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2021-02-01
Fahrwerk x By-ExpressenThere is no official bike messenger exchange program, but in the world of collectives and worker-owned companies, there are a number that we respect, like to talk to about how they work and pay attention to. So when two of our Fahrwerk couriers found themselves in Copenhagen at the exact time that By-Expressen needed some help during a particularly busy month, with Copenhagen Fashion Week in town, Claire #45 and Fabian #69 jumped at the chance to experience three weeks working with the Danish messenger company. Here’s what it’s like going from the big streets of Berlin to the nearly-as-big bike lanes of Copenhagen, written by Claire #45.The ‘Cycling Utopia’
Copenhagen is known as the bicycle capital of the world, as it’s for a reason. The super-organised bike lanes, bike bridges just for cyclists, and the ways that pedestrians and cars pay full attention to everything on two wheels? It’s dreamy.For Berliner couriers that are used to navigating the faster-paced traffic of the city – normally riding in the traffic, rather than next to it – that calm can take a little getting used to. You can briefly hear some words on the joy of Berlin bike lanes, in the ‘Common Ground’ podcast last month, and also Simon #77 talking about just how exciting it is riding a cargo bike around Berlin to Deutschland Funk Kultur earlier this year.
But after three weeks, we adjusted to the peace and calm of well-organised bike lanes. Luckily, there were new distractions to deal with, including navigating a mostly-unfamiliar city, the quick turns of a small city over the longer sometimes-endless roads of Berlin, rush hour with hundreds of Copenhagen commuters to deal with, two-stage left turns, and learning to manoeuvre like messengers in a city that isn’t entirely used to cyclists doing so. We were definitely kept on our toes.Cargo bikes: what types and what for?
At Fahrwerk, we divide our jobs up by bike, cargo bike and electric car. By-Expressen, however, stick solely to regular bikes for speedy, smaller jobs and cargo bikes for larger jobs. This definitely leads to some really comedic cargo jobs when the package is a bit bigger than expected. At one point working at By-Expressen, one big job involved two of us on very stacked cargo bikes, riding through Copenhagen in a little loaded cargo train.
Based in Copenhagen, By-Expressen have the luxury of having the two main cargo bike makers literally around the corner, with both Bullitt and Omnium cargo bike makers based in the city. Jimmi ‚Jumbo‘ Bargisen, the CEO and designer who started the entire Omnium world, is still an active rider for By-Expressen, and their riders can always be seen near the top of a race podium at the various Bike Messenger Championships that take place around the world. It would be fair to say that they’re the messenger company most associated with Omniums in the world. If you take a look in the Fahrwerk bike stands, however, we use a real mix of cargo bikes. Historically, we’ve mostly used Bullitt cargo bikes which are built for really hefty cargo jobs. They’re heavier but have a lower centre of gravity, which make it easier to throw something really heavy like a washing machine on and ride off – or another cargo bike. Then, just like By-Expressen, we use Omnium cargo bikes, which is a constantly-growing collection and now use equal numbers of Bullitts and Omniums.
We also use a couple of cargo bikes from our friend Seb who runs 314 Transport Design in Berlin. In the last few years, he’s started building his own cargo bikes and we use a couple of these locally-produced bikes between us. For especially large cargo bike jobs we work with Carla Cargo, a company based down in south west Germany, who make a variety of trailers. We manage to surprise customers with just how much you can fit on a cargo bike, but when a job is really big or over a very long distance, then we bring in our environmentally friendly electric autos. Over in Copenhagen, where they don’t work with electric cars and rely only on cargo bikes, there were definitely some huge cargo jobs coming in – which are also an opportunity to show the ridiculously large things a cargo bike can actually carry.Small city vs Big city
Copenhagen is a small city – a really small city – and the streets surprised us by their intricacies, particularly in the city centre where a maze of winding one-way streets provided a fun challenge that we needed to learn quickly for high speed ‘VIP’ rush jobs around the streets.
In Berlin, we often pick up jobs that take us completely across our 891.8 km² city. We clock up around 100kms a day. In Copenhagen, we weren’t quite distancing that but it’s not unheard of. In Copenhagen, which comes in at 1/10th of the size of Berlin, you tend to cross the city a lot more. In Berlin, a long job for Fahrwerk means that we can find ourselves delivering bike jobs out to the city limit or into the next state. When it comes to longer distance jobs, By-Expressen riders can find themselves travelling kms up the coast to the end of the island Copenhagen is situated on, Zealand.Back in Berlin, it is nice to be back on our own, slightly noisier, slightly faster, maze of streets. But we’re back on them, feeling slightly wiser, enjoying having experienced time with By-Expressen, and excited to see how we can put into practice some of the thinking about subtly different ways of working and riding that we’ve brought home with us. Fashion Week in Berlin might not be as big a deal, but we’ve launched into our own bigger jobs, as the autumn rush kicks off, with renewed enthusiasm and a slightly different lens on the city.
