RSS FeedPedi No Mani
Has it really been almost five years since Pedicabs first came to Penn Quarter? GPLiving posted his surprise back in June of 2006 upon coming across his first DC pedicab on 7th Street NW, but now you can hail them like a taxi. Despite their ubiquitousness in downtown DC we’ve never actually been a passenger on one and today we thought we should rectify that.
Unfortunately we thought of this while out for a walk with our dog*, so we did the next best thing: We flagged down an empty pedicab and ask the (driver? peddler? biker? we’re going with driver) if she minded answering a few questions for a local, and lucky for us we snagged a good one, Robin with Capitol Pedicabs.
So how much do they cost? What should you expect from your driver? Where are you likely to find a cab?
- Cost: The basic cost is $60 an hour, or more precisely $1 a minute. But that price can fluctuate based on the number of passengers, the girth of said passengers, if the ride is uphill/downhill, and if the ride is to a location where they are likely to pick up a return passenger. Maybe you want to ride from PQ to Nats Park? That’s about a 30 minute walk, so we’re guessing a 15 minute Pedicab ride. It has a decent up-hill run so we’re going to ballpark (ha!) that at $20. But your pedicab driver knows there won’t be many return passengers at the start of a ball game and might quote you a higher price based on that one-way fare.
- What to Expect: A pretty detailed tour of whatever part of the city you ride through. Robin said this was her favorite part, showing off and discussing the various sights DC has to offer.
- Hailing a Pedicab: The Mall & museums are obvious places, but you can find Pedicabs all throughout Penn Quarter. Robin in fact was the 5th Pedicab driver we considered speaking with; the others either had passengers or were too far away to call.
Pedicabs are likely to be most heavily utilized by tourists, but that doesn’t mean locals shouldn’t take advantage of them as well. For our next (first) trip we’re thinking grocery store.
*We don’t want to do a disservice to Robin and suggest she won’t allow dogs in her pedicab, we didn’t even ask.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
There’s nothing you can put on a manual bike, other than a variety of gears such as on 7-speed bikes, to help lug around more weight. It’s all leg strength. Don’t you think that if there was a mechanism that made riding bikes easier, all bikes would have it? 
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Is there some kind of built-in mechanism that assists the driver? If not, that would require some serious leg strength.