I live on the Slope and I am sure even for an average person, a properly geared bike, a trailer and a particle board table from the big box store we’re all discussing, would not create a hardship. I was bothered that “gasping” was passing off the idea of hauling materials by bicycle due to “serious hills”. I hired a “driver” and his cargo trike to haul a bureau and then two rain barrels up the hill from lower Atlantic Ave, and Red Hook respectively, no one got hurt from the effort. I rode next to him and we talked the whole time. It cost way less and was way easier than renting a car. Trips by bicycle and work-cycle is a viable method in our compact city, if we keep knocking the idea that it isn’t, people won’t try it themselves.

It’s news to me there are hills anywhere in Brooklyn.

So how come nobody in this city has come up with the idea of rentable bike trailers? I don’t have a place to store a trailer so buying one is out of the question, but if U-Haul can rent trailers for gas guzzlers why not trailers for human powered vehicles too?

I doubt urban IKEAs in Europe have giant parking lots, but they wanted one here.

Danish or Swedish planners for IKEA can understand the value of bike-sharing and trailers, but if IKEA’s U.S. team is just another bunch of fat Americans in their fat cars (or typically paranoid lawyers) does it stand a chance?

I recommend that people do it themselves. Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition has a trailer that they loan to members. I bought a trailer for myself at http://www.bikesatwork.com/ – with a capacity of 300 pounds.

But because it’s SO sensible for an Ikea in a dense city to rent/lend bikes/cargo bikes, I really hope they manage to overcome any understandable fears of lawsuits that might result from Ikea-bike use.

Letting furniture buyers in a dense city rent or borrow cargo bikes: as an old-school New Yorker friend of mine would say, “it’s called ‘it makes all the sense in the world.’”

I suspect that if free bikes and trailers were to be offered by IKEA it would require a fair amount of paperwork and signing on the dotted line before one was allowed to bike one’s belongings home.

It certainly can’t be about the price of the bikes; imagine how expensive it is to operate the free water taxi or shuttle buses. It also probably has little to do with fears of theft, since that is easily cleared up with a deposit on a credit card, as is done in Copenhagen. When the economic cost of potential lawsuits is less than the economic benefit of providing this service, I’m sure IKEA will offer it.