Bicycles, Tricycles

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently featured a modified bicycle for car-less environmental zones in Europe. The article gushed on about how the bicycle was an innovation from a "hippie commune," waxing euphoric about how it solves the environmental problem of transporting large amounts, "up to 100 kg!", without those pesky combustion engines.

I'm all for reducing use of fossil fuels through whatever novelties available, and I generally have nothing against hippies, even die-hard European ones. But have these journalists ever traveled outside of their hometowns? As the photos here show, this bicycle is not newer than sliced bread. It's hard to mirror their enthusiasm, seeing variations of this innovation being used daily on the streets of Chennai. Modifying bicycles for transportation is essential for the livelihood of hundreds of vendors in Chennai and other cities in the developing world for delivering fruit, ice, construction materials, and a thousand other wares and goods. And I doubt these guys are thinking about the environment as they peddle well over 100 kg per load, in flip-flop sandals.