Posts Tagged ‘christiania’

Entrepreneurs are discovering markets for the iconic Danish cargo bikes in the US and UK, though their cost and eccentricity factor are hard to overcome

American Will Kearnis, seen with his three-year-old son Kristian, was so taken by Christiania Bikes that he began exporting them to the US (Photo: Peter Stanners)

Cities across the world are looking to Copenhagen for inspiration on how to get their inhabitants out of cars and onto bikes – so much so that a new term has been coined for the trend, ‘Copenhagenisation’.

But even in cities that actively encourage cycling, the prevalence of self-powered transport is still mostly limited to the conventional two-wheeled variety. Cargo bikes, such as the Christiania, Trio or Nihola, are still a rarity outside Copenhagen despite offering a practical and relatively cheap alternative to a car for transporting people and cargo.

One American entrepreneur hopes to change that, however. Through his distribution company Boxcycles, Will Kearins has been selling the iconic Christiania bicycles in the United States for a year now, where they can be found in about 20 specialist bike stores across the country. (more…)