tahustvedt said:
Almost all the bike paths here are at least twice as wide as my first velo, even with the 110 cm track. I ride in the road instead when there's less room or when there are a lot of pedestrians on them. Pedestrians in Norway are mostly mindless drones who don't give cyclists room for safe passing, even on roads made for both bikes and pedestrans. I wish the paths had a center line to encourage sharing. My new velomobile will be about 74
cm wide, which is about the same as handlebars on a regular bike.
Yes this aligns with my experiences of Swedish bikepaths aswell. People get surprised by a bike approaching on a bikepath...
And I am very carful to not approach too fast from behind with my silent cargobike. And when I ring the bell to alert zombies, even if I am like 30-40meters behind, they go like WHOA! and some literally jump to the side for no reason. A lot of drones staring at the screen of their phone, walking in the middle of the bikepath playing pokemon go.
When I built the tilting wintertrike, I had roughly my shoulders as guideline for the width. The handlebars are slightly wider.
I think this is an acceptable compromise, because even if the bike might be just as narrow as the body, having a trackwidth still makes the ride take more space. With the cargobike I can theoretically ride with almost half the vehicle "outside the road" So what I conclude is that going from 110cm to 74cm must be huge.
Ever considered 4 wheels for the wintervelo build? My experiences with the wintertrike leads me to a quadbuild. The main reasons being better tracking in snow with only 2 tracks instead of 3, and an easier time to avoid obstacles. Sometimes the winterroads have wheelpaths (from carwheels) in a ~5-10cm thick crust of ice, and 3 tracks can be very tricky to ride. (The front trackwidth won't fit in the wheelpath, but are to narrow to ride at either side. And with one wheel in the wheeltrack and one ontop of the crust, the rear wheel goes on the icy crust slope sliding all over the place.) Very unpleasant, and pretty common for countryside roads here at wintertime.
With 2 tracks I can ride one in the wheelpath, and the other ontop of the crust. This might be an extra significant problem for the particular trackwidth of my wintertrike. (50cm). Your velo version 1 should be able to ride with the front wheels at either side of the wheelpath and the rear wheel in it. To assure a somewhat stable ride.
Can you ride exclusively on bikepaths and go wherever you need to?