Some of the best rides are the ones you take with someone else. That is the whole idea behind Cycling Without Age, and it is why we helped bring the Ricky Rickshaw to Australia: a trishaw designed to carry people who can no longer ride for themselves 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. The movement began in Copenhagen in 2012 and has since grown into chapters around the world, with many across Australia.
Its guiding principle is a lovely one: the right to wind in your hair. A ride is free, unhurried, and about the company as much as the scenery.
An approved trishaw for Cycling Without Age Australia
The Ricky Rickshaw is an approved bike for Cycling Without Age Australia. When a chapter is choosing a trishaw to run its rides, the Ricky is one it can pick with confidence.
It is built for the job:
- 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.
Everything about it is shaped around the ride: the passenger seeing the world go by, and the pilot having an easy, confident bike to steer.
Co-designed with a CWA chapter in Perth
The Ricky did not arrive fully formed. We worked with a Cycling Without Age chapter in Perth to co-design it, taking the bike out with the volunteers who would be riding it and the passengers who would be carried. Their feedback shaped the details that matter on a real ride: how a passenger gets in and out, where they hold on, and how the bike handles when it is loaded and moving slowly.
That is why the Ricky feels purpose-built rather than adapted. It was designed alongside the people who actually use it.
Far more affordable than the alternatives
Trishaws of this kind have long 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 would benefit most.
We have kept the Ricky at a fraction of that. We do it by working directly with our manufacturer partner and buying in bulk, so there is no importer’s margin stacked on top and no extra layer in the middle to pay for. 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. There are now Rickys all over the country, out on rides with Cycling Without Age chapters from coast to coast, and each one is another group of passengers getting the wind back in their hair.
If your chapter is weighing up a trishaw, or you would simply like to know the bike a little 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.
