Wheels of Fortune

Pedicab News, an industry blog and news aggregator, carries more dispatches — with datelines like Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, Banff, Canada, and Dhaka, India — from the pedal-powered war zone: "New rules may bring pedicabbies to heel"; "Pedicabs nipping at heels of city horse carriages"; "Glendale's rules confuse operators of bicycle taxis"; "Man suing city over pedal-powered cab business"; "Free transportation service shut down by government"; "Last days of the rickshaw."

Meyer is frustrated by this resistance, and not just because he supplies vehicles to many of the besieged operations and owns a stake in some of them. In his mind, automobile-oriented societies simply don't know how to deal with something different.

"It's the junior high school dance. Nobody wants to be the first one on the dance floor." He scoffs at attempts to prove that pedicabs are dangerous, like the video London taxi drivers made showing a car running into a pedicab and exploding. There's never been a major accident involving Meyer's cabs in Denver, he points out, and serious incidents in other cities are few and far between. "Cars are the killers," he says. "I could run over someone on a pedicab back and forth for ten minutes and hardly break a bone."

And concerns about pedicabs slowing traffic downtown? Well, that's sort of his point, he says.

Denver hasn't had as many skirmishes, but that doesn't mean that everyone around here appreciates pedicabs. "They are not monitored, they are not regulated, they are not controlled," says Marie Ray, owner of Denver horse-drawn-carriage operation Irish Rose Carriages. "They use the 16th Street Mall as a slalom course, weaving in and out of trees, giving customers a thrill. We've seen them tip over."

Last year, the city adopted new testing rules for horse carriages in response to safety concerns. "They have stopped worrying about carriages," says Ray, "but they have never even worried about pedicabs, which are more dangerous."

Denver passed a "pedal cab" ordinance in 1981, requiring all pedicab drivers to have a driver's license and complete a license application, including a criminal background check, a process that costs $56.85. Drivers also have to show proof that they're working for a pedicab company licensed through the city, one that carries insurance for each pedicab. The vehicles are allowed everywhere downtown except for the pedestrian mall between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. or on arterial streets during rush hour.

"I don't hear of any complaints about them, and I've been here since last July," says Awilda R. Marquez, director of excise and licenses for the city. She admits, though, that her department has a very small inspector team to monitor whether or not pedicabs are licensed, and up until recently had little recourse if they found a driver who wasn't. That changed in early February, thanks to a new ordinance giving all city agencies the authority to issue citations and fines for municipal-code violations. "We are looking into developing rules on that," says Marquez. "When someone is not even licensed, there is nothing to take away. That's why there's a need for fines."

In the absence of thorough monitoring, some pedicab drivers have started policing the streets themselves. Casey Bobay, the new manager of Mile High Pedicabs and owner of Rocket Bike Cabs, a smaller Denver company with ten vehicles purchased from Main Street, has taken it upon himself and his drivers to check for licenses at Pepsi Center events, and there's talk of instituting similar enforcement elsewhere. If they find someone patrolling the arena parking lot without a license, says Bobay, the drivers ask them to leave. He isn't sure what they would do if an unlicensed driver refused, since it hasn't happened — yet. "I imagine it would be pretty easy to get a security guard or police officer over there to take care of it," he says.

Some independent drivers see this self-policing as an effort by Mile High Pedicab to squeeze out smaller players. "The guys who wanted to drive out the other companies made sure we had a license and made sure we had insurance," says Jeremy Bernier, who co-owns his pedicab and is licensed through the city. "I like the idea of insurance, but at the same time, it seemed like it was about sweeping people out."

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In one corner of Meyer's factory, there's a special pedicab, slightly different than the others. Painted "the greenest green we could find," Meyer says it will be used during the Democratic National Convention — a not-so-veiled appeal to the catch the attention of event organizers, who have repeatedly stressed their intentions to make this the greenest convention ever.

"It's a huge opportunity for us," Meyer says. "I think we will really be able to showcase what we are all about to decision-makers all over the country."