Passage 1: The Return of the Cargo Bike
For most of the twentieth century, the bicycle with a large box at the front was a familiar sight on the streets of many European towns. Bakers, butchers and postal workers used these heavy machines to carry goods short distances, and in some places children were taken to school in them. Shops often painted their names on the boxes, turning each bike into a moving advertisement. As cars and vans became cheaper after the 1950s, however, the cargo bike almost disappeared, surviving mainly as a curiosity in a few cycling-friendly cities. Today it is making an unexpected return, and transport planners are beginning to ask whether it could change the way goods move around urban areas.
The main reason for this revival is a problem known as the 'last mile'. Large lorries can move goods efficiently between warehouses, but the final stage of delivery, from a local depot to the customer's door, is slow and costly. In crowded city centres, delivery vans spend a large part of each day stuck in traffic or searching for somewhere to park, and drivers often stop in bus lanes or on pavements, creating danger for other road users. The problem has grown as more people order goods online and expect them to arrive within a day. Some estimates suggest that this final stage accounts for more than half of the total cost of sending a parcel.
Cargo bikes offer an attractive solution to these difficulties. Because they can use cycle lanes and park almost anywhere, riders are not delayed by congestion in the same way as van drivers. A trial in one medium-sized city, in which a courier company replaced six of its vans with twelve electric cargo bikes, found that each bike completed an average of 60 deliveries a day, compared with 45 for each van. The company also reported that its spending on fuel and parking fines, which had been major expenses, fell almost to zero. Modern designs make this possible: an electric motor assists the rider, allowing loads of up to 250 kilograms to be carried without extreme effort.
There are wider benefits for the city as well. Cargo bikes produce no exhaust fumes, so replacing even a small proportion of vans can improve air quality in busy streets. They are also much quieter, which means deliveries can be made early in the morning without disturbing residents. Road safety is another consideration. A collision with a bike travelling at 20 kilometres per hour is far less likely to cause serious injury than one involving a vehicle weighing several tonnes, and riders tend to have a clearer view of pedestrians than drivers sitting high in a cab. Some residents also say that their streets feel more pleasant when fewer large vehicles are parked along them.
Nevertheless, the cargo bike is not suitable for every job. Large or very heavy items, such as furniture or building materials, still require vans or lorries, and riders cannot cover long distances quickly. Weather is a further limitation: in heavy rain or snow, riding becomes uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe, and some companies find it difficult to keep staff during the winter months. Theft is another concern, since the bikes are valuable and easier to steal than a locked van. There is also the question of space. Because the bikes carry less than a van, a company needs small storage points close to customers, often called micro-depots, where riders can collect fresh loads during the day. In city centres where rents are high, finding a suitable site can be expensive.
Local governments have responded in different ways. Some have offered grants that cover part of the cost of buying an electric cargo bike, which can be as expensive as a small car. Others have introduced zones in the city centre where vans are allowed only at certain times, making bikes the most practical option for much of the day. A few cities have gone further and turned unused car parks into shared micro-depots, which several delivery firms can rent at a reduced price. Planners say that such policies work best when they are combined with a network of wide, well-maintained cycle lanes.
Whether the cargo bike becomes a permanent part of urban transport will depend partly on the growth of online shopping, which continues to increase the number of small parcels being sent. Transport researchers point out that the bikes are not intended to replace vans completely, but to take over the short, frequent trips in dense areas where vans perform worst. Some also expect better batteries to make the bikes lighter and able to travel further on a single charge. If that happens, the delivery bicycle may become as common in the twenty-first century as it was a hundred years ago.
Passage 2: Learning from Getting It Wrong
Most of us were taught at school that mistakes are something to avoid. Tests rewarded correct answers, red ink marked errors, and the best students were often those who rarely got anything wrong. It is not surprising, then, that many adults feel embarrassed when they make an error in front of others, and some avoid trying new activities altogether because they are afraid of looking foolish. Yet a growing body of research suggests that this attitude may be holding learners back. In my view, schools would produce more capable and more confident students if they treated mistakes not as failures but as an essential part of learning.
Consider first what happens when we get something wrong. When learners make a prediction and then discover that it was incorrect, they tend to pay closer attention to the correct answer that follows. Researchers call this the 'surprise effect': the gap between what we expected and what actually happened seems to make the new information more memorable. This may explain why a wrong guess, followed quickly by the right answer, often leaves a stronger memory than a correct answer that was simply given to us. In one study, students who attempted difficult questions before being taught a topic remembered more a week later than students who simply read the material first, even though the first group answered most of the initial questions incorrectly.
A related idea is known as productive failure. Here, teachers deliberately give students a problem that is slightly beyond their current ability and ask them to try to solve it without help. Most groups fail to find the correct method, but in the process they explore different approaches and discover why some do not work. Only then does the teacher explain the standard solution. Studies of mathematics classes using this approach have found that students understand the underlying ideas more deeply and are better at applying them to unfamiliar problems. I find these results convincing, although it is worth noting that most of the studies so far have involved older pupils rather than young children.
Critics argue that allowing students to struggle wastes valuable lesson time. If a teacher could simply explain the method in five minutes, why spend thirty minutes letting the class go down the wrong path? This objection is understandable, but I believe it misunderstands the purpose of education. The aim is not merely to cover the syllabus as quickly as possible, but to develop the kind of thinking that students will need when there is no teacher to give them the answer. Time spent working through mistakes is, in this sense, an investment rather than a loss. Of course, a teacher must still judge carefully how long to let the struggle continue, since students who remain stuck for too long may simply give up.
That said, not every mistake is useful. Errors are valuable only when learners receive feedback that helps them understand what went wrong. A student who repeats the same mistake in every homework exercise without correction is not learning; he or she is simply practising the error. The most useful feedback does not simply supply the right answer but asks the learner to find the error and explain it. Feedback also needs to arrive quickly. When marked work is returned two or three weeks later, most students look only at the final grade and ignore the comments, because the task no longer feels relevant to them.
Emotions play an important role too. Students who fear being laughed at or punished are unlikely to take risks, and without risks there can be few productive mistakes. Some teachers have tried to change the atmosphere of their classrooms by sharing their own errors, or by asking the class to vote for the 'most interesting mistake' of the week. These may sound like small changes, but surveys of pupils suggest that they can make learners noticeably more willing to attempt difficult tasks. One teacher reported that some of her quietest pupils began to answer questions in class for the first time. Personally, I would like to see such practices become a standard part of teacher training.
None of this means that accuracy does not matter, or that every lesson should begin with failure. A surgeon or a pilot must be precise, and exams will continue to reward correct answers. But the way to reach a high level of accuracy is not to avoid errors during learning; it is to make them early, understand them and correct them. If schools can help students see mistakes as information rather than as a judgement on their ability, they will be preparing them far better for the challenges of adult life.
