Rickshaws may roll again in Atlanta

By Steve Visser

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall wants downtown to follow in the treads of Decatur and Marietta in adopting a calorie-fueled taxi to ferry the weary and open-minded.

Hall has sent legislation to the city legal department to craft a law to permit and regulate tricycle taxis -- known as pedicabs or rickshaws, a term now shunned because of images of servitude -- to operate in Atlanta just as they do in the county seats of DeKalb and Cobb counties.

He hopes the vehicles, which usually charge a few dollars a trip, will ferry both tourists and residents on short hops around the city core and perhaps other areas such as Midtown, providing access to restaurants, meetings and even sightseeing tours.

"It just feels like it would be a good thing for us to try out in the city," Hall said. "Atlanta gets hot and I hate walking around in a suit."

Pedicabs first appeared in the city in the 1990s when they ran into resistance from the city council and the taxi industry, even though they had been making progress across the nation. One company established itself in Decatur last year and two began operating in Marietta last spring.

So far it has been slow pedaling.

“It is a hard thing to get going because it is really hard to change people minds and think, ‘Instead of getting in a car, it's a nice night so let's take a pedicab,'" said Cassandra Buckalew, who owns Marietta Pedicab. "A lot of cities, large and small, have them and I think they would be great for Atlanta because Atlanta is such a car culture. People don't want to walk anywhere."

Mike Gerke, who owns Easy Living Pedicabs in Decatur, said he tried to bring pedicabs to Atlanta for three years for precisely that reason. The veteran pedicab operator -- he once operated during Packer season in Green Bay, Wis. Think long underwear -- said bureaucrats have not been welcoming.

“They found some statutes from around 1910 that you cannot sightsee from a bicycle and they said a pedicab would be sightseeing," said Gerke, who contended the human-powered vehicles are more about transportation. "The city could probably handle a dozen pedicabs, no problem. It really needs to be down by the aquarium, the World Congress Center and Piedmont Park. That is where pedicab business would thrive.”

He said he has tried to win over taxicab drivers, some of whom oppose the unwanted competition, by contending their industry can feed off his because cabbies prefer longer hauls while pedicabs usually provide lifts of less than a mile or so.

Downtown taxicab drivers said much of their business is short rides, fares from hotels to restaurants or the World Congress Center. But the handful interviewed didn't express strong opposition.

"Those are called tricycles," said 50-year-old Okey Onydum, waiting in his Euro Cab by the Ritz-Carlton hotel. "America is about competition man, so I'm not against it."

Pedicabs are not without problems. A 60-year-old man, celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary in Seattle, died when his pedicab driver lost control and collided with a minivan two years ago. The business got black marks in Las Vegas and Orlando when the unregulated industry spiraled out of control, pedicab operators said.

Rusty Browne, who has been operating a pedicab business in Savannah for 16 years, said cities need to regulate the industry, establish licenses, rules and inspections to ensure the cabs are safe and the drivers know what they are doing and don't antagonize drivers of two-ton automobiles.

"There are a lot of traffic problems in cities where pedicab companies are not regulated. You get so many companies that start up that it is totally out of control," he said. "

In Decatur, Gerke said insurance cost $1,500 a year. Requiring operators to be licensed controls the number of pedicabs on the road. Manhattan, he said, went from 2,000 operators down to 400 after new regulations required insurance and background checks.

"I want to see it done right in Atlanta," he said. "I don't want it to be shut down because it was done wrong like in Las Vegas, where there wasn't any regulation."