Tips For Owning A Cargo Bike In Ottawa
I’m not an authority on bikes, cargo bikes or anything related. I’m just a dude who’s lived without a car in Ottawa since 2020 and has learned a few things.
My goal here is to just share enough information for the range of folks who don’t own bikes at all, to those who are eager to get rid of a family vehicle and replace it with a car. I want to add for emphasis that the biggest market for cargo bikes are from those households that own more than one personal vehicle. It’s also a good way to ease into the life and behavioural changes that are required to live more slowly on two or three wheels.
What Bikes Do We Own
In April 2023 we bought a Yuba Kombi E5 from TallTree Cycles on Bank St. We lived in Old Ottawa East at the time and it was easy enough to walk to the shop with a then-three-year old. A few weeks ago the odometer passed 2,000 miles. The amazing thing to me mileage-wise is we parked this bike from mid-November till the end of March to protect the drive train from Ottawa’s salt nightmares. It’s easy to get around all over the city with e-assist day after day.
The other bike is a Riese & Muller Load4 75. We bought it from Curbside Cycles in Toronto. They shipped it to us fully assembled for $250. Pretty hard deal to beat. Maybe it’s because we can both ride electric cargo bikes together. Maybe it’s because it’s designed to ride all year round. Maybe it’s because it’s a full suspension beauty of a two-wheeled electric vehicle. But in short this bike changed our lives. Living without a car in Ottawa is fucking hard. The adjustment is hard. It’s hard to see past what you have to give up when you live here without a car. We’ve been rolling, walking and taking transit in Ottawa since 2020 and our quality of life never increased more drastically than with this bike. It’s still hard. Making safe choices is hard everyday. This city is not designed for you to live without a car. Quality of life is hard to have without a car. But this bike is as close as we’ve come to having the quality of life we had when we owned a personal vehicle. Do you need a bike like this to start though? No. Should you start with a bike like this? If you can afford it, yes. Is that the point of this blog post? No but it’s worth saying anyway.
Lessons Learned Living In Ottawa Without A Car
CAA Insurance
CAA membership includes emergency services for bikes. I’ve been a member for over 20 years and decided to keep my membership once we sold our car. Our bikes are specifically insured on waivers included under out condo insurance policy for theft, damage etc. Because being able to get a 100 lb bike, and most likely a kid, picked up and taken home if something breaks or you get a flat tire, brings a lot of peace of mind. An extension to this is, oh no, what do I do once I get the bike home and I have no idea how to get a complicated rear wheel off?? VeloFix is an awesome, mobile bike service that will drive the bike shop to your location. They can be busy, depending on the time of year, but booking is easy and the techs are amazing. They do really good work and are capable of working on a variety of models of bikes.
Linka Lasso 10 Bike Lock
Have to start by giving a shout out to the bike locks we use for both our electric cargo bikes. We bought two Lasso 10 bike locks from Linka.
Tough and hard to cut. Rated to -20C. Battery life is three months+. I charge once a month to be safe and there are sleep modes in the app that can be changed that greatly affect battery life.
Connect by bluetooth and/or a fob key - You can share access with family and friends through the Linka app. Very handy.
Features a movement alarm. Double-press the button once it’s locked and the alarm is armed. If someone touches the chain without the app around? Everyone is going to know.
Recommendation: get the Lasso 10 XL Moto Chain - it’s 40 cms longer and does make a difference given the shitshow that bike rack configurations can take everywhere.
Insulated Grocery Bags
I will admit it took me longer to come around to this organically. But it makes sense. If you’re getting groceries between +30C and -20C you want to be able to get home with your expensive life necessities in good shape. And IMO you do not need Yeti insulated shit to do this well. We have a Yeti Hooper Flip 12 for day trips around town but the total cost for the three main bags we use was $16. Two Metro shopping bags fit well on the Yuba’s front rack and the no-name soft bag was $10 at Costco three years ago. This set up gets a full weeks of groceries home in one trip. Food stays cool at +30C and warm for the -20C trips. We are pretty lucky to have two good groceries stores under 600m of where we live. I mean, it’s not luck. We chose this but hey, people make lots of different choices for themselves and this method will work too if your groceries are a 10 km round trip.
Storage
So parking is both a maintenance and safe storage issue. An ideal world is not what most people have access to. We’ve been lucky enough to have a variety of underground parking garage options in most of the places we’ve lived. The bikes we chose had storage in mind. The locks we use had storage in mind. Currently our building has a secure parking garage that is open on the sides and not heated. We have a communal wash station open from May through October which makes cleaning the bikes of mud very quick and easy. Before we moved out here to Britannia, our building in Old Ottawa East had a year-round bike wash station in the heated underground parking garage. It was a ride through style that made keeping the bikes free of ice and slush very easy for anyone regardless of physical ability.
The challenge is mostly for those who have single family homes, duplexes and triplexes etc that do not have built in storage options but just “space” for people to normally park their cars. If you do not have a physical structure to keep your bike inside then here’s what I recommend: get a large burly bike chain and lock like the one above. Get a wheel lock that is installed on your bike. Install airtags or any of the other tracking options available somewhere on the bike that doesn’t stand out. Motorcycle covers cost $35 on Amazon and have front and rear wheel buckles that can keep your bike completely covered. This is important to keep the elements off the bike but also make it less visually appealing from a safety perspective. We use a garden pump sprayer that we can fill with warm water in the winter to keep the grimmy shit off the bike and won’t make an ice sheet in your parking spot like you’d get if you just pour water on the bike from a bucket. These sprayers can be found at Home Depot for $25. We found a $200 one on Kijjiji for $40.
Parking
Take. Up. Space. Effectively everywhere you go in this city, decisions on bike racks and their locations are based on lightweight, small “regular” bike designs. So take up space like you would if you were driving a car. Talk to your regular stores about getting spaces dedicated for cars repurposed for bike parking. Make the parking obvious. People driving cars will normally do whatever the fuck they want and if you don’t want someone to crowd you out, then take up space. I would like to note that the locking system seen below is based on regular visitation, a rear wheel lock and not being gone from the bike long. Normally you should lock the frame of your bike to something bolted down. But I digress.
How Do I Try Out A Cargo Bike?
Cargo bikes of every shape and size need to be seen by more eyeballs in real life to really catch on. Ottawa has slowly started to organize within the community to gather folks together who already own cargo bikes to get together to allow folks interested in seeing them and trying them out. Test riding demo models is something bike shops have taken up in other cities like Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, and London, Ontario. No bike shops in Ottawa has done this and it’s a serious hole in the industry here. Like many before us, we travelled out of town to test ride the bike we wanted to buy. The bike we bought also come from a bike shop in Toronto, Curbside Cycles, and can’t recommend them enough. We did visit the one Riese & Muller distributor here to see if we could test ride / see a bike in real life but none were available. I’ll keep the rest of my opinions to myself but I do not understand the business case in not stocking demo bikes for models that can cost over $15,000. This is like asking someone to buy a car without seeing or touching one. But fine, let the community step up. And in stepping up I want to highlight a part of the community that is helping fill the gap.
Lets Go Cargo - Ottawa
You can rent a cargo bike in Ottawa for yourself, or visiting friends and family. Are you just curious about how much sweat you’ll spare in Ottawa’s humid days? Well LetsGoCargo has stepped up to offer a service to satisfy your curiosity. They will deliver the bike, locks and helmets to specific drop off locations or to your location. For other options you can rent cargo bikes across Ontario and Canada, see a few more options below.
Wheel Excitement - Toronto
Zygg E-Bikes - Toronto
Velo Lifestyle - Montreal and Vancouver
