By John Challen

The publication of a report, ‘Delivering Good Work: Labour, employment and wellbeing in London’s cargo bike sector’, has highlighted some of the issues around the two-wheeled delivery phenomenon cargo bikes. While benefits have been pinpointed, including the reduction of carbon emissions and delivery times, there are also concerns about the mental health and physical safety of riders. There is also an issue around diversity within the workforce.

“The logistics sector is white male dominated, as are most forms of cycling. That situation served as the wider context within which we examine diversity in the cargo bike logistics sector,” says Tiffany Lam, Strategy Lead, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Sustrans – and one of the authors of the report.

“Other issues that we raised in our report are the gendered on-road experiences that female and non-binary cargo bike riders encounter, such as street harassment, which happens when they're riding on the roads and also when they're making [a] delivery. Road aggression is also very gendered,” Lam adds. “There has been research done about cycling, and gendered road safety, which states that female cyclists are twice as likely as male cyclists to be closely passed by drivers. And they also experience disproportionately more verbal harassment, beeping and other forms of nasty behaviour on the road that can put people off cycling.

“There's the issue around a lack of public toilets, which is an issue for all people who don't really have an office space and can't work from home. But it's more of a problem for female and non-binary users, especially when they’re menstruating or when they just can’t find places to go to the toilet or keep warm.”

Solving the diversity problem

As part of a solution and a way of creating a more diverse and equal workforce, one of the recommendations within the report for cargo bike delivery companies was to prioritise training.

“Only one or two of the companies we spoke to had proper training for new cargo by couriers,” reveals Lam. “Most of them expect you to come in knowing how to ride a cargo bike and load and unload them. A lot of female riders that we spoke to said that just creates a lot more pressure, especially as some of the cargo bikes are not really built for smaller, shorter people, which females tend to be.

“So physically, they're struggling a lot more to begin with, then they're not getting proper training, instead being just sent off and not really encouraged to be open about the challenges they face.”

The report suggests enforcing a culture around health and safety and encouraging riders to be more open about safety concerns and the road dangers they've experienced. “Ideally, there would be more support from local authorities and the police in terms of increasing safety for cyclists in general on the road,” says Lam. “Another recommendation we had was for an industry-wide alliance, which is something that came up in a CIHT roundtable around cargo bike logistics. The Bicycle Association suggested companies could get together and act as a lobbying group and advance their interests to increase take-up of cargo bike deliveries.

“Hopefully, that would be a chance for companies to share good practice because there is a shared recognition that the sector needs to diversify, and they're struggling with how to achieve that. By bringing together companies more regularly, the hope is that there will be more collaboration to help increase working standards and the overall health and wellbeing conditions for riders across the board,” concludes Lam.
 
Read more about the CIHT roundtable about advancing cargo bike solutions.

Newsletter image: Cargo bike in London; credit: Shutterstock.