Star academic Robert Egan joined us at our Public Meeting recently to share the results of his research into cargo bike use in Ireland.

Rob’s work, with SEAI, Trinity College Dublin and with Dublin City University, explores peoples’ behaviours and attitudes to everyday cycling, active travel planning, and parent-child mobility. Robert has analysed how active travel infrastructure is debated in the planning process, and has developed the theory of ‘precarious entitlement’ to describe and discuss cyclists’ experience on Irish roads.

He recently published papers based on in-depth qualitative interviews and widespread surveys around Ireland involving users of e-cargo bikes. The results of this recent research project were astonishing, and heartening.

Here are just a few takeaway points that struck us-

• The use of e-cargo bikes, often by families with small children, replaced a significant number of car trips;
• Buying an e-cargo bike prevented people stopping cycling, for example when a first or second child came along;
• E-cargo bikes fill a niche that ordinary bikes can’t: The electric motor, large capacity, seating for children and even the way e-cargo bikes can be stood in place all made for a big difference from, for example, child seats on ordinary bicycles, or trailers;
• After settling into life with an e-cargo bike, Robert’s respondents found that their car was now being used for ‘the odd trip’, as opposed to being the mainstay of household transport;
• E-cargo bikes reduced the ‘mobility work’ of being a parent by saving significant transport time;
• Kids love them: Many e-cargo bike users’ children nagged them to go by e-cargo bike, rather than by car;
• Older kids/ teenagers, growing too big for the e-cargo bike, need car transport or safe independent cycling - So the struggle to get authorities to provide safe infrastructure remains critical;
• In heterosexual parent families, fathers in the study appeared to engage in a more equitable share of child-transport journeys;
• Parking and security are major issues, for both damage and outright theft.

Robert says in his research article,

The private car is widely used by parents as a technology to cocoon their children from car-dominated environments while facilitating structured opportunities for their development. Outside the car, parents travelling by active or public modes must intensively regulate their child’s mobilities. These parent-child mobilities can help to develop a child’s independent mobility in the future, without the car.

Unlike the car, the e-cargo bike afforded a unique sensitivity to the natural world and local environment. This enabled parents to train their children in local geography and responsible mobility, thereby building their competences for independent mobility in the future while normalising everyday mobility without the car.

We were super grateful to Robert for coming along to our public meeting. We’re grateful also for his work examining the reality of cycling in Ireland on a sociological level, how we talk about transport, and how to challenge the dominant car culture that costs us all so much.