Streetsblog New York City

I wonder how many thousands of folding bikes would fit in Ikea's planned waterfront parking lot in Brooklyn...

Yet probably not the 'highest and best use' of waterfront land I would guess.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/10/06/nyregion/06ikea_CA0.ready.html

Who says people are not able to peddle home with a sofa? Take a look at ttp://www.bikesatwork.com/hauling-cargo-by-bike/hpv-cargo-capacity.html ...

No, people won't be pedaling home with a sofa. But neither can they take a bus with a sofa, and yet IKEA provides a free bus from the Port Authority to their New Jersey store, and the service is in pretty high demand. How does it work? IKEA can, for a fee, deliver your furniture for you.

See entry titled "Couch" on that previously given link. My mistake.

It seems that Red Hook with Fairway, the cruise ship dock, and the upcoming Ikea has lots of excess capacity to redesign for sensible human-scale transport. Being on the waterfront provides low-cost freight options. Much of Ikea furniture breaks down to compact packages than can be moved by hybrid human-electric transport and develop ideas and demonstrations on how freight can be moved throughout the city on a human scale that is highly efficient, convenient, and practical. Aggressive development of local urban farms would further show what can be done. The area is also perfect for geothermal retrofits as detailed in NYC DDC's at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ddc/html/ddcgreen/geotherm.html which should be promoted a lot more. The rapid economic benefits to locals in the area would show how green can really be green and how responsible sustainable development can make a big difference.

I'm all for cargo bikes, but (always the cynic) using them to transport Ikea furniture is like killing the headache by cutting off the head. Their entire business model is based on enormity of scale. They exploit entire regions of forest land, replant a few saplings so's they can label the packaging 'from sustainable forests', ship the raw materials thousands of miles to Asia because cheap labor more than makes up for shipping costs, again by sea then truck to a mega sized box store, at which point the consumer foots the remaining shipping cost. This is like the 3,000 mile ceasar salad; it's the 15,000 mile ugly disposable funky mod pleather couch. Do what you can to help the environment, but even a handful of conscious Brooklynites biking some stuff home will still mean Ikea is 100% unsustainable.