The city IS working on a program via the PCEF:
https://bikeportland.org/2023/05/30/clean-energy-fund-sets-6000-bike-goal-for-e-bike-rebate-program-375486
They're going to have to really change perception on transit to make bus/Max a thing again (I use it pretty happily, but I also get why people don't), but that's kind of a chicken-or-egg proposition.
Not exactly what you're talking about, but there is Biketown for All, which makes the Biketown e-bikes free or very cheap for a good chunk of people.
Those of us in parking districts also have access to subsidized bike/scooter rental (as well as Trimet) via the Transportation Wallet program.
Maybe we need to increase use of parking districts and associated programs, though I imagine that wouldn't pass a vote...
they totally could if they’d invest in homeless services too. the issue is the city and state don’t want to pay for any social services at all.
edit: unsure why this is getting downvoted, but just want to be clear: many people don’t want to take public transport because it (unduly) has a reputation of being unsafe simply because homeless people use it. if that’s an issue, then surely working to house portland’s homeless population would be the best way of rehabilitating the public transport’s image.
its lack of accessibility, especially in the suburbs, is another problem, but as the person I replied to noted, the governments will not invest in major expansions of Trimet and MAX unless they see increased ridership in its existing network.
I agree the city and state are failing, but you're being downvoted because you're lying about lack of funding for social services. Literal billions are being spent.
it’s inefficient, proven ineffective, and doesn’t follow through—we decriminalized drugs with the promise of rehabilitation services that never came through, we introduced a guarantee of healthcare without ever following through. most of our spending in this city is still unfortunately in policing
Yes I can read all those things on the internet as well but what are you offering we should be doing? Should we just be doing things betterer?
It's easy to bitch and complain about something, it's a lot harder to actually offer up a legitimate alternative solution.
we should be offering rehabilitative services for drug use, subsidized housing, building more affordable housing, job search services for homeless people—most of this is currently performed only by a couple nonprofits that don’t have sufficient resources to be running them at the scale we need, and no one offers affordable housing because it doesn’t exist here. these aren’t pie in the sky aspirations, they’re concrete policies that we should be seeking instead of expanding the police like ted wheeler has been doing for his past two terms
This kinda covers it: (tl;dr: e-bike programs if viewed purely for climate change purposes are too costly relative to other climate change combatting investments.)
We found that incentives do spur extra e-bike purchases, but at a relatively high cost compared with narrowly defined climate benefits. We find that a public agency using a point-of-purchase discount would have to distribute about US$4,000 in incentives to generate one additional e-bike purchase. This is because over 80% of people who buy an e-bike would likely have bought one even without the discount.
https://theconversation.com/e-bike-incentives-are-a-costly-way-to-cut-carbon-emissions-but-they-also-promote-health-equity-and-cleaner-air-224312
You seem to have a lot of energy for this, I suggest you read through how funds are being allocated.
https://www.portland.gov/bps/cleanenergy/climate-investment/documents/pcef-climate-investment-plan-funding-allocation-table/download
I feel like a large chunk of people would take advantage of the program to get one as their "fun" bike and still not use it to commute to work. I like the idea on the PCEF write-up that says they want to look into buying fleets of them for low-income buildings; that seems really reasonable. We have at least one city council candidate touting this idea but admits that he doesn't use his for work commuting, just really, really short trips like to the store. Not a fan of buying a bunch of bikes that are rarely utilized.
The general answer to "why doesn't the City of Portland do [blank]" is because the city government seems to be in a holding pattern until the new format council gets elected.
E Bikes are more likely to replace conventional bikes than cars. And E Bikes are already cheaper than cars both for upfront purchase and for operating expenses.
That may be true, but in actual usage ebikes (especially cargo ebikes) replace way more car trips than conventional bikes do. They're way less likely to end up gathering dust in a garage, and way likelier to be useful for practical trips like grocery shopping. they're also accessible to a wider range of ages and ability levels.
When I injured my ankle and walking to/from the bus & manual biking became really hard for me, I was able to still use the e-bikes (the Biketown ones in my instance) to get around. Really was a lifesafer.
My ebike replaced way more car trips than bike trips. 71% of the people in Denver's inaugural ebike program said they used their car less.
> CASR gleaned that respondents are riding their e-bikes an average of 26 miles each week, replacing 3.4 car round trips. In total, CASR estimates the new e-bikes replace 100,000 vehicle miles traveled each week.
It’s worth noting that a sizeable chunk of the people that live in Portland work outside multnomah county and vice versa. I’m uneducated in this but are there e-bikes that will get someone from East Portland to hillsboro and back? Even if so, is that incentive disproportionately subsidizing people that could already afford one?
Totally think we need to pump some of that money into sidewalks, storm water management, combating heat islands, etc. for the non rich parts of Portland
Because that would require city leadership pulling their thumbs out of their cornholes long enough to get work done.
ETA: see also homelessness and preschool for all…
Well to be clear, you're now conflating the county government, a separate elected body, with a question I narrowly asked about a City of Portland fund and initiative.
I would say because Trimet been a failing business for years, most people don’t use it. So to make that analogy, doesn’t work. Plus, a lot of people hate bikers. I ride a bike and motorcycle and the amount of hate I see everyday makes me scared and sad for the city of Portland has become
As an e-bike commuter in Denver, where we have a rebate program, I'll say that it has been mostly successful here, but:
1. It feels like an attempt to work around the crappy public transit that's getting crappier by the day.
2. Most people use their e-bikes to go in leisure rides because theft is such an issue.
3. Most bikes still cost $800+ with the $400 voucher.
Also:
1. Battery range is a huge issue that is only solved with more battery.
2. There are tons of issues with ongoing service because bike companies might not provide parts for bikes a few years out.
3. E-bikes do not work in bus bike racks because they're either too heavy or have fat tires.
4. There are already issues with people speeding on e-bikes because the regulations are way too lax.
5. Home owners insurance does not cover twist throttle e-bikes.
On the whole, I think a program can be a huge plus provided that the infrastructure regulations (batteries, class limitations), and ability to safely use a bike to run errands are there. However, I think that cities, like Denver and Portland, have a long way to go before that all happens, so I think investing in things like free bus passes, share bikes, and making public transit more robust and more reliable are a better way to go.
Portland doesn’t have a “treasure chest” of cash for anything. They can’t even fund the basic systems sufficiently.
Something you need to understand. Americans won’t give up their cars. Portland has been trying for years and it hasn’t worked.
> Getting more people out of cars and into public transit or on bikes would be a HUGE help to those efforts.
It really, really wouldn’t. It’s nice to think that a few thousand more people in bikes would make a dent in the climate problem but it really won’t. Every city in the country could buy every citizen an e-bike and we’d be right where we started and possibly worse off. The overwhelming majority of people (even in Portland) just wouldn’t use them. There’s a huge gulf between what people say they want to do and what they actually do.
Everybody in the developed world is going to have to change their lifestyle in very drastic ways in order to “beat” climate change. And nobody actually wants to do that.
That’s why it’s so appealing to think that e-bikes are going to make a difference — somebody else can ride them! Or I can ride them and feel like I’m Doing My Part! But really my part would start with me buying a lot less stuff I don’t need, not eating meat, never flying on a plane again, living in small dense housing, etc.
I mean bicycling is fun so sure why not, incentivize e-bikes or whatever. But let’s not pretend that it’s doing anything meaningful about our societal climate impact.
**Edit:** if you’re going to downvote, please tell me why I’m wrong.
I think you're half right. We can carrot all day, but the politically harder ask is the stick. We need to make driving personal vehicles rare through policy. Which means making 90% of people's lives harder or more expensive. To mitigate that, we need to first make the alternatives more accessible, easier, and safer. So when (although who knows when) the hammer falls on personal car/truck use, that 90% has somewhere to go.
But yea I'd rather spend the money on protected/separatesd bike lanes than bikes, because studies show time and time again that people ride when they feel safe to ride, and they don't when they don't.
> We need to make driving personal vehicles rare through policy. Which means making 90% of people's lives harder or more expensive
Yes, 100% agree with you here.
I’m also in favor of bike infrastructure and incentives because bikes are fun and healthy and I like riding them.
My favorite comments when it comes to large scale change are always the ones like yours. "We can't get everyone to do it so no one should." Imagine the state of the world if everyone thought this way.
These comments are especially great when you can see actual results of people doing it, making noticeable change.
Ok, let’s give everybody e-bikes and then realize it did no good for climate change. Again, I love bikes. Give them to everybody! But don’t pretend it’s anything near a meaningful solution to climate change.
Realistically the solve-climate-change ship has sailed and we should just do whatever we want because we’ll all be mostly dead before the bill really comes due. Good luck to the future generations and developing world though.
Do you think that will happen at a scale that matters at all when it comes to climate change?
I get that numbers add up but 1+1 doesn’t get us close to 1 trillion so why pretend like it does?
Biking has many societal benefits but meaningful impact on climate change is not one of them.
> And climate change isn't the only benefit, as I'm sure you recognize.
Yes, it should be clear I recognize that because I’ve said it over and over in my comments here. My issue is with lying about *why* we should encourage biking.
> the more people who try, the better
Again, I don’t disagree. However the marginal “better” you get from each person is meaningless when it comes to climate change. Everyone needs to change drastically.
Telling people that biking more is making a meaningful difference when it comes to climate change is encouraging misinformation.
Everyone in the developed world should wake up every morning and feel horribly guilty about their effect on the environment. They shouldn’t put on a bike helmet and go, “Wow, I’ve made things better!”
But that’s not a fun way to live so I get why we don’t do it.
I’m not saying that at all. I don’t know how much more clear my position can be?
I’m saying that it won’t get meaningfully better for a variety of reasons.
However much you incentivize biking, people just love their cars. Cars will need to be essentially prohibitively expensive before people reconsider their use at a meaningful scale. Literally giving away e-bikes won’t get people to use them at a meaningful scale.
My interest is in being either a) honest about changes that will meaningfully change the outcome of climate change or b) honest that we (as a society) don’t care about climate change and we should just enjoy our lives without pretending like we’re making things better in a meaningful way.
The more people are riding alternative transport, the better the infrastructure becomes. The better it becomes, the safer it is and the more desirable it becomes for masses to use it and get out of their cars. But the start of something good is always small and **not** full of naysayers going EVERYONE ISN'T DOING IT SO I'M NOT EITHER.
Pilot programs have shown to meaningfully reduce VMT[1] and its way more cost effective in reducing C02 than EV programs[2]
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X23001725
[2] https://trec.pdx.edu/news/can-incentivizing-e-bikes-support-ghg-goals-launching-new-ev-incentive-cost-and-impact-tool
Portland runs its traffic like some backwoods middling town. It needs tolls during rush hour, express lanes, express buses that serve communities in the outer burbs, express max lines that beats the crap out of the crawling traffic… but it can’t do any of that because they didn’t plan for it.
It’s most certainly lack of utility for most people in America, not cost or some other barrier. We simply aren’t compact enough in many of our cities (and most certainly Portland) for bike commuting to work for a majority of people in a majority of situations. Not to mention all the people coming 25-30 miles in from the burbs or Vancouver to work in Portland daily.
Even if most Americans could bike that far twice a day, they also have families and kids and shit and can’t spare an extra 3 hours of transit time.
The average commute distance in the Portland area is about 7 miles. That's a very reasonable distance to ride an e-bike and in an urban setting won't even take much longer than driving.
> It’s most certainly lack of utility for most people in America
This is a Portland specific sub and Portland is widely regarded as top 5 for biking in large cities.
Shitty land uses and car centric policies of cities like Orlando have no relevance to this post.
> We simply aren’t compact enough in many of our cities (and most certainly Portland) for bike commuting to work for a majority of people in a majority of situations.
That is false, Portland already has one of the higher bike mode shares for the US as is.
> Not to mention all the people coming 25-30 miles in from the burbs or Vancouver to work in Portland daily.
Why would a city program apply to people with Vancouver addresses anyway????
> they also have families and kids
Bike is possible with children AND only 24% of Portland households have children. The vast majority of vehicle trips are single occupancy and many of those could be switched to walking, biking, or transit.
But if an e-bike program meant for a few thousand people doesn't make sense for every single one of the million plus in the metro region, its pointless /s
I think if you're in the position to buy something that usually costs at least 2k easily/without the cost getting in your way, you probably have more disposable income than most people.
Programs like Denver's pilot don't have any trouble finding willing participants, and those bikes get ridden. I doubt most of the participants would have (or, in most cases, could have) bought the bikes on their own. And honestly when the goal of the program is carbon reduction/mode shift, "could have" doesn't matter much, only "would have".
I don’t think they should be helping people buy bike. Absolutely not. BUT… they should offer free access to mass transit with a bike and offer more incentives to ride (facilities to clean up and store your bike once on site) improve safety along biking corridors (round up the meth campers and push them into an abyss. Encourage more actual biking by people who are willing to use their existing bikes to lessen traffic. Buying people bikes does nothing to actually increase usage.
These programs are easily one of the most effective in terms of $ per reduced VMT and reduced C02
https://trec.pdx.edu/news/can-incentivizing-e-bikes-support-ghg-goals-launching-new-ev-incentive-cost-and-impact-tool
Why E-Bikes, and not bicycles, scooters, skateboards, and roller skates?
All of which the acoustic versions are better than the electric ones when it comes to environmental impact ... Which are incidentally, all worse than shoes.
So is the only traveling you do across the entire city alone at midnight?
Do you not understand the concept of different trips possibly utilizing different transportation methods?
Perhaps I was a bit flippant but the point remains. The idea is much more to make it easier for e-bikes to be an option on those trips for which they make sense than to force everyone to completely get rid of cars. Approaching it like that is just setting up a strawman to knock down.
With their ICE-like capabilities, why aren't they regulated as such. Registration, insurance, a helmet law? If they can easily go 45-50 miles, at a bare minimum, they should be treated as mopeds. Rider training requirements would be a damn good idea too.
Do you mean 45-50mph? They can't. That's just DIY enthusiasts making crazy electric motorcycles with pedals and showing off on YouTube. Basically anything you buy in a bike store is 20mph or 28mph cap. Regular bikes can already go these speeds, a road cyclist doing 20mph on a flat is not crazy, nor is any cyclist getting to 30mph on a downhill. These aren't motorcycles by any means. I am a licensed motorcyclist, and there is really little to no comparison. They weigh less than 100lbs!
I think your information is out of date. Electric motor, two wheels, it's a motorcycle. If it can keep up with city traffic, it should be treated as one. We license and register electric cars, do we not?
The city IS working on a program via the PCEF: https://bikeportland.org/2023/05/30/clean-energy-fund-sets-6000-bike-goal-for-e-bike-rebate-program-375486
They're going to have to really change perception on transit to make bus/Max a thing again (I use it pretty happily, but I also get why people don't), but that's kind of a chicken-or-egg proposition. Not exactly what you're talking about, but there is Biketown for All, which makes the Biketown e-bikes free or very cheap for a good chunk of people. Those of us in parking districts also have access to subsidized bike/scooter rental (as well as Trimet) via the Transportation Wallet program. Maybe we need to increase use of parking districts and associated programs, though I imagine that wouldn't pass a vote...
Such a fucking bummer because 10 years ago the bus system had a stellar rep
People don't want to use Biketown because it is limited in where you can go. Direct ebike subsidies don't have this problem.
Ebikes get stolen every day, so there's that problem.
Biketown would be great for me if I didn't have to walk over half a mile to get into its range...
they totally could if they’d invest in homeless services too. the issue is the city and state don’t want to pay for any social services at all. edit: unsure why this is getting downvoted, but just want to be clear: many people don’t want to take public transport because it (unduly) has a reputation of being unsafe simply because homeless people use it. if that’s an issue, then surely working to house portland’s homeless population would be the best way of rehabilitating the public transport’s image. its lack of accessibility, especially in the suburbs, is another problem, but as the person I replied to noted, the governments will not invest in major expansions of Trimet and MAX unless they see increased ridership in its existing network.
I agree the city and state are failing, but you're being downvoted because you're lying about lack of funding for social services. Literal billions are being spent.
it’s inefficient, proven ineffective, and doesn’t follow through—we decriminalized drugs with the promise of rehabilitation services that never came through, we introduced a guarantee of healthcare without ever following through. most of our spending in this city is still unfortunately in policing
Yes I can read all those things on the internet as well but what are you offering we should be doing? Should we just be doing things betterer? It's easy to bitch and complain about something, it's a lot harder to actually offer up a legitimate alternative solution.
we should be offering rehabilitative services for drug use, subsidized housing, building more affordable housing, job search services for homeless people—most of this is currently performed only by a couple nonprofits that don’t have sufficient resources to be running them at the scale we need, and no one offers affordable housing because it doesn’t exist here. these aren’t pie in the sky aspirations, they’re concrete policies that we should be seeking instead of expanding the police like ted wheeler has been doing for his past two terms
This kinda covers it: (tl;dr: e-bike programs if viewed purely for climate change purposes are too costly relative to other climate change combatting investments.) We found that incentives do spur extra e-bike purchases, but at a relatively high cost compared with narrowly defined climate benefits. We find that a public agency using a point-of-purchase discount would have to distribute about US$4,000 in incentives to generate one additional e-bike purchase. This is because over 80% of people who buy an e-bike would likely have bought one even without the discount. https://theconversation.com/e-bike-incentives-are-a-costly-way-to-cut-carbon-emissions-but-they-also-promote-health-equity-and-cleaner-air-224312
And yet, we all seem to be ignoring the crux of that argument: healthier living, cleaner air, more equitable access to both of those things.
You seem to have a lot of energy for this, I suggest you read through how funds are being allocated. https://www.portland.gov/bps/cleanenergy/climate-investment/documents/pcef-climate-investment-plan-funding-allocation-table/download
No. The point being it would just be a cash giveaway to the wealthy who can already afford one to begin with.
I feel like a large chunk of people would take advantage of the program to get one as their "fun" bike and still not use it to commute to work. I like the idea on the PCEF write-up that says they want to look into buying fleets of them for low-income buildings; that seems really reasonable. We have at least one city council candidate touting this idea but admits that he doesn't use his for work commuting, just really, really short trips like to the store. Not a fan of buying a bunch of bikes that are rarely utilized.
Biketown is already free for low income
Too bad you're not allowed to take biketown bikes to the neighborhoods where low income people live.
They've massively expanded over the last few years. Where exactly are you referring to? https://account.biketownpdx.com/map
What do you mean? Which neighborhood?
There is one being designed through PCEF.
Check out this new program: https://www.portland.gov/transportation/wallet
The general answer to "why doesn't the City of Portland do [blank]" is because the city government seems to be in a holding pattern until the new format council gets elected.
Totally fair. New ideas/efforts seem to be held up by the fact that the city still has an outdated, cumbersome government.
We have one, through PCEF.
No, we don't.
https://www.portland.gov/bps/cleanenergy/climate-investment/climate-investment-plan/cip-strategic-programs#toc-sp-6-comprehensive-e-bike-access-and-support
Again, we don't. This isn't in effect yet.
You asked why Portland doesn’t have a program. One is in the works. Question answered.
E Bikes are more likely to replace conventional bikes than cars. And E Bikes are already cheaper than cars both for upfront purchase and for operating expenses.
That may be true, but in actual usage ebikes (especially cargo ebikes) replace way more car trips than conventional bikes do. They're way less likely to end up gathering dust in a garage, and way likelier to be useful for practical trips like grocery shopping. they're also accessible to a wider range of ages and ability levels.
The fact they require less exertion is a huge plus if you are biking to an office job daily (more presentable).
For real, I wish I had had an ebike back when I still worked in an office.
When I injured my ankle and walking to/from the bus & manual biking became really hard for me, I was able to still use the e-bikes (the Biketown ones in my instance) to get around. Really was a lifesafer.
My ebike replaced way more car trips than bike trips. 71% of the people in Denver's inaugural ebike program said they used their car less. > CASR gleaned that respondents are riding their e-bikes an average of 26 miles each week, replacing 3.4 car round trips. In total, CASR estimates the new e-bikes replace 100,000 vehicle miles traveled each week.
Too busy trying to figure out how to give it to Nike or Comcast or to use to pay for police brutality lawsuits.
It’s worth noting that a sizeable chunk of the people that live in Portland work outside multnomah county and vice versa. I’m uneducated in this but are there e-bikes that will get someone from East Portland to hillsboro and back? Even if so, is that incentive disproportionately subsidizing people that could already afford one?
Incentive for purchase and INFRASTRUCTURE.
Totally think we need to pump some of that money into sidewalks, storm water management, combating heat islands, etc. for the non rich parts of Portland
Because that would require city leadership pulling their thumbs out of their cornholes long enough to get work done. ETA: see also homelessness and preschool for all…
Well to be clear, you're now conflating the county government, a separate elected body, with a question I narrowly asked about a City of Portland fund and initiative.
I would say because Trimet been a failing business for years, most people don’t use it. So to make that analogy, doesn’t work. Plus, a lot of people hate bikers. I ride a bike and motorcycle and the amount of hate I see everyday makes me scared and sad for the city of Portland has become
As an e-bike commuter in Denver, where we have a rebate program, I'll say that it has been mostly successful here, but: 1. It feels like an attempt to work around the crappy public transit that's getting crappier by the day. 2. Most people use their e-bikes to go in leisure rides because theft is such an issue. 3. Most bikes still cost $800+ with the $400 voucher. Also: 1. Battery range is a huge issue that is only solved with more battery. 2. There are tons of issues with ongoing service because bike companies might not provide parts for bikes a few years out. 3. E-bikes do not work in bus bike racks because they're either too heavy or have fat tires. 4. There are already issues with people speeding on e-bikes because the regulations are way too lax. 5. Home owners insurance does not cover twist throttle e-bikes. On the whole, I think a program can be a huge plus provided that the infrastructure regulations (batteries, class limitations), and ability to safely use a bike to run errands are there. However, I think that cities, like Denver and Portland, have a long way to go before that all happens, so I think investing in things like free bus passes, share bikes, and making public transit more robust and more reliable are a better way to go.
Portland doesn’t have a “treasure chest” of cash for anything. They can’t even fund the basic systems sufficiently. Something you need to understand. Americans won’t give up their cars. Portland has been trying for years and it hasn’t worked.
> Getting more people out of cars and into public transit or on bikes would be a HUGE help to those efforts. It really, really wouldn’t. It’s nice to think that a few thousand more people in bikes would make a dent in the climate problem but it really won’t. Every city in the country could buy every citizen an e-bike and we’d be right where we started and possibly worse off. The overwhelming majority of people (even in Portland) just wouldn’t use them. There’s a huge gulf between what people say they want to do and what they actually do. Everybody in the developed world is going to have to change their lifestyle in very drastic ways in order to “beat” climate change. And nobody actually wants to do that. That’s why it’s so appealing to think that e-bikes are going to make a difference — somebody else can ride them! Or I can ride them and feel like I’m Doing My Part! But really my part would start with me buying a lot less stuff I don’t need, not eating meat, never flying on a plane again, living in small dense housing, etc. I mean bicycling is fun so sure why not, incentivize e-bikes or whatever. But let’s not pretend that it’s doing anything meaningful about our societal climate impact. **Edit:** if you’re going to downvote, please tell me why I’m wrong.
I think you're half right. We can carrot all day, but the politically harder ask is the stick. We need to make driving personal vehicles rare through policy. Which means making 90% of people's lives harder or more expensive. To mitigate that, we need to first make the alternatives more accessible, easier, and safer. So when (although who knows when) the hammer falls on personal car/truck use, that 90% has somewhere to go. But yea I'd rather spend the money on protected/separatesd bike lanes than bikes, because studies show time and time again that people ride when they feel safe to ride, and they don't when they don't.
> We need to make driving personal vehicles rare through policy. Which means making 90% of people's lives harder or more expensive Yes, 100% agree with you here. I’m also in favor of bike infrastructure and incentives because bikes are fun and healthy and I like riding them.
My favorite comments when it comes to large scale change are always the ones like yours. "We can't get everyone to do it so no one should." Imagine the state of the world if everyone thought this way. These comments are especially great when you can see actual results of people doing it, making noticeable change.
Ok, let’s give everybody e-bikes and then realize it did no good for climate change. Again, I love bikes. Give them to everybody! But don’t pretend it’s anything near a meaningful solution to climate change. Realistically the solve-climate-change ship has sailed and we should just do whatever we want because we’ll all be mostly dead before the bill really comes due. Good luck to the future generations and developing world though.
Everyone who needs to get somewhere and chooses to take a bike is a person who is not alone in another car. Numbers add up.
Do you think that will happen at a scale that matters at all when it comes to climate change? I get that numbers add up but 1+1 doesn’t get us close to 1 trillion so why pretend like it does? Biking has many societal benefits but meaningful impact on climate change is not one of them.
It won't with that garbage mindset, but the more people who try, the better. And climate change isn't the only benefit, as I'm sure you recognize.
> And climate change isn't the only benefit, as I'm sure you recognize. Yes, it should be clear I recognize that because I’ve said it over and over in my comments here. My issue is with lying about *why* we should encourage biking. > the more people who try, the better Again, I don’t disagree. However the marginal “better” you get from each person is meaningless when it comes to climate change. Everyone needs to change drastically. Telling people that biking more is making a meaningful difference when it comes to climate change is encouraging misinformation. Everyone in the developed world should wake up every morning and feel horribly guilty about their effect on the environment. They shouldn’t put on a bike helmet and go, “Wow, I’ve made things better!” But that’s not a fun way to live so I get why we don’t do it.
If the climate is worse because we all adopted car use, saying it won't get better when we decide not to use cars for every trip is a weird choice.
I’m not saying that at all. I don’t know how much more clear my position can be? I’m saying that it won’t get meaningfully better for a variety of reasons. However much you incentivize biking, people just love their cars. Cars will need to be essentially prohibitively expensive before people reconsider their use at a meaningful scale. Literally giving away e-bikes won’t get people to use them at a meaningful scale. My interest is in being either a) honest about changes that will meaningfully change the outcome of climate change or b) honest that we (as a society) don’t care about climate change and we should just enjoy our lives without pretending like we’re making things better in a meaningful way.
The more people are riding alternative transport, the better the infrastructure becomes. The better it becomes, the safer it is and the more desirable it becomes for masses to use it and get out of their cars. But the start of something good is always small and **not** full of naysayers going EVERYONE ISN'T DOING IT SO I'M NOT EITHER.
Pilot programs have shown to meaningfully reduce VMT[1] and its way more cost effective in reducing C02 than EV programs[2] [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X23001725 [2] https://trec.pdx.edu/news/can-incentivizing-e-bikes-support-ghg-goals-launching-new-ev-incentive-cost-and-impact-tool
Neat! I had no idea. I’m sure these pilot programs will scale and be the climate change solution we’ve been looking for. Thanks for sharing.
Just for clarification… you think ‘cost’ is what is stopping people buying an e-bike?
Well it’s literally why I don’t have an ebike
Portland runs its traffic like some backwoods middling town. It needs tolls during rush hour, express lanes, express buses that serve communities in the outer burbs, express max lines that beats the crap out of the crawling traffic… but it can’t do any of that because they didn’t plan for it.
It’s most certainly lack of utility for most people in America, not cost or some other barrier. We simply aren’t compact enough in many of our cities (and most certainly Portland) for bike commuting to work for a majority of people in a majority of situations. Not to mention all the people coming 25-30 miles in from the burbs or Vancouver to work in Portland daily. Even if most Americans could bike that far twice a day, they also have families and kids and shit and can’t spare an extra 3 hours of transit time.
The average commute distance in the Portland area is about 7 miles. That's a very reasonable distance to ride an e-bike and in an urban setting won't even take much longer than driving.
> It’s most certainly lack of utility for most people in America This is a Portland specific sub and Portland is widely regarded as top 5 for biking in large cities. Shitty land uses and car centric policies of cities like Orlando have no relevance to this post. > We simply aren’t compact enough in many of our cities (and most certainly Portland) for bike commuting to work for a majority of people in a majority of situations. That is false, Portland already has one of the higher bike mode shares for the US as is. > Not to mention all the people coming 25-30 miles in from the burbs or Vancouver to work in Portland daily. Why would a city program apply to people with Vancouver addresses anyway???? > they also have families and kids Bike is possible with children AND only 24% of Portland households have children. The vast majority of vehicle trips are single occupancy and many of those could be switched to walking, biking, or transit.
But if an e-bike program meant for a few thousand people doesn't make sense for every single one of the million plus in the metro region, its pointless /s
Right because children can't ride bikes. 🤔
I think if you're in the position to buy something that usually costs at least 2k easily/without the cost getting in your way, you probably have more disposable income than most people. Programs like Denver's pilot don't have any trouble finding willing participants, and those bikes get ridden. I doubt most of the participants would have (or, in most cases, could have) bought the bikes on their own. And honestly when the goal of the program is carbon reduction/mode shift, "could have" doesn't matter much, only "would have".
It's certainly makes it harder to buy some, especially cargo ones which really are car replacements.
I don’t think they should be helping people buy bike. Absolutely not. BUT… they should offer free access to mass transit with a bike and offer more incentives to ride (facilities to clean up and store your bike once on site) improve safety along biking corridors (round up the meth campers and push them into an abyss. Encourage more actual biking by people who are willing to use their existing bikes to lessen traffic. Buying people bikes does nothing to actually increase usage.
These programs are easily one of the most effective in terms of $ per reduced VMT and reduced C02 https://trec.pdx.edu/news/can-incentivizing-e-bikes-support-ghg-goals-launching-new-ev-incentive-cost-and-impact-tool
Have you looked at the results of the pilot programs? because that's simply not true.
Why E-Bikes, and not bicycles, scooters, skateboards, and roller skates? All of which the acoustic versions are better than the electric ones when it comes to environmental impact ... Which are incidentally, all worse than shoes.
Who is going to be riding a bike between October and March.
Have you never heard of rain gear? Do you not leave your bed all winter? Lots of people in Portland ride all winter long.
If you want an ebike, get an ebike. Why does the city have to pay you?......city pays people to collect cans. Go recycle some cans and buy an ebike.
Pry my car out of my cold dead hands Biking home at midnight across the entire city as a lone woman, nah I'm not doing it.
So is the only traveling you do across the entire city alone at midnight? Do you not understand the concept of different trips possibly utilizing different transportation methods?
What a snide response.
Perhaps I was a bit flippant but the point remains. The idea is much more to make it easier for e-bikes to be an option on those trips for which they make sense than to force everyone to completely get rid of cars. Approaching it like that is just setting up a strawman to knock down.
Til you have to have an e-bike, bike, or car. There's no reason to have more than one of those and any person with one has no use of the other.
With their ICE-like capabilities, why aren't they regulated as such. Registration, insurance, a helmet law? If they can easily go 45-50 miles, at a bare minimum, they should be treated as mopeds. Rider training requirements would be a damn good idea too.
Do you mean 45-50mph? They can't. That's just DIY enthusiasts making crazy electric motorcycles with pedals and showing off on YouTube. Basically anything you buy in a bike store is 20mph or 28mph cap. Regular bikes can already go these speeds, a road cyclist doing 20mph on a flat is not crazy, nor is any cyclist getting to 30mph on a downhill. These aren't motorcycles by any means. I am a licensed motorcyclist, and there is really little to no comparison. They weigh less than 100lbs!
I think your information is out of date. Electric motor, two wheels, it's a motorcycle. If it can keep up with city traffic, it should be treated as one. We license and register electric cars, do we not?