bunch of them in the European market. And the reason, one of the reasons is because there are so many policies and design that force you not to have a car. And here we can have cars. The reason why we specifically picked the bike fits was because it is the most utilitarian and the least likely kind of bike that you're going to buy, and the least likely you have access to here in the US, because you can simply walk up to it, load it up, and then you can go, we do have the benefit in our City of

00:27:49:25 - 00:28:16:03
Dot Fennell
Boston program that they already own to return to work, assuming the management of three assets. So we are testing turns in our fleet. So it will be interesting to see what it's like for customers to load those up, as well as, the batteries. But yeah, you're right. The like, we really wanted people to just have that experience of a car truck that you just walk up to it, get your stuff in, and life is easy.

00:28:16:06 - 00:28:44:03
Zack DeClerck
Yeah. And just to clarify, brought this up earlier in the call to, the pilot that we're starting with, the city of Boston, she mentioned employees at City of Boston employees. So public employee. So we're running a pilot program that we're about to launch where, City of Boston employees will have, access to a standard cargo B, which is a built out urban arrow, and then three long tales, that the city already owned the cargo be, you know, the, the urban areas, ours.

00:28:44:03 - 00:29:05:18
Zack DeClerck
And, they'll have a it's a private fleet. So the they'll they, you know, the city pays a flat rate and, we, you know, that they have unlimited access to do city business with these bikes, for a period of time while we piloted it out. So that's something that, you know, we're we're exploring not just our standard, our our main goal, our main product is the on demand.

00:29:05:18 - 00:29:33:02
Zack DeClerck
Anybody can use it. Anybody can walk up, scan and go service. However we are, you know, we do have other revenue streams. We do side of bike advertising. We're exploring, other kinds of private fleets, not just with municipalities, but with, you know, private buildings and tenants in hotels. So, you know, there's there's lots of different ways to integrate this, these kinds of bikes into the public realm.

00:29:33:04 - 00:29:39:10
Zack DeClerck
That and we're exploring all those different options in addition to our, our regular on demand service.

00:29:39:12 - 00:29:49:00
John Simmerman
Right, right. Speaking of of your regular on demand service, Zach, you uploaded this heat map. Why don't you walk us through this?

00:29:49:03 - 00:30:08:18
Zack DeClerck
Yeah, sure. So this is, our heat map. For the from the first 15 months of operations, you're going to see hotspots down in the in the bottom of this map. You're going to see hotspots in Jamaica Plain. And Roslindale out to the west. You'll see hotspots and Allston and Brighton hotspot. And then, near our these are all where our stations are.

00:30:08:18 - 00:30:26:23
Zack DeClerck
There's one hotspot downtown in the seaport. That's where a station is. And you'll see that. And we have right now other than the seaport. But this is about to change. But in our early operations, we had no, you know, we had no stations in the, in the main urban core. But you can see riders are going there.

00:30:27:00 - 00:30:50:02
Zack DeClerck
So people are getting, you know, they're mostly getting bikes, in they're either doing neighborhood trips near the station or they're going downtown, or across town. There's one exception that you'll see that really bright. You know, this is, up top on the, top left is, the Minuteman Bikeway, which, extends in and out of Boston.

00:30:50:08 - 00:31:13:17
Zack DeClerck
And that's our it's a combination of our Cambridge and our East Arlington bikes, making trips all the way out to Lexington and beyond. That's really the only instance where we're seeing a lot of trips out of the city, because of that, some bike way. But for the most part, you're seeing people doing, you know, neighborhood trips, generally round trip under, under five miles, mostly.

00:31:13:19 - 00:31:31:17
Zack DeClerck
And, in, in some people making, you know, the trek, downtown. So really filling in those gaps and making that the center of that map. The hardest part of that map is what we'll be doing with our our partnership with the mBTA and starting to site bikes at train stations and other public properties.

00:31:31:19 - 00:32:05:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. Dot, you know, you mentioned earlier the work that you had been doing previously, and I believe you were probably working in TDM transportation demand management. Is that correct? Okay. Fantastic. You know, based on looking at this heat map here and some of the things that we also alluded to earlier, which is, there's only so much we can do, you know, the three of us, in terms of changing the built environment and, and creating a safer, more inviting place for people to ride a bike, let alone a cargo bike.

00:32:05:13 - 00:32:26:16
John Simmerman
But I've spent a fair amount of time documenting what it looks like in, in Boston and in Cambridge and in Somerville. When I look at this, this, this heat map, I don't know what this kind of reminds me of, where some of the nicer places to ride a bike are.

00:32:26:19 - 00:32:57:26
Dot Fennell
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. We're we're doing a lot of storytelling right now about how much people actually ride. Because you get feedback of no one's going to ride these bikes. And I think there there is some culture shift happening. And we have to work with folks to get beyond bikes, occasional whimsical things. And bicycles as sport to bicycles as transport.

00:32:57:28 - 00:33:18:29
Dot Fennell
And the reality is, and I've been talking to major cargo bike shops across the country, and I've been asking them, who are buying your bikes? And they tell us families. And this is all anecdotal, but it's backed up by their sales, and they say they're being purchased by Families first because they're pushed by the urgency to solve the transportation problem.

00:33:19:01 - 00:33:47:01
Dot Fennell
And they're being primarily ridden by women. And really by moms. So if you look at who is has the most who's like most risk averse to get on a bike, it's moms because women tend to be more risk averse. And then you add the thing of like, they're carrying children. So what what this says to me is that these are our indicator species in the area that moms are riding in with kids.

00:33:47:03 - 00:34:11:24
Dot Fennell
Are these smaller sort of radiuses. So you take that like 3 to 5 miles and then shrink it to like 1 to 3 miles. And I look at this map and I think, okay, so people are adding in cargo bike trips to their other trips and that's that's good to see this and what cities are, because you can have two things at one at once.

00:34:11:26 - 00:34:37:14
Dot Fennell
People are adding in their trips. And while they do that and that grows organically, cities are then connecting these like nodes where these things are happening. And I think collectively together, that's going to be the culture shift that we need and is happening that will just gradually kind of drown out the sentiment that no one rides by.

00:34:37:17 - 00:34:58:21
Dot Fennell
Because the reality is, is the cargo bike market is $860 million. I mean, like a lot of people are buying bikes and they wouldn't be buying them for no reason. I mean, like these are expensive and they're specifically cargo bikes. So they're they're buying them because they're, they're riding them and they're riding them to solve a transportation problem.

00:34:58:24 - 00:34:59:23
John Simmerman
Yeah I love it.

00:34:59:25 - 00:35:25:18
Zack DeClerck
And yeah, yeah, yeah. That that is also like a great advocacy tool as we continue to push for, for for more communities to have access to safe mobility infrastructure, we can say like, hey, we'd love to be in this neighborhood too. We'd love to see more ridership in this neighborhood. But if you look at this map, those hotspots are some of the most comfortable, as you said, John, the most some of the most comfortable bike corridor as well, most well and infrastructure in the greater Boston area.

00:35:25:18 - 00:35:35:03
Zack DeClerck
So, you know, if you build it, they will come, whether it's providing a shared electric cargo bike or a safe where a safe place to ride that cargo bike. Yeah.

00:35:35:05 - 00:35:56:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I really do encourage people to, you know, go back into my archive of some of the videos that I've shot out of the, the Cambridge and Boston area, a little bit of Somerville as well. It's it's impressive to see the evolution of that area. I've documented it several times over a period of years.

00:35:56:07 - 00:36:20:12
John Simmerman
And so it's really wonderful to see, especially in Cambridge, the, the build out of the network and how it's, it's starting to mature. And again, to your point, it's all ages and abilities because you're absolutely right. Women and children are the indicator species of a safe and inviting environment. And so when we see more people out there doing that, then that's an indication that we're doing something right.

00:36:20:12 - 00:36:44:17
John Simmerman
We're creating a safer environment. But there is no such thing as a perfect environment. Even the city of Utrecht. I went out for a very long ride with the city, designer who is building out their bike network. And he was, you know, expressing to me that they still have decades of work yet to make it even better and safer and more inviting there.

00:36:44:17 - 00:37:00:23
John Simmerman
So even even like the best of the best in the world is they're still going. Yeah, it's not good enough yet. We need to still work on this. You know, earlier we alluded to how easy it was to to check one out. And I think that's what we're looking at here. Walk us through what's going on here.

00:37:00:26 - 00:37:29:24
Zack DeClerck
All right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that was, one of the things that we wanted to, to be able to do is to tap into what people already know how to do with Bike Share. Boston is one of the big five bike share markets. We top five in ridership. So you have basically New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Bay area, Boston, and DC are the, the the largest bike share markets in the US at least.

00:37:29:26 - 00:37:54:13
Zack DeClerck
And so people are every year, you know, the, you know, people are familiar with bike share and in using the regular bike share system. So we wanted to tap into that familiarity and have an app based solution where, as opposed to like renting from a bike shop where you have to, you know, reach out, make a reservation, you have to go to them, you know, there's a lot of back and forth, which, we do do some of that with our, more extended rentals that we offer.

00:37:54:13 - 00:38:13:20
Zack DeClerck
But our main, our main offering is that by the minute rental, so you just download the cargo, the app, you put a little bit of money in your in your app wallet, and you, and you scan and go, you can lock up and pause your trip at the store, at the park, wherever you may be.

00:38:13:27 - 00:38:35:07
Zack DeClerck
And then you can end your ride, back where you started. So it is A2A trip, which is in a way different than, a free floating system where you can end your ride in a lot of different places, or a, stationed, Adobe system like Blue Bikes, where, you you can end your ride in a handful of stations, places.

00:38:35:10 - 00:38:58:27
Zack DeClerck
And that's the way we're operating for now, for a variety of reasons. One is the use case for cargo bikes is different. People are much more likely to do trip chaining. They're much, like, less likely to use this, use cargo, be for commuting and being at work all day and then coming back, you know, this is for, weekend errands, evening errands, evening adventures, weekend adventures.

00:38:58:29 - 00:39:21:09
Zack DeClerck
Kind of, and and people who, you know, live close to the station are the most likely to use it. And, and we have many users who, we just put out a survey that said, like, the biggest barrier to them, not using cargo be more often is the distance to their home to a station. So as we can build out, more stations in more neighborhoods, we'll see ridership increase.

00:39:21:11 - 00:39:34:18
Zack DeClerck
But yeah, it's it's really as easy to scan and go and, and there's a chain, you know, you can lock to, you know, bike rack where you're at your destination or your pit stop and, try to keep it simple.

00:39:34:21 - 00:39:58:05
John Simmerman
Great. Now, if we if we were to if I give you a couple of scenarios, can you, sort of estimate, you know, kind of what, how much it would cost me to, to, to, you know, to do this particular trip. Okay, cool. Let's just say I, I've got, like, an errand to run. I need the bike for an hour or I'm going to be, you know, jump.

00:39:58:06 - 00:40:17:22
John Simmerman
I'm going to getting the cargo be and I'm going to jump in and, you know, I've got like 20 minutes to of riding to a particular location and I'm going to pop in and purchase my item. I've got something that's big that I want to, carry back to, to, to that a to a, you know, type of situation.

00:40:17:22 - 00:40:31:15
John Simmerman
Or maybe I'm stopping off, you know, at my apartment or townhome or whatever and dropping it off. But then I'm taking the car to be, let's say it's just a round trip of, of an hour. How much is that typically going to run me?

00:40:31:17 - 00:40:55:27
Dot Fennell
Well, it's, $0.25 a minute. So we did a price comparison to TNC, which is ride hailing, Uber and Lyft, Zipcar and Electric Blue Bikes, which is our bike share if you are not a member. So don't buy this a minute is a really reasonable cost for what you get. Not in traffic. And you go door to door.

00:40:56:00 - 00:41:17:03
Dot Fennell
And so that's the cost. So that would be $15 an hour plus, 275 for an unlocked fee, which is also comparable to blue bike unlock fee. We do offer our, member, if you want to have an annual membership, we are piloting that. And that would be 60, 60% off your trip if you are visit.

00:41:17:05 - 00:41:45:18
Dot Fennell
Yeah. Which is like a real deal. All trips. Free, a really good deal. Because we don't want you to have to be rushing. We just want you to be out doing your ride. We offer day rentals. We do have a lot. In Boston is a huge tourism city. We believe that America's walking city has space to become America's bicycling today, because walking and bicycling go hand in hand.

00:41:45:18 - 00:42:02:27
Dot Fennell
The same infrastructure serves both. And so if you're here for a day, 100 bucks for a bicycle for 24 hours, and we can bring it to you, if you are here for more than three days, we drop it to $80 a day, which is comparable to bike shops. That would rent you a bicycle.

00:42:03:00 - 00:42:22:02
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it because that was the second question. That was the second scenario is, you know, say I'm a local family and I live right there in Cambridge, and I want to take this. This cargo bay thing has been very, very cool. I've used it for a few errands. But you know what? I want to throw the little I want to throw my kids in the front in the in the back.

00:42:22:02 - 00:42:46:15
John Simmerman
These. And I want to go to the park along the river and, and spend the afternoon there. I now have a way to do this, and I know that I can actually save some money, too, if I'm also a member, an annual member of the program. And so there's kind of an affordable option for that special day that that picnic that's being delivered.

00:42:46:18 - 00:43:01:11
John Simmerman
And maybe this is a test case. Maybe this is like the test picnic picnic case before making that decision of buying my own urban arrow from the local urban hero dealer, I'm assuming there is a local urban arrow dealer, is there?

00:43:01:14 - 00:43:02:18
Dot Fennell
We have better. Yeah.

00:43:02:19 - 00:43:04:16
John Simmerman
Good. All right. Perfect.

00:43:04:18 - 00:43:11:11
Dot Fennell
That would be $99 an hour for an annual membership if you were an elite member.

00:43:11:13 - 00:43:34:25
Zack DeClerck
Yeah. So. And and for the day rentals. One of the cases that we've seen several like many, many times with, with is often, the renter lives in Boston or metro Boston, and they are someone who prefers to bike as their transportation. They are having out of town visitors coming to stay with them for the weekend or for the week.

00:43:34:25 - 00:44:09:27
Zack DeClerck
And they don't want to have to change their lifestyle or sit in traffic or, you know, be limited to the routes that the tea serves. You know, to, to have to if they want to be able to share their lifestyle with their visitors. And so we've had people rent cargo be to, to kind of extend that lifestyle to the people that they're hosting, as well as people who, often, we've had people who use cargo bikes in their home city are staying in a hotel in downtown Boston, and they're like, well, this is how I get around in my city.

00:44:09:29 - 00:44:18:17
Zack DeClerck
I would like also to get around this city this way, too. So cargo would be, cells that need in addition to our on demand service.

00:44:18:19 - 00:44:22:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it, I love it, I love it. Go ahead. Yeah.

00:44:22:07 - 00:44:43:24
Dot Fennell
Can I also add, we've had folks who had cargo bikes in the shop and needed a replacement for a couple of days, and we've had folks who've had their car in the shop, or there are one car family and the other partner needed to be on like a work trip out of town with that car. So we've had some really interesting use cases for those multi-day rentals.

00:44:43:26 - 00:45:26:02
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, that's great. I love this too. I love this little, triplex of photos here because this kind of captures the Zeit geist of, I think a lot of the, the cases that, that we're talking about here in the center there, it looks like we're all packed up. Maybe we are going for a picnic and, but we also have the one on the right, with, the filled full of the, the the harvest of the fall with the pumpkins and, it just this brings such a big smile to me that this is what we're talking about, you know, and you were talking about it earlier about, you

00:45:26:02 - 00:45:58:01
John Simmerman
know, the, the, the use cases of these. And from a transportation demand management, perspective, the TDM perspective is that these can be meaningful utilitarian trips. But they can also be quite joyful. And from my perspective of behavior change, which is my background in public health, is that the more joyful we can make this and the more routine that we can do this over and over and over again, we get habit formation, which is just the magic thing of being able to get more people doing it more often.

00:45:58:04 - 00:46:27:13
Zack DeClerck
Yeah, that's a really good point. And I would just say real quick is, is when we have people critiquing or curious about price comparisons of like, you know, getting, you know, a TNC versus, you know, taking a cargo B or getting it, you know, Zipcar is like, it's not just and this is not apples to apples because people get on these and they just have the biggest smile and it can make a chore, the best part of your day.

00:46:27:18 - 00:46:49:27
Zack DeClerck
So it's, it's you're paying, you know, you know, if you could do an apples to apples comparison, like, I have a utilitarian need. I need to run this errand. I need to fix this transportation problem in my life. But we also add that there's that added layer of like. But you could also enjoy the experience and not be stuck in traffic and fighting for a parking spot or whatever it is.

00:46:50:00 - 00:47:11:19
John Simmerman
I do want to say this because I live in a city where Waymo is operating. So Uber has now flooded our market with Waymo cars. And I know that some of my colleagues and friends in the area have have used it. And there's a wow factor to it right now. So it's it's kind of like instilling a bit of joy and a bit of fun because it's different and it's new and etc..

00:47:11:19 - 00:47:42:18
John Simmerman
And so you have that little novelty aspect of it that's going to soon wear off, just like the novelty, wore off with the taxis after they become became ubiquitous. But I don't think that the joy that you get from riding a bike and riding a cargo bike is going to wear off, because it has staying power. I mean, just riding a bike, period, regardless of the type of bike, instills a sense of joy because you're also connecting so much to your environment.

00:47:42:20 - 00:48:02:06
John Simmerman
Now, obviously, there are situations where it's not very joyful, like it's pelting you with rain and sleet, and it's not a very pleasant environment, but for the most part, what we're talking about here is, gee, how about this? You can actually go do meaningful things, utilitarian trips and get a kick in the pants at the same time and enjoy this.

00:48:02:06 - 00:48:09:02
John Simmerman
This is fun stuff. Anyways, I just wanted to instill that, diet. You had something you wanted to say about this as well.

00:48:09:04 - 00:48:17:02
Dot Fennell
I'm now looking up how many days of rain does Boston get? So, Zach, if you can look at that for me, days.

00:48:17:06 - 00:48:21:21
Zack DeClerck
Where we're we're currently in a very significant drought. Drought. So.

00:48:21:24 - 00:48:43:17
Dot Fennell
But what I, what I was going to say is we did just survey, our, our, our, ridership, and have 115 people who had entered the survey and, it was like 90%. I had to go back and look at it. But they are car owners. They are drivers. And even though they are car owners, it's picking up behavior change.

00:48:43:23 - 00:49:04:29
Dot Fennell
They are choosing not to drive their cars. They would rather, for these short distance trips because it is not pleasant experience, not just hop on a bike but hop on a cargo bike. And so unlike Waymo, like it's this desire to to stream and I'm gonna say streamline. I'm not here to optimize life, but to just make life a little more pleasant.

00:49:05:06 - 00:49:40:22
Dot Fennell
They, I don't think that's going to wear off. They they might decide that they're going they like this so much that, that, that they'll move to ownership. And that's fine, because there's always going to be a new crop of customers, because we're really thinking about a location where there is a high density. So right now we're exploring partnerships with university campuses, where every year there's a new bunch of students, we have a partnership with, Harvard University, and then we have, some other universities that I can't mention because they're not landed yet.

00:49:40:24 - 00:49:56:02
Dot Fennell
That we are talking to. But but that's like, that's the goal is that we would love for you to be our customer, whether it's occasionally or it's more often. But that we understand that if you love this so much that you end up just buying your own cargo bike, I love it.

00:49:56:05 - 00:50:27:23
John Simmerman
I love it, I really love this shot here too. And for the listening only audience, this particular, photograph, shows a cargo B urban Arrow standard issued rental bike, with two adults. And so you have an adult riding in the front cargo bay area. And the reason why I love that is, there's oftentimes this assumption that, you know, it's it's only for parents of small children, and cargo bikes have a much broader usage.

00:50:27:23 - 00:50:53:17
John Simmerman
And so from a case study of being able to carry real cargo, you know, whether it's a whole bunch of pumpkins or, you know, we saw earlier like a, an air conditioning unit or something like that or whatever, and then the kids. But, you know, my good friend Brandon last, from from Carmel, Indiana, his wife, Tatiana frequently gets in the front of their urban arrow, and they go on date night.

00:50:53:20 - 00:51:10:27
John Simmerman
And I think that that's a really good point to put. Is that. Yeah. I mean, again, the joy full factor of, yeah, we're going to go do a meaningful utilitarian trip. We're going to go out to dinner. But you know what? It's a beautiful evening. Let's let's have fun. Let's jump in in the cargo bay and off we go.

00:51:11:00 - 00:51:38:13
Zack DeClerck
Yeah. And we have had many users, do just that. And that will not only put a smile on the rider's face, but that typically also puts a smile on spectators faces when they see an adult riding a cargo bike. It's kind of kind of a bit of a spectacle, but it also it work is great. We've we've had riders who who is partner doesn't ride a bike and, they would like to take them, you know, to the park or something like that, or to date, my wife had.

00:51:38:13 - 00:51:39:11
Zack DeClerck
Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

00:51:39:13 - 00:51:59:00
John Simmerman
I was just going to say, do you hold on to your thought there for a second? Zach, I just wanted to instill something really, really good. You just mentioned something that know a partner who doesn't ride, and they're able to go. I would also include, something like, about my good friends, Chris and Melissa Brundtland in, in Delft.

00:51:59:03 - 00:52:21:18
John Simmerman
When she injured herself and wasn't able to ride her own bike and then, you know, they rented a car, drew at the time, and she was able to get that trip or a case of a person who, maybe have a disability and isn't able to ride their own bike, but they're able to catch a ride and go to that meaningful destination.

00:52:21:19 - 00:52:49:07
John Simmerman
You know, together with their family, their loved ones. Another great example of that. And then the add on to that, if I circle this back around to the built environment in infrastructure cities, this is what we're talking about. When you build a safe and inviting bike infrastructure for all ages and abilities, you're empowering mobility for people who may have a disability, whether permanently or just, you know, for a short period of time.

00:52:49:07 - 00:52:53:29
John Simmerman
In the case of Melissa, when she had injured her leg. So anyways, continue.

00:52:53:29 - 00:53:20:01
Zack DeClerck
And so I so I literally was just about to say that. So my wife, who does ride a bike, had a major knee surgery last year and was in a wheelchair, and we, I was taking so I started taking her to physical therapy multiple times a week and a cargo B because, you know, she we her, her physical therapy was three miles away.

00:53:20:07 - 00:53:45:07
Zack DeClerck
If people aren't familiar with Boston, we live in Jamaica Plain. Physical therapy was in the South end, three miles. We took the train, but she was in a wheelchair, so we had to navigate the elevator system. That was door to door. 45 minutes we took we drove a car 35 minutes in the middle of the day, not during rush hour to go three miles.

00:53:45:09 - 00:53:54:02
Zack DeClerck
And then I took her in the cargo bay and I was 25 minutes from. So from that point on, we always took the we always took the cargo bike, to, to get her to to her appointments. Yeah.

00:53:54:04 - 00:54:17:25
John Simmerman
You bring up a really good point. And I try to emphasize this on the channel a lot because when we look at the the astounding percentages of mod share of the Dutch riding bikes for meaningful trips, the reason why they do it is it's pragmatic, it's a practical solution to mobility. And you just highlighted that Zach as well.

00:54:17:28 - 00:54:18:05
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:54:18:07 - 00:54:54:09
Dot Fennell
Dot I'm just thinking, well, one of the ideas we have for like future revenue is, which is a model here in the US is do we get into bicycle leasing? You see it with Bombay. You see it, with ride pay and that's geared towards workplaces. And we have a Dutch student from Harvard last year who had a permanent disability, and she had an aide or she had like a friend or something, and she was like, I want to lease a bike for a semester, so that my friend can ride me around.

00:54:54:09 - 00:55:10:13
Dot Fennell
And we weren't. But I was like, of course, of course you're Dutch. So I laughed. Not at her, but just that, that pragmatic of like, your solution. I want to use your service. And I'm sorry that we couldn't, provide her that at that time.

00:55:10:15 - 00:55:37:16
John Simmerman
It's. I'm glad you mentioned that diet, because I did profile a program, in Oslo. The the we program in Oslo, and we as is spelled w h e and Carrie-ann. Who launched that program there? We went out for an on bike interview, there on the streets of Oslo. And we talked about that. And that's what their model is, is a is a long term leasing type of situation.

00:55:37:18 - 00:56:06:25
John Simmerman
So the, you know, folks can elicit for I'm not sure it's just a year lease or if it's if it's broken up into shorter leases as well, whether it's three and in six months as well. But what a what an interesting model. And of course, that comes on the heels of another leasing type of model or subscription type of model, which was the swap fees program, also back in the Netherlands and then starting to expand and spread across, Europe.

00:56:06:28 - 00:56:42:04
John Simmerman
In it's the ubiquitous, you know, standard Dutch bike but has a one slight difference. It has a very visible light blue front wheel and so you always know that the tire, the light blue tire, the rubber on it. Oh, that's a swap. Fleets. And, they're just everywhere. It's so cool. And people love them and yeah, they're everywhere and they love them because if they're not a mechanic, if there is an issue, all they have to do is get on their app and say, hey, got a flat tire?

00:56:42:06 - 00:56:58:16
John Simmerman
The bike is parked in front of my office right now. And the swap fleets, you know, guys will will deploy either fix the flat, swap the bike out, literally swap the bike out, swap fleets. And so it's it's cool. That's a that's a very, very good point.

00:56:58:18 - 00:57:19:25
Dot Fennell
Don't they also have, different sizes. So like, you can get like, kids all the way up to adults. Yeah. Which, which is amazing because with my three kids, Granit, I have a husband who's a former bike industry guy. So we had them on good bikes. They age up, we know how to sell them. But I know so many folks who, like, come to us and they're like, what?

00:57:19:25 - 00:57:35:24
Dot Fennell
Like our neighbor, my kid. And I wish that there were. But what I'll say is keep on building out that bike network because great bike networks beget more bike industry stuff. And eventually we'll have our own swap kits here.

00:57:35:26 - 00:58:10:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And in fact, I'm glad you mentioned that about the children's bikes. I did profile a program, there in Utrecht. And please, pardon me, folks, I'm so sorry. I can't remember the name of your program. I will find that name, and I'll put it right here, in the, in the program. In fact, I'll, I'll probably cut away from this photo and, and highlight the video from that program, but it's a wonderful program where the parents can actually do a swap feets type of, program, a monthly leasing, rental type of program of a bike.

00:58:10:25 - 00:58:30:21
John Simmerman
But then as the child grows out of that bike, they simply bring the bike back. The kid gets, the next bike up, they're able to test it to see if it's if it's the one that they like, etc.. There's usually different choices between, colors and styles and all of that. And they have a little test track inside there so the kids can ride around it.

00:58:30:21 - 00:58:57:02
John Simmerman
And on the interior of it, it's a real hoot. And, and it takes away that, that burden because, and, and this was actually a project that was a college project from the university there in Utrecht that a couple of students did as a master's project. And they were like, how do we decrease the amount of these children's bikes that are ending up in, like being discarded or in the landfill or something like that?

00:58:57:02 - 00:59:19:28
John Simmerman
So they considered it like a recycled bike? Program of, of doing that. And they have a whole bunch of volunteers that come in and rehab the bikes that get turned back in, rehab bikes to get Tony to them and then keep them in that stream. So kind of a fun thing. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's really fun.

00:59:20:00 - 00:59:41:13
John Simmerman
The other thing that was really fun is this beautiful image right here where we're we're creating the narrative again, that this is not only just for those utilitarian trips, it's also for, a second to take a deep breath and slow this crazy world down a little bit and take in, a beautiful site together.

00:59:41:15 - 00:59:44:13
Zack DeClerck
You can't drive to that spot.

00:59:44:15 - 00:59:48:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, apparently you can if you have a cargo bay.

00:59:48:24 - 00:59:53:23
Dot Fennell
Yeah. Zach likes to say cargo bay. Get to where a car can't go.

00:59:53:25 - 01:00:06:19
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, I love it. Is there any, specific, special story behind the word there? The name cargo B we were.

01:00:06:21 - 01:00:28:19
Dot Fennell
Well, so as you kind of think really deeply. Oh, this is a great picture. This my two of my children. And it really illustrates what kind of world do you want? Do you want a world where you know, I mean, just like, what are we prioritizing? The safety of our, you know, our most precious cargo or big vehicles take up space?

01:00:28:22 - 01:01:00:07
Dot Fennell
I will add that our neighbor who has this truck finally did realize that it was really hard to parking garages and it was hard to drive in town. So he did sell this. So now he has something that is much smaller, so good for him. But the name came from thinking about, bees and how they are a very simple creature that, do a very practical thing every single day that we don't really think about.

01:01:00:10 - 01:01:16:29
Dot Fennell
But then when they work together, they do something quite remarkable. And we kind of we're like, you know, just kind of riffing on that a little bit. But we kind of got down like a little, like too deep of a rabbit hole. And we realized for like cargo bikes, like, we don't need to go any further than that.

01:01:16:29 - 01:01:21:20
Dot Fennell
And we were like cargo Boston, like a white car. We went cargo bikes in Boston.

01:01:21:22 - 01:01:24:17
Zack DeClerck
Cargo Bay, better cargo Boston cargo bike cargo.

01:01:24:17 - 01:01:25:11
Dot Fennell
Better or.

01:01:25:16 - 01:01:27:01
Zack DeClerck
Versatile. Yeah yeah.

01:01:27:01 - 01:01:51:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it I love it. And what's what's great about this particular image doc, we're going to go back to this image of, of your your neighbor's former vehicle. For the listening only audience. We see a picture of the cargo be urban Arrow with couple kids here in front, in front of one of the typical North American massive pickup trucks.

01:01:51:10 - 01:02:24:17
John Simmerman
And and you can see just how massive it is, because you can see it's easy to understand that there's a tremendous blindspot, in front of this vehicle. And in back of this vehicle, where children could be hanging out. And so, what what I love about the illustration of what this is, is the impracticality of something of this size, a behemoth of this size, which more often than not, is not being used, for a true work vehicle.

01:02:24:20 - 01:02:56:12
John Simmerman
I grew up on a ranch where I had multiple trucks, and they were work vehicles and we had tremendous, bed space in the back, the incredibly ever shrinking bed space and cargo hold, bed space of these, massive trucks is is just it's laughable. But the vast majority of the time, these massive vehicles are carrying a load that looks like this, which is a grocery store run to Whole Foods.

01:02:56:14 - 01:02:57:05
Zack DeClerck
That's right.

01:02:57:08 - 01:03:04:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. What additional thoughts have we not covered that you want to make sure to leave the audience with?

01:03:04:28 - 01:03:36:04
Zack DeClerck
Yeah, we had we had a lot I would think one thing and we just say it didn't say is, is the, the potential of, the, the climate benefits here. You know, there's a lot of focus on the transition of, you know, gas powered vehicles to EVs, but an urban arrow takes about 7% of the kilowatts per hour, to, to operate, than, than than a typical evening.

01:03:36:04 - 01:04:06:13
Zack DeClerck
So you're, you're, you know, not a not only is the vehicle taking up less space and allows for more efficient land use patterns, but really it's 7.7%, you know, so and our in the grid in which we pull our power from is still is still not, you know, decarbonized. So so there is there's that angle to that. You know, the more people we can, you know, mode shift is something that I think still does not have enough focus in North American cities as a solution here.

01:04:06:15 - 01:04:29:11
Zack DeClerck
EV transition is super important and very great. But, but there's just like, there's just no comparison really, on that sense and, not not even thinking about the embedded carbon to, you know, build these and ship them and, and, so it is one thing that, you know, we're really here to solve mobility problems and help people enjoy their communities more.

01:04:29:18 - 01:04:39:10
Zack DeClerck
But the climate benefits of, of of bringing these, to more, to putting more people on a vehicle like this is, is definitely undeniable.

01:04:39:12 - 01:04:41:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. Final words.

01:04:42:01 - 01:05:11:05
Dot Fennell
I think the cargo bikes solve a simple problem. We're going short distances. The majority of the time. I think that cargo bikes are a next step in welcoming a lot of women into bike share, who are in that age bracket of having children, and the price point is out of reach. I think it will be. I'm curious to see where the market goes, across the country.

01:05:11:07 - 01:05:37:01
Dot Fennell
And I think that demonstrating that we can do it here is going to be a template, an inspiration for other cities to say, you know, moving things in car doesn't have to be a default. And that actually we have real solutions to our mobility challenges in American cities as well as smaller cities and, you know, universities across this country.

01:05:37:06 - 01:05:51:23
Dot Fennell
I don't think we have to just give up and say we're, you know, destined to just live in our cars. For, you know, the remainder of time here in America, I think we really have a, a future that is positive here.

01:05:51:26 - 01:06:03:20
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. And again website is ride cargo be.com dot and Zach, thank you so much for joining me on the active Towns podcast. This has been so much fun.

01:06:03:22 - 01:06:05:16
Dot Fennell
Thank you. We enjoyed it.

01:06:05:18 - 01:06:18:26
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dot and Zach from cargo B, and if you did, please hit give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel.

01:06:18:28 - 01:06:36:27
John Simmerman
Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell. And folks, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. He is super easy to do. Just click on the join button right here in YouTube, down below, or you can navigate over to Active towns.org.

01:06:37:01 - 01:07:01:19
John Simmerman
Click on the support tab at the top of the page, and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon member. The patrons do get early and ad free access to all my video content, but you can also leave a donation to the nonprofit, as well as buy me a coffee again. Every little bit adds up and is very much appreciated and makes a huge difference in being able to keep this channel moving forward.

01:07:01:21 - 01:07:19:17
John Simmerman
I mean, to be honest, we just don't earn that much here on YouTube in the ad revenue. So I could not do this without your support. Okay. That's it for this video. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness.

01:07:19:19 - 01:07:37:14
John Simmerman
Cheers. And again, just want to send a huge thank you to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel financially via YouTube memberships YouTube super thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and joining my Patreon, every little bit adds up and is very much appreciated. Thank you all so much!