Wild Hair
I sometimes get possessed of a notion and can’t let go of it until I’ve gnawed it good for a while.
Today, for example, I’ve gotten obsessed with the idea of buying a pedicab and operating it as a small business venture this summer. My vision is that one day cars will be all but absent from downtown Seattle streets and human-powered taxis will ferry (there’s a funny locution; could ferries taxi?) people all over from Pioneer Square to at least lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill.
The only place and time I’ve seen pedicabs around here is at sporting events near the baseball and football stadiums. Perhaps that’s the only context in which they’re a viable business. I have to believe, though, that a person could make a living wage (or at least a supplemental one) driving pedicabs on a more regular basis.
No doubt I’m being naïve about this; certainly if this were a realistic business model someone would have done it already. Poking around the web, it looks like most of the places that run pedicab businesses make their money by leasing out the rigs to drivers; while I think it would be grand to provide job opportunities for cyclists in this way, I’m not that interested in owning the capital goods--even though I guess that’s where the money is historically.
Apparently, the pedicab business in New York City hasn’t been particularly pretty; from what I’ve read, it seems like the same cutthroat competition as in the taxi world, just played out on a smaller scale.
I don’t even like the idea of taking rides away from those three or four guys I’ve seen down by Safeco Field in the summer; I’d like to think that there’s enough of a market for pedal-powered hansom cabs that entire fleets of them could serve our fair city.
And hey! That’s the perfect name: Hansom Pedalers.
But then I would have to get some other drivers.
Today, for example, I’ve gotten obsessed with the idea of buying a pedicab and operating it as a small business venture this summer. My vision is that one day cars will be all but absent from downtown Seattle streets and human-powered taxis will ferry (there’s a funny locution; could ferries taxi?) people all over from Pioneer Square to at least lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill.
The only place and time I’ve seen pedicabs around here is at sporting events near the baseball and football stadiums. Perhaps that’s the only context in which they’re a viable business. I have to believe, though, that a person could make a living wage (or at least a supplemental one) driving pedicabs on a more regular basis.
No doubt I’m being naïve about this; certainly if this were a realistic business model someone would have done it already. Poking around the web, it looks like most of the places that run pedicab businesses make their money by leasing out the rigs to drivers; while I think it would be grand to provide job opportunities for cyclists in this way, I’m not that interested in owning the capital goods--even though I guess that’s where the money is historically.
Apparently, the pedicab business in New York City hasn’t been particularly pretty; from what I’ve read, it seems like the same cutthroat competition as in the taxi world, just played out on a smaller scale.
I don’t even like the idea of taking rides away from those three or four guys I’ve seen down by Safeco Field in the summer; I’d like to think that there’s enough of a market for pedal-powered hansom cabs that entire fleets of them could serve our fair city.
And hey! That’s the perfect name: Hansom Pedalers.
But then I would have to get some other drivers.
posted by Professor Dave at 5:16 PM
2 Comments:
I realize this entry is a few weeks old now, so maybe ye wild hair has gone & went, but this dude http://www.bikeblog.us/ has been doing it in Rochester, NY and blogs about it here http://www.buffalobiketaxi.com/home/blog/
"... a few DAYS old", I meant. Not "weeks".
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