The bikes, hailed as “revolutionary” by fans, are around half the cost of the cheapest electric vans

By Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter

Oliver Lord from the Clean Cities Campaign (credit: LDRS)

Environmental campaigners hope more businesses will swap their vans for “revolutionary” cargo bikes.

Cargo bikes – most often two or three-wheeled bikes with an attached trailer – can cost up to £12,500, while the cheapest electric vans cost around £24,000, and would allow businesses to reduce pollution and avoid costly ULEZ charges.

Transport for London’s recently-published action plan on cargo bikes suggests they could replace up to 17% of van-driven kilometres in central London by the end of the decade.

To incentivise businesses to make the shift, City Hall politicians have called on London Mayor Sadiq Khan to provide more money for local councils to arrange cargo bike sharing and training schemes.

Hina Bokhari, chair of the London Assembly’s economic committee, said: “We’ve already got big businesses like Amazon who are taking them up and now we want to make sure that those smaller businesses, that want to do the same, feel like they can make that transition.

“We’ve talked to plumbers and electricians who are making that transition and they’ve said that [using a cargo bike] saves them time, they can get to their appointments on time and fit in more appointments. It’s great for their business, it’s great for their mental health as well… it’s a win-win for so many businesses.”

Brian Whiting, operations manager at the homeless outreach charity Under One Sky, has trialled one of the bikes and ordered one to help with his charity’s deliveries across London.

He said: “It’s quicker than the van, I don’t have to worry about parking. I can get anything I want into it, [and] if there’s busy traffic I can take an alternative route. It’s clean, it’s non-polluting and it’s good exercise, I felt good when I was on the bike.”

Oliver Lord, who leads the UK branch of the Europe-wide Clean Cities Campaign, said the bikes were “obviously not going to be a solution for every business” but said London “can’t sustain” the growth in vans, which has increased by 30% in the last decade.

He said: “We’re concerned about the levels of air pollution in London, especially in central London and we see this as a really positive solution for businesses.

“It’s an excellent initiative to try and reduce costs to businesses in a cost of living crisis. As an environmental campaign, it’s going to help us save the planet, but also more importantly, save our health as well, because of the air pollution problem.”

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