B-Spokes Pedicabs

There is a certain amount of novelty to being cycled around town on a pedicab. It offers a rustic outlook to travel around town, but unfortunately it’s unbelievably expensive. When I hear how much people have paid for these pedicabs, I’m surprised that they even have that amount of money on them in the first place.
Price aside, and it’s a big thing to put aside, they are in abundance in tourist spots and around clubs and for those who’ve had a bit too much to drink and unable to get in a real taxi might find them of use. This only leaves the last concern which is speed and these are very slow hence why it ends up costing so much.
Despite all this I do have a degree of admiration for the drivers — it’s not the easiest work especially in the hilly areas.

You can’t help but laugh at them, can you!
Sometimes I feel sorry for them though, like when a group of drunken lads ask the poor guy to cycle up the Mound or something for banter. Poor guys. But my mum and I once used one to go down the Mound… bloody hell it’s scary! Plus they charged us £30! They make a fortune, around £60 a night one of them told me (if they can be bothered). It is daylight robbery!
Kinda funny though!

Like Jonathan, I can’t help but laugh at Pedicab drivers. Who in their right mind would want to do that? People looking to make a quick buck, that’s who.
I have vowed never to use a Pedicab again after using one in New York and the «driver» cycled into the side of a taxi on Broadway. It was quite frightening, made even more so by the fact he just carried on cycling.
Anyway. So being a student in Edinburgh, student friends from around the country like to come visit and stay with me. For whatever reason, they always seem to end up using Pedicabs. I think it is some sort of novelty. One night my flatmate decided to use them after his girlfriend refused to walk home (under the thumb…). So we live on Dalry Road which is approximately 15 minutes walk from the city centre. A black cab costs about 6 pound to get back to ours after a night out.
My flatmates pedicab journey cost him 40 pound!!! That’s like two weeks worth of food for me. I couldn’t believe it, I would quite happily ditch the driver and just run away instead of paying that ridiculous fee.
So, if you have money to burn and aren’t in that much of a hurry to get home then use a pedicab.

Without wanting to sound cruel, I honestly dont think there is anything funnier than watching a poor pedicab driver trying desperatly to pull 3 drunken rugby lads up a steep hill.
But to be honest, they will be getting thier moenys worth — because the pedicab driver can charge whatever he likes for this journey — making pedicabs soooo much more expensive than a black cab. Also, there are way more black cabs around the city, so you wont be waiting an age to get one. Also, black cabs have something very important — an engine. Makes it easier to get to places quicker. Just a suggestion.
Avoid, really is my conclusion. Unless you are a tourist who wants something different and had lots of money.

I have to admit when I first moved here I was sort of surprised to see pedicabs here, mostly cause I thought they seemed sort of unmoral.
Quickly though I saw how clever the whole concept was. Young people (mostly boys) get to cycle around town, and pick up people (usually drunk people) and charge what they want. A percentage goes to the pedicab company and the rest the cyclist gets to keep. (at least I think that’s how it works). Considering most of the clientele are drunk they can be easier to charge the high prices for their ride (compared to black cabs for example). I once saw a poor kid cycling up this steep hill with these too rather large middle aged drunk men sitting in the cart repeatedly yelling and cooing and occasionally smacking the poor guys bum. I hope he charged the extra.
As Fiona H. said this is not the most ideal way to travel around the city and certainly not the cheapest either. But I have come to get used to the ringing of bike’s bells around the Grassmarket area on a Saturday night and they seem to be doing good business with the drunks or the tourists.

If you fancy spending 20 minutes in the company of a knife-​wielding teenage shoplifter, who will literally rob you blind for a cold, uncomfortable, and dangerous lift, then by all accounts flag one of these bad boys down and hop in.
Stereotyping aside, I’d really rather walk, but I suppose this mode of transport serves some purpose to pissed (and easily exploitable) morons.

Yes, they’re much greener than normal taxis. And yes, they’re much easier to flag down at 3am than a black cab. But that’s about a far as the list of plus points goes.
They cost about three times the price of a black cab, and even though there is a certain amount of wiggle room for haggling over the price, it will definitely end up costing you so much you’ll probably wish you’d just walked it in the first place — 6 inch heels or not.
They’re pretty much open-​air too, despite their little flimsy roofs, so on those (many) Edinburgh nights when there’s horizontal sleet falling when you come out of a club, you can expect a face-​full of it all the way home. Which will take you three times as long as it would in a normal taxi, because the poor student who has to cycle the thing understandably doesn’t have the same power in his legs as a car’s engine.
Their one saving grace? They’re great for that one person on any night out who always peaks far too early and needs to go home by midnight. And when I say «peaks» I mean they’ve puked all over their own shoes and no black cabs will take them, and no-one’s offering to walk them home. That’s when these pedicabs are a welcome sight, but it’s about the only time.

Spare a thought for the young man sweating to peddle you and your friends around in a city that’s built on a massive hill. These guys work hard for their money, and if their prices seem exorbitant then just remember this: your driver will probably have to pay half of all he makes that night just to rent the contraption that weekend!
Seriously though, there really isn’t any better way to see the picturesque city of Edinburgh. Except maybe in a taxi.