we just drove to Amsterdam today and had a look at your 1st shop at the Veemarkt. My wife liked the 2-wheeler bakfiets more than she thought, and the same goes for me.
It is not as hard as thought to start and get going, and at higher speeds it rides nearly like a “normal” bike.
Turning is a bit difficult, though.
There remain two things: 1. quite narrow child compartment 2. styling, or lack thereof (and a better child compartment – padded seats etc.)
But, to be honest, it was very worthwile coming over and having a look. It is a very good bike and we will definitely consider it.
Richard in your shop was very competent and very nice at the same time. Thanks to him!
Then we went to het zwarte fietsenplan in the Spiegelqwartier. They had a triobike V2 amongst a load of other bakfiets.
Now I understand all your points:
The triobike is definitely the wrong bike for Amsterdam!!
1. the streets have a strong curvature, especially at the sides, that make any trike uncomfortable to ride
2. the streets are narrow and sides are often spiked with little columns to keep people from parking / riding through.
So, for these two reasons alone, the triobike is just not usable in Amsterdam.
I guess Copenhagen must be a different city.
We live in a village, and so these two constraints do not apply, really.
Remains the riding experience, and that was better than expected (after reading your review). But I can see that at higher speeds my bicycle instincts have to re-learn or I might have difficulties when reacting to sudden events.
Well, thanks again for pointing us to your bikes, we really like them.
Now it’s time to decide, which is not too easy…
All the best from Germany!
Martin

Only a few of the available bikes have built up a substantial user base and those are the bikes you should seriously consider: the bakfiets.nl/workcycles cargobike/cargotrike, christiania and nihola each have a broad following and tens of thousands on the road because they work well, the quality is good, the prices are reasonable and they’re supported by a network of knowledgeable dealers. The Winther Kangaroo is also a good bike but has a more limited audience as a result of it’s price and sporty intentions: it’s just not suitable for parking outdoors in the city.

I don’t consider any of the other bikes to be serious contenders. Regardless of what I think the Triobike would have earned some popularity if it were a good bike, and it never has, version 1 or 2. BTW in the one Danish test I read the testers favored the Nihola and Christiania very heavily over the TrioBike. But forget about “reviews” – you need to test for yourself and talk to other real users.

WorkCycles stocks just the Bakfiets.nl Cargobike and Cargotrike and we have the Taga as well, but that’s something different. In principle we’re a Winther dealer but the Kangaroo just isn’t something for our local customers so we don’t stock it. We used to do Christiania but we’ve replaced it with the better made, better priced, better serviced Cargotrike.

But there are several other dealers in Amsterdam that will have all of these bikes to try… except possibly the Triobike which i something of a joke amongst bike shops.

thanks for the quick reply!
Well, maybe a trip to Amsterdam is a good option!
Do you mean that you have the Kangaroo bike in stock yourself so that we could have a ride in comparison to 2-wheelers or do you have dealers nearby who offer this possibility.
Maybe there is even the chance to test the trio v2 and the mono in Amsterdam at the beginning of the year as they have deales in the NL soon.
As you said, the design and finish of the Trio is really intriguing.
If nothing else speaks against it, we will consider it.
But if it proves too flawed, then we will rather buy something else.

By the way, there have been users here and there on the net giving positive accounts of the trio. And the Danish Cycling union had a more detailed test recently. It is in Danish only and Google translates pretty bad.
But they find hardly anything not to like…

The kassa test was watched from our side mainly and while looking at the women and men riding the bicycles we saw some problems with the 2-wheelers that we were fearing ourselves.
We also saw a women falling over with a 3-wheeler while turning..
It SEEMED as if the 3-wheelers were safer.
Speaking Dutch helps there, I see now.

Who knows, maybe we will meet in the future…
All the best
Martin

I’ll let our customers speak for two-wheelers over three wheelers for family transport and there’s no contest; We stock both in the WorkCycles shops but sell several hundred two wheelers against maybe two three wheelers. Almost everybody who rides both chooses the easier, more natural riding, less tippy two wheeler. That was also the result of the Kassa test by the way. They considered the Bakfiets.nl and WorkCycles Cargobikes the overall winners but noted that the testers did initially have some preference for the trikes.

after bashing the triobike V1, have you ever had a look at V2, and at the mono version (not convertible in any form)?
We just tested the Winther Kangaroo and really liked it, we will test a Christiana bike in a few days. We are also considering the Triobike, but face the usual problem: None around here in Germany.

So, it is always interesting to see how others view it.
I just finished talking to trio on the phone and they said the first generation trio had flaws and they think they improved a lot with version 2.

We actually do not like the 2-wheeler versions of Cargobikes, after viewing the dutch TV test “kassa”, we also remain in our preference for the 3-wheelers. (well, we did not understand all of it… the dutch are so much better at German than we are at Dutch)
Downtown with slow speeds we feel that 3 wheels have advantages especially while stop+go.

Thanks for adding your experiences. At WorkCycles we sell almost entirely Bakfiets Cargobikes for pretty much the same reasons you describe. It is very interesting that our experiences with the Christiania and Cargobike are basically opposite but that must be a matter of Londoners having different needs, conditions and tastes than the Dutch. When it comes to family transport we can hardly give trikes away here. Of course we do still sell the bigger three-wheelers for many other applications.

But in principle the Christiania and the Cargobike remain the “best of breed” despite the more “fashionable” newcomers. Their simple, well developed constructions work properly and the “open source” wooden boxes can be easily adapted to the needs of each growing family.

Just to note I wrote some more about some of these child transport trikes in a later post:
http://www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2008/05/18/nihola-on-its-nose/

Also worth noting is that WorkCycles hasn’t dismissed the idea of family trikes; We’re actually developing one of our own. It won’t be cheap or a hip design object but it will be a very carefully thought out machine that addresses the shortcomings of the existing models. Finishing our second shop and getting production of our new FR8 up to speed have first priority so I’d estimate a 2009 introduction.