Some of the best rides are the ones you take with someone else. That’s the idea behind Cycling Without Age, and it’s why we helped bring the Ricky Rickshaw to Australia: a trishaw built to take people who can’t ride for themselves anymore back out into the fresh air.
What is Cycling Without Age?
Cycling Without Age is a community movement that gives older people, and anyone living with limited mobility, the chance to get back on a bike. Volunteers, known as pilots, pedal passengers on gentle joyrides: along the river, through the park, past the streets they grew up on. It started in Copenhagen in 2012 and now has chapters all over the world, with plenty here in Australia.
Its guiding principle is a lovely one: the right to wind in your hair. Rides are free and unhurried, and they’re as much about the company as the scenery.
An approved trishaw for Cycling Without Age Australia
The Ricky Rickshaw is an approved bike for Cycling Without Age Australia, so when a chapter is choosing a trishaw for its rides, the Ricky is one they can pick with confidence.
Here’s what it’s built with:
- Passengers ride up front, with room for one or two adults and a 160kg front capacity.
- No step access, so a passenger with limited mobility can settle in without a climb.
- A 250W Bafang mid-drive motor, with pedal assistance up to 25km/h for the volunteer pilot.
- Lap belts and a front safety bar, so passengers feel secure the whole way round.
Co-designed with a CWA chapter in Perth
We worked with a Cycling Without Age chapter in Perth to design the Ricky, taking it out with the volunteers who’d be riding it and the passengers who’d be carried. Their feedback shaped the details you only notice on a real ride: how a passenger gets in and out, where they hold on, and how the bike handles when it’s loaded up and moving slowly.
Far more affordable than the alternatives
Trishaws like this have always been expensive. The alternatives cost over $20,000, which puts them out of reach for a lot of the volunteer-run chapters and community groups who’d get the most out of one.
We’ve kept the Ricky at a fraction of that by working directly with our manufacturer and buying in bulk, so there’s no importer’s margin stacked on top. The saving goes to the chapters, not the supply chain. You can see the current price on the Ricky Rickshaw product page.
Rickys around the country
What started with one chapter in Perth has spread, and there are now Rickys out on Cycling Without Age rides from coast to coast.
If your chapter is weighing up a trishaw, or you’d just like to know the bike a bit better, take a closer look at the Ricky Rickshaw, browse the rest of the bikes, or find your nearest group at Cycling Without Age Australia.
