Perhaps a four wheel bicycle, also known as a quadricycle, quadracycle or surrey, could replace your car for short hops!
If someone came up to you and asked :What has four wheels, drives like a car but burns no gas? What can carry one, two or more people depending on the model and runs on bananas and yogurt?" Would your answer be: a four wheel bicycle, surrey or quadricycle? Probably not, you most likely would look at them like, why are you asking me this? Do I know you? Why are you bothering me? Well, maybe not all that but then you won't ask everyday strangers questions like this anyway. There are lots and lots of choices out there for 4 wheel pedal powered vehicles, more than you can imagine. I will try to give you a comprehensive listing of them and what you need to know about them. A bike of this type can be a great way to get around your neighborhood and run short errands. While you are pulling up to the local grocery store and going in, your friends are still cruising the lot looking for a place to park. Your friends come out, their car doesn't start because they left the lights on. Yours will always start because it runs on your power, not an external source. If you live in a planned community and don't want to drive a golf cart what alternatives do you have besides a car. Now you know there is a better way. Do you not like the idea of an electric car and still want to drive to work? What better way to burn off lunch? Were aren't talking about doing a 50 mile commute on a quadricycle but most people in the US don't commute that far. According to government statistics, the average driver only travels 12 miles and averages 32.3 mph. If you rode your quadricycle for just your daily commute and it was 12 miles away you could get there in 45 minutes doing around 17mph. Now, as they say, your actual mileage may vary. But what about those short trips like I talked about above. Why not use the quadricycle to go to the grocery store, hardware store or video store to rent a movie? It is a great way to get your metabolism revved up and burn off extra calories. Giving you the stability of a car, smooth ride of a car but not the environmental impact of a car this is truly a green alternative. If you have the right community, they are a great way for one or two people to get around and carry stuff with them when a tandem or single bike just won't do. Around in modern times commercially since the 1930's under the name "Velocar" by a French man named Charles Mochet, recently these vehicles have been available in the U.S. from a company called Rhoades Car Store If you are interested in a little history here it is, if not, skip down to the next paragraph. Seen as early as 1853 at the World Fair in New York, quadricycles were seen as a viable transportation alternative to the horse and buggy. Though not configured like a 4 wheeled bicycle you might see on the road today, these were one solution to the problem of low-speed stability in inherent in the early cycles such as high wheelers and similar types. Quadricycles of the period and were typically multi-seat models to make them practical as "real" transportation and not just a form of entertainment. The types of seating that you could find on the Quads of the time were tandem (in line like a tandem bicycle) and sociable (side-by-side called this because you could easily speak with your passenger thus you were being "sociable") seating configurations were used. Both of these designs are available today as prebuilt model or as combine-them-yourself models where you fit two bike together (like this. Another company that is producing a quadricycle is Quadracycle International. They produce the "Little Deuce Coupe" quad
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These bikes are a common way to get around resort areas as a family outing
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You can find these at some resorts as a fun filled way to get around. A company named 
