There are moments when the city suddenly starts working differently. Not from behind a car windscreen. Not stuck in traffic.
Just with kids sitting in the front of the bike, when you ride together through Warsaw in the morning and suddenly everyone is calmer.
Our family cargo bike didn’t appear because we wanted a fashionable gadget from the Netherlands. It appeared when, with three kids, a regular bike stopped being enough for us, and the car was getting more and more mentally tiring.
For a few years now we’ve had one goal. To reduce moving around Warsaw by car in traffic to an absolute minimum. Beyond producing exhaust fumes that we then all breathe (more on that below), and the lack of movement, daily driving to work and nursery in rush hour is just exhausting. Sitting behind the wheel, we get frustrated with other drivers, and our emotions transfer onto how the kids feel. There’s no space for a calm, attentive conversation, we answer questions briefly. The result is that no one is happy.
So before our third child was born, whenever we could, we’d ride around the city by bike. We’d put the kids in seats or in a two-child trailer. That option, though not ideal, was sufficient with two little ones. But when Basia joined our cycling crew, it turned out we needed something that would not only let us carry three kids, but would also be much safer.
That’s when we started looking for a family cargo bike.
O tym przeczytasz
Why we wanted to limit the car in the city
It wasn’t even about the traffic itself. In Warsaw you just get used to it. What was more tiring was how our mornings and afternoons in the car looked. The kids sat in the back, us in the front, each of us a bit apart. Constant red lights, frustration, looking for parking, or sitting in a line of cars that all go to exactly the same place every day.
And suddenly we realised that a huge part of our family life was happening exactly there. In traffic. Then the cargo bike appeared, and it turned out that even an ordinary trip to nursery can look completely different. The kids sit in the front, so we talk the whole time. They spot trams, comment on dogs at crossings, count diggers, and ask about things we never even heard before from behind the wheel.
Sure, on top of that there’s the question of exhaust fumes, fuel costs, and the whole hassle of having a car in the city. But honestly? Over time, the calm and the togetherness turned out to matter most for us.
How a family cargo bike rides with three kids on board
We’d been thinking about a cargo bike for a while, but the models we’d tested put us off with their clunky look and, above all, their weight. After a few months of searching, fairly unexpectedly, Dolly Bikes appeared on our path.
Why did we choose Dolly? First, the look. You can configure it in 40 possible colour combinations, which turns out to matter more than you’d think. It also doesn’t look clunky on the path. Second, how easily it rides. The Dolly handles like a normal city bike. We’re still a bit shocked that a bike weighing 43 kg, with three kids and a baby carrier added on (another 40 kg), we’re able to ride like a regular city cruiser. We don’t know how the Dutch did it, but clearly they did.
There is one thing you need to get used to
We’ll be honest, though, the bike has one downside when it comes to handling. The crank (the part where the pedals turn) sits fairly low, which means when you turn the bike while going downhill at the same time, you can be unpleasantly surprised when the pedal catches the ground. Same goes for riding up over a kerb. You have to build the habit of remembering this.
After a few days we stopped thinking about it
It’s an individual thing. The first turn of the wheels definitely brings a slight feeling of uncertainty, but with each minute the ride causes no particular problems. The only thing your brain needs to recode is the different position of the front wheel. On a normal bike, the front wheel is right under the handlebars. On a cargo bike, the wheel is under the box, not under the handlebars. The effect? You think you have 2 or 3 seconds before going off the kerb, and it turns out the wheel has already dropped off it.
A huge plus is the system of standing the bike on legs mounted under the box. It’s simple and effective, and at the same time it lets you leave a child in the cargo without worrying that the bike will tip or fall off the stand. What’s more, the legs fold out and back in easily, Karolina manages them without a problem.
Dolly Bikes also surprised us positively in one more area, namely steering. We were convinced it would be very hard to turn this bike around, for example. It turns out doing a three-point turn goes quite smoothly.
OK, but where do you keep a cargo bike?
It’s the eternal question for those considering this kind of bike. It turns out that most cargo bikes are kept outside. Whether winter or summer. Living in a block of flats, it’s just hard to fit a bike that’s over 2.5 metres long anywhere. We have a bike storage room in our building and initially we thought we’d keep our vehicle there. Unfortunately the bike room is reached by stairs, and there’s no chance of “folding” the bike to fit it through.
Dolly Bikes seems to know this, because as standard you get a proper bike lock built in, an AXA wheel lock. On top of that, if you think about it more carefully, stealing this kind of bike isn’t really worth it. Why steal a cargo bike when, given how few of them are on the paths in Poland, you can’t easily sell it? On top of that, the cargo bike community here is small enough and tight enough that a stolen one would get spotted on the street within days :).
Why we felt safer than with a trailer
There probably isn’t a perfect way to keep a child safe on a bike, whether you’re carrying them or letting them ride on their own. If we had to rank our sense of how safe the kids are, from least to most safe, the order would seem to be: bike seat, trailer, and finally cargo.
If we consider the five-point safety belts in a trailer and the protective cage frame, versus the much simpler belt setup in the cargo (the belts are hard to adjust), the trailer wins on that point. But when it comes to the safety of carrying kids around the city, for one simple reason the cargo wins clearly here.
In the cargo all the kids sit in the front. So we have them constantly in view, we can talk freely, and react at any moment. In a trailer, which (as the name suggests) is attached to the bike at the back, you don’t have that option. On top of that, sometimes we have to ride on the road in Warsaw. You can imagine that with a trailer this is quite stressful. Who knows whether the driver behind us will notice our flag and not hit our kids or catch on them.
What actually turned out to be useful
There are quite a few accessories you can add to the Dolly. Starting with a cushion for the bench and ending with cells for electric power. We have a rain cover in two versions, one for riding and one for covering the box when parked. The first one is fairly impractical in our view, because you can’t fold it. Before going out you have to decide whether to take it with you or skip it and risk getting wet.
Something that was a so-called must have for us from day one was the bracket for mounting a Maxi Cosi car seat. We knew we wanted to start our cycling adventure from Barbara’s very first days. The bracket mounts in the box trivially easily, as does the seat itself. The setup with the carrier in the front works perfectly. Our older two, sitting facing little Basia, are able to do the simplest things for her (pass the dummy, cover her up, etc.). On top of that, all three are in our field of view. We can react quickly to their needs, talk, watch things passing by together. Just spend time really well :).
Our mornings changed the most
We really bought this bike mainly with logistics in mind. Three kids, seats, trailer, daily riding around Warsaw. At some point a normal bike just stopped being enough for us. And then it turned out quite quickly that the cargo most strongly changed something we hadn’t considered at all. The pace of our daily life.
With the kids sitting in the front, they see exactly the same thing we see. So everything becomes shared. Suddenly even an ordinary trip to nursery started to feel like a small micro-expedition through the city.
Today it’s a bit of an element of our family outdoor life. Just as natural as a backpack, thermos, or carrier in the mountains.
Can a family cargo bike replace a car in the city?
We can sum the article up in essentially one sentence. We found a product perfectly tailored to our needs. First, light handling for both parents, plus easy loading and unloading of the kids. Second, capacity, you can carry up to four little ones at most, so the ideal solution for big families. On top of that, there’s the build of the bike (light, rounded box, smooth Nexus gearing) and the look of it. And last but also important, the savings on fuel and CO2 emissions. Given that the centres of big cities will soon have traffic restrictions, the cargo bike seems like an ideal solution.
Zostań z nami na dłużej!
