Worldbike: Not Just Another NGO in Toyota Land Cruisers

Photography by Pau Spinrad (Figure A) and Ed Lucero (Figure C)

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Fig. A: Bicycle infant seat devised by Nate Byerley for his daughter, Davis. Fig. B: B3 Mini blender, with all-recycled plastic. Fig C: Worldbike market test in Kenya shows child-carrying capacity.

In 1996, Ross Evans, a mechanical engineering graduate from Stanford, traveled to Nicaragua for Boston-based Bikes Not Bombs, to teach civil war veterans there how to fix bicycles. While waiting for a shipment of bikes and parts, Ross observed how the people there used bikes to carry things. He noticed the trailers used for big loads had problems. They had extra wheels, which are expensive, and they clattered around, wasting energy while reducing mobility and handling. So Evans invented the Xtracycle, a bolt-on extension to a mountain bike that lengthens the wheelbase and adds a versatile cargo platform. This cargo bike lets you lean into turns, isn’t upset by potholes, and can be ridden as an everyday bike.

Evans turned his Xtracycle into a product for the U.S. market, while his Xtracycle Access Foundation (XAF) continued to explore how it could help the developing world. In 2000, Adam French brought the XAF to Tinker’s Workshop in Berkeley, and Paul Freedman took over a couple of years later, filed for nonprofit status, and changed its name to Worldbike.

In 2004, Freedman won a grant from the Lemelson Foundation, which supports inventions that benefit humanity, to test Worldbike’s lowest-cost frame extension for local manufacture and use in Kenya. They called the project Big Boda, a play on boda-boda, the word for Nairobi’s ubiquitous bicycle taxis.

The Big Boda project was a great experience. “People there appreciated that we weren’t just another NGO in Land Cruisers,” Freedman recalls. They found a great technical lead who could manufacture the bikes in Kisumu, epicenter of the boda-boda phenomenon, and did extensive test marketing in 2005 with boda-boda drivers. The Big Boda was not a universal success, but the drivers found that it worked well for loads that are bulky but not heavy, like empty water jugs and cans, and bread. Its “extended cab” also suited it well for taking children to school.

Last year, the latest version of the Worldbike was shown in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s exhibition “Design for the Other 90%.”

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