Ten Years on One Bamboo Bike: How Taro Tsuruta Rides His Handbuilt Frame Every Day

In 2015, architect Taro Tsuruta read a Financial Times article about building a bicycle from bamboo. That same week, he decided to do a charity ride for Alzheimer's Research — because his mother was living with the disease. He booked a BBC workshop, chose his bamboo, and built a frame.

Ten Years, Zero Frame Failures

A decade later, Taro rides that same frame every single day. Around sixteen miles through London traffic, to his architecture practice. The bamboo joints are structurally intact. He has never needed to repair the frame — only cables every six months and a Brooks saddle replaced four or five times. Everything else has been maintenance, not repair.

In the summer of 2025, he rode the Dunwich Dynamo: 180 kilometres overnight in ten hours, including rest stops. "The bike handled it effortlessly." He has also completed London to London via Antwerp — over 600 kilometres — on the same frame. Every few days, a stranger stops him in the street to ask about it.

The Durability Argument

The conventional question about bamboo bicycles is always the same: will it last? Taro's answer is not a claim or a promise. It is ten years of daily evidence, accumulated on London's streets, through the rain, through the traffic, through long summer rides and wet winter commutes.

"Even after 10 years, every few days someone stops me to ask about the bike. My friends still introduce me to others as 'the bamboo bike guy.'"
— Taro Tsuruta, Architect and BBC Maker

The Charity Ride That Started It

The charity ride for Alzheimer's Research was the reason Taro first walked into a BBC workshop. He did the ride. He raised the funds. Then he kept riding — the same frame, the same routes, the same daily commitment to a machine he made himself, in memory of someone he loves.

Outcomes

• 10 years of daily use — frame structurally perfect throughout
• 16 miles per day commuting, London streets
• Dunwich Dynamo 2025: 180km in 10 hours completed
• London to London via Antwerp: 600km+ completed
• Charity ride for Alzheimer's Research completed
• Currently building a second BBC frame

"Take accurate body measurements and make it as custom as possible. But most importantly — speak to James Marr."
— Taro Tsuruta

If you want to know whether bamboo makes a good daily bicycle, Taro has been conducting a ten-year field test on the roads of London. The answer is yes.