Hello all. Interested in hearing your suggestions on our upcoming plan. We recently travelled to Urkai in Burlington, Ontario to test drive their cargo bike/trike. Both were fantastic. I actively tried to tip the trike but didn't even come close. Despite this, we are still looking at the bike, because we think it will be better long term.
The reason that we are looking at the Bakfiets is that we want to get my wife back into biking and be able to haul around 3 year-old twins and (currently) 7.5 month old (he should be ready to ride in a child seat by June). She hasn't biked in over 8 years and is not confident to handle a trailer and rear seat set up. I haven't tried with the rear seat addition, but I regular move the older minions with a double trailer. We will be going with the e-assist (and upgraded hydraulic brakes), partly to offset her lack of biking, and because we will be moving to Halifax, NS, which is pretty hilly.
Once in Halifax, our plan is to have the bikes almost entirely replace the van (2011 Toyota Sienna) that we currently have. We aren't planning to get rid of the van yet, but if the bike works out like we're hoping, we may be able to have that in the cards in the future. Our long term (11-year) plan is to bike across Canada after I retire at 43. We will be home-schooling the kids that will be 11, 13 and 13 at this point. We expect the Bakfiets to be good for this too.
Any advice or recommendations? Specifically, I'd be really interested to hear how you estimate maintenance costs on a bike like this.
