Cycling with two kids

I believe that driving cars is very unsustainable, and am a keen cyclist. Generally, where possible, I ride my bicycle in preference to driving a car. I have done many cycle-camping trips, and am comfortable riding with a lot of luggage or a trailer. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the "best" way to cycle with kids.

Options (each has advantages and disadvantages):

Child seat

On an ordinary bike, it is not easy to carry more than one child. I have ridden a 10-speed, steel-framed racer with my four-year-old in a rear seat, and my 1-year-old in a front seat (that attaches to the cross bar) -- riding the bike is fine, but it is very difficult to get on and off the bike. A Ladies'- or mixte- frame, with a seat that mounted on the handle bars would be easier to mount, but heavier to steer. Particularly with front panniers as one needs with a rear-mounted seat.

My solution, which I think works well, was to buy an xtracycle kit, and convert my bike into a long-bike. Then there is room at the back for two seats.
The advantage of this is that there are still only two wheels on the road, and it rides similarly to a normal bike with little extra weight and no extra rolling resistance.
The disadvantage is that weight near the back of the xtracycle (behind the rear hub) tends to unbalance the bike. This can be compensated for by riding without shaking the bike, and I haven't found it to be a problem (my now-two-year-old weighs 15 kg, and I regularly ride with them both on the back plus lots of luggage and it is fine).

More detail of my setup is provided in this article.

tag-a-long

This option gets the weight of one's bike at the price of an extra tyre on the road. It makes the bike much longer, and the child can't be too tired. On the plus side, when the tag-a-long is remove the bike is an ordinary bike.
UPDATE: I recently saw a tandem tag-a-long that has one wheel on the road, and carries two kids -- one behind the other. It looked nice, and I think it was by weeride, and was about AU$450. Because the kids are in a line, it's no wider than the bike, and so gets around the width problem of a trailer (below), and only has one extra wheel on the road. Had this option been available previously, I might have done this instead of the xtracycle.

trailer

This is perhaps safest for the kids, though its width is often a problem. It also adds lots of weight, rolling resistance and wind resistance -- riding is much heavier work. The advantage is that no modification to the bike is needed and the trailer can be shared between bikes.

Summary

On the whole, I feel that the xtracycle is a great option. It rides like a normal bike (unlike, for example, a bakfiets), weighs only marginally more than an ordinary bike, but can carry two kids plus lots of luggage. I've happily ridden 25 kms with my two young kids plus luggage.

I should note that my xtracycle is based-on a recycled bicycle that I bought from the nice guys at the bicycle revolution in Brisbane. It has a Rohloff hub, velocity rims, and some Magura hydraulic rim brakes that I salvaged from an old bike. I love my xtracycle!

This article was written by Angus Wallace, and first appeared on guesstimatedapproximations.blogspot.com

My xtracycle

In this article I detail how I modified my xtracycle to cheaply carry two children. For the context of my decision to do it this way, please read my other article, cycling with two kids.

Disclaimer/warning

This article is for information only. If you decide to proceed with doing this, you take full responsibility for ensuring your arrangement is safe. Think carefully about what would happen if a child-seat detached from your bike with your child in it, and only proceed if you are confident you can install it safely! Off-the-shelf options are available! I accept no responsibility.

This shows the xtracycle, when it had only one seat attached

Detail

I bought two second-hand rear bike seats (topeak, I think they were). On their underside, they had two large metal bolts embedded in them, which attached to in-built suspension which attached to the carrier. I sawed off the legs of the seats with a hand saw, and then the bolts with a hacksaw. The seat around these bolts is very strong, so I drilled a hole through the centre of each bolt-stub, and used these to screw the seat through the xtracycle "flight-deck" (the top of its rack) and into the aluminium tubing that holds the flight-deck. I did this because otherwise the flight deck could easily detach from the tubing. I put a few other screws through the flight-deck and into the tubing to make sure it is secure. I put three other bolts through the seat, attached only to the now-firmly-attached flight-deck, and included large washers to spread the strain on the seat.

A detail of the underside of the seat. The legs protruded at the bottom and were sawn off. The two metal circles at the top are the remains of the "captured" bolts, which were sawn off flush with the bottom of the seat and then drilled through so that the seat could be screwed through the "flight deck" and into the aluminium tubing beneath it, anchored through the bolts themselves. Also visible are several holes through the base of the seat. I tried a couple of locations for these, and didn't use the first ones (I can't remember why). They were attached to the flight-deck using bolts and large washers to distribute the force across the seat's plastic so it didn't tear.

The benefit of this system:

• cheaper (total cost of the two seats: $100, plus a few screws/bolts that I had anyway and will reuse when finished with)
• the weight is lower to the ground than the off-the-shelf-xtracycle-seats', and so the bike is much better balanced (the off-the-shelf seats are at least 100 mm higher -- this would make a big difference to handling)

My kids on the back of the double-seater (faces smudged to preserve their privacy)

The down side is that the seats can't be easily detached -- they stay on the bike all the time. I have now removed the front seat and put some handlebars for my elder son to hold on (they are attached to my seat post)

On my xtracycle I now have two seats. For rear one has been there for about 18 months (since my youngest son was about 12 months old), and the front has been there for about 3.5 years. I had one nut come off one of the bolts on one seat, but because each seat has 5 bolts/screws it was still safe. I check them regularly to make sure they are safe, and feel that they are stronger, more rigid, better balanced and safer than the off-the-shelf child-seat-and-carrier-combo I use on my steel-frame racer.

Now that he's older, my four-year-old doesn't need a seat any more, and can hold onto the handlebars I've installed for him

Luggage

It's not just kids that I can carry -- the carrying-capacity of the xtracycle is huge.
I've had 80 kg of wheat in sacks, plus my two-year-old on the back, plus my normal daily luggage (nappies, change of clothes, etc) on it and rode home in the rain. It was very heavy but still stable. Amazing.

I should note that my xtracycle is based-on a recycled bicycle that I bought from the nice guys at the bicycle revolution in Brisbane. It has a Rohloff hub, velocity rims, and some Magura hydraulic rim brakes that I salvaged from an old bike I broke. I love my xtracycle!

This article was written by Angus Wallace, and first appeared on guesstimatedapproximations.blogspot.com