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Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 4y agoImpressive results. Now the question is will they commit to a program with so few costs and so many benefits, or will they just forget it like most American cities forget their "pilot" programs?
- WillPostForFood 4y agoJust looking at reducing CO2 emissions, 0.94 lb CO2e per dollar spent is a terrible return. That money applied to more efficient CO2 reduction options could return 100-1000x better.
- dylan604 4y ago[flagged]
- WillPostForFood 4y agoWhy? Because it is the #2 bullet point on their presentation of benefits. They could have left it off, but they are trying to make it like like a some sort of win. Considering the opportunity cost, it is not a benefit.
- ackfoobar 4y agoI get around by bike. Reducing CO2 emissions was the last in the list of pros of that choice. Scratch that, it did not cross my mind at all.
- jeffbee 4y agoCDOT spent $1.2 billion on 10 miles of I-70 widening. How much CO2 did that reduce per dollar? Oh, none?
- acdha 4y agoIt’s a long game. Removing a car from the road lowers CO2 now and saves the rider a ton of money for years, but it also reduces demand for expensive infrastructure which locks in a massive CO2 footprint for decades. If you build society around driving, people will expect endless road expansion and repair projects; give them better alternatives and that feedback process works in the other direction, not to mention the general benefit from saving lives and improving quality of life.
- simonsarris 4y agoNot mentioned in the summary but super relevant to understand what they are talking about: > After nine months, the City had spent $4.7 million to provide vouchers to 4,734 Denver residents [for ebikes and equipment to ride in the winter] I'm a bit skeptical of some of this data: > 65% of Ride Report's Ride App users were riding at least once daily, and 90% were riding weekly. In the report, it mentions the Ride App was iPhone only and "Our sample size consisted of 70 riders across 12 of the 19 participating local bike shops". Is that 70 iPhone users out of the 4,734 voucher recipients? It seems like it would wildly skew any survey data to expect them to be representative. Sadly they do not report any other survey data, like how many of the recipients even completed the online survey. I suspect there's some huge self selection going on. It's hard to take these numbers at face value.
- dylan604 4y ago4.7m / 4734 residents is just under $1k per resident. I'd love to have $1k back for the purchase of my e-bike. I hesitated a bit on my decision to purchase an e-bike, but that would have made it an instant buy now decision. I'm okay with the initial price I paid for mine, and then the additional add-ons I bought once I realized how much I could do with the thing. It's always my luck to miss out on the free money from the gov't just like the covid payouts.
- JPKab 4y agoYou're correct to be skeptical. Denver city government has a tremendous amount of waste and city officials and non-profit partners desperately trying to get more funding by presenting programs as rosy as possible. Colorado politics has a long, long history of corruption, but Denver is especially egregious.
- webdood90 4y agoIn Denver and I question this data as well. It sounds like a nice program but I imagine it subsidized a lot of bikes that are sitting in storage for the majority of their lives. There should have been more aggressive terms - completely free bikes if you don't have a car or get rid of one. There is no incentive to actually use them with the current strategy.
- 4y ago
- d_sem 4y agoWhen you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the opportunity cost of car ownership over e-bike adoption is tremendous. The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year: a figure which blows my mind.(edit: Source bankrate.com, the top hit on google) As a personal anecdote, my household has gone from 3 cars pre-pandemic (2 commuters + 1 back up beater car) down to 1 commuter, 1 e-bike, 1 bicycle. The change has been startling in improved quality of life.
- liquidise 4y agoHow is that yearly cost figure derived? I can't imagine it is repairs, gas, tolls, registration and maintenance alone.
- potatochup 4y agoThat probably includes capital/depreciation? But I agree it seems high
- askvictor 4y agoIt seems high as the costs of depreciation are hidden. Also, depending on how the average is calculated, it might include stupidly expensive cars alongside cheapies. But the upshot is that owning a car is expensive.
- askvictor 4y agoDepreciation of value would be the most significant cost. Financing costs might also factor into.
- Plasmoid 4y agoIt could be including depreciation, loan interest, and insurance.
- d_sem 4y agoMy source is bankrate.com (top google search hit) which doesn't provide an exact line item breakdown. Here are some parameters they consider: - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month - Average repair costs ~ $1,425 - Depreciation of initial investment. (google search returns an average new car - cost to be ~$50,000 USD in 2022) - Gas - Registration
- Gigachad 4y agoE bikes are amazing for getting around. Did it for years before moving inner city and just walking. The major issue I had was the fear of theft as e-bikes are stolen regularly and cost a lot to replace.
- stevenpetryk 4y agoInsurance is pretty cheap though. My ~$2.5k e-bike's insurance for no-questions-asked replacement in the case of theft is $12/month. Probably higher in high-crime areas but still, nothing compared to auto insurance.
- jupp0r 4y agoThe major issue is safety. Bikers are much more (3.4x to 11.5x) likely to be fatally injured per mile travelled compared to people driving cars [1]. Better bike infrastructure is needed. [1] https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/ https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/
- avianlyric 4y agoYet despite that, the improvement in fitness from commuting by bike rather than car, is so great that switching to bike will statistically increase your lifespan in just about every city in the world. That’s after including the negative impacts of increased exposure to air pollution, and higher likelihood of being fatally injured while commuting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cycling-to-work-means-better-health-and-a-longer-life-heres-how-to-get-started/2017/09/08/b48d13f2-72ed-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cycli...
- jupp0r 4y agoThe article is comparing biking vs not doing any exercise. Not sure how applicable that is for the average person. Does not apply to me at all.
- juve1996 4y ago> is so great that switching to bike will statistically increase your lifespan Yea but so can a large number of other activities that let you keep your car.
- j_walter 4y agoHonestly this is not great efficiency. While getting more people of the road is great, the CO2e avoided per dollar is magnitiudes less than what can be done at the private company level. $4.77M for 2,040 MT CO2e reduced/avoided yearly My company was able to install a abatement unit that reduced >4,000 MT CO2e yearly for ~$150K. We are doing many more of these, but the cost is way better on a per lb level than this waste of money. If we are going to get serious about emissions reduction, stop the feel good measures and focus on where it will make the most impact.
- avianlyric 4y agoHas it occurred to you that e-bikes provide greater benefits than just CO2 reduction? They also reduce congestion by removing car journeys, they reduce amount of road infrastructure that needs to be built, they reduce the cost of maintaining road infrastructure (e-bike cause effectively zero damage to roads), they reduce healthcare costs by improving rider fitness. In short, for a government getting people on e-bikes can result in huge savings for relatively small investments. I believe for most developed nations you would expect every $1 spent on improving active travel to produce at least $2 of savings over a ten year period.
- lotsoweiners 4y agoSure but do they actually?
- avianlyric 4y agoDo they actually what? Provide other benefits? Then yes, there’s huge body of evidence out there that shows active travel of any kind significantly improves people individual lives, and also the community they live within. I don’t really understand why anyone would struggle to believe the a fitter, healthier population would be a good thing.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoYes
- 4y ago
- PaulsWallet 4y agoMy problem with e-bikes is my problem with regular bikes. Riding on the sidewalk is generally not permitted and I don't trust drivers in cars to not murder me while driving in the street.
- 0_____0 4y agoSounds like a problem with cars, but also lack of facilities for cyclists. Places that care about cycling infrastructure often do things like provide cycle tracks that don't share space with cars.
- flyingpenguin 4y agoThe amount of public real-estate we dedicate exclusively to enabling peoples usage of their private property in the united states (and to lesser extents all other countries really) is absolutely absurd. I have considered just walking slowly in random lanes of traffic while in downtown areas recently. On what grounds do you need thousands of acres of space? Speed limits should often be 4-5mph and space usage should be shared.
- lostmsu 4y agoHow would you deliver furniture and maintenance machinery to your place?
- komali2 4y agoI mean if you genuinely wanna game theory this out, what's wrong with wheel barrows or carts?
- lostmsu 4y agoExtreme labor inefficiency. Today Amazon's driver can deliver an order of magnitude more packages than a person with a wheel barrow could. There are 100,000+ Amazon drivers in the US. You'd need at least 1,000,000 people with wheel barrows.
- JPKab 4y agoI'm a huge fan of programs like this, but one thing that cities like Denver (especially Denver) need to be wary of are things that actively worsen bike commutes over time. I live nearby, and one of the things that is a frequent topic of conversation is how dangerous certain bike trails in Denver are due to assaults and muggings. This is a new phenomenon, and there are bike trails in Denver I wouldn't go near on an expensive e-bike. The South Platte trail has some really sketchy areas, including an underpass where a mugger was pulling a clothesline to knock people off their bikes and rob them. Property crime in Denver has skyrocketed, and even the local light-rail (RTD) has become far more dangerous, discouraging vulnerable people from riding. A whole lot of the weapons to reduce car trips in cities get completely undermined when order collapses.
- asciimike 4y agoDenver resident who routinely rides bikes on those trails--mind providing some citations on those so we can know where to avoid? I've never had issues with folks in underpasses while running/biking (mostly early morning hours or commute hours), but could imagine there being issues at different times.
- kal_lamar 4y agomade an account just to comment. i commute in from the highlands to rino about 3/4 of the year and do a bunch of trips to littleton or golden when not work commuting. used this program last year to get an e-bike and have been absolutely loving it (when there isn't ice or snow on the ground). most full on pedestrian trails are genuinely great, especially when helped by higher traffic. i do, however, avoid my most direct route into work at night. on the south platte trail from cuernavaca park to 29th is legitimately a scary stretch. mind you i'm a 6'1 225lbs guy.. denver really is trying, and they've come a long way! i'd love to see some improvements on vehicle calming and better cycling right of way on the neighborhood bikeways, but the highest priority issue has to be biking trail connectivity. that was a very long winded way to give you a single half mile stretch answer..
- asciimike 4y ago
- Scubabear68 4y agoJust today I saw a crazy e-bike kid cruise down a major highway, going back and forth between the north and south lanes on the shoulder at intersections, narrowly missing several tractor trailers. And when I am in major cities I am regularly almost run down by scooter people. What are the stats on injury rates on these things?
- mattcantstop 4y ago40,000 people are killed each year by cars in the United States. We do need to ensure bikes and scooters are not on the sidewalks. The best way to do this is to build dedicated bike lanes that remove bicycles and scooters from the sidewalk and from the road (where cars are too dangerous). But I can't take humans serious as this stage where 40,000 of us are dying each year and so little is done to prevent it despite it being something we can dramatically improve. But people shake their fist at a scooter laying on it's side on the sidewalk while 7 Eleven says a car drives into one of their stores (through the building) on average once a day.
- Scubabear68 4y agoI get that. But those are cars generally driving at highway speeds, and there is a lot of safety built it. These e bikes and scooters are going quite fast in urban environments with more or less zero protection for the cyclist/scooterist, and who are closer to pedestrians.
- avianlyric 4y ago> I get that. But those are cars generally driving at highway speeds, and there is a lot of safety built it. Tell that to 40,000 dead pedestrians every year. > These e bikes and scooters are going quite fast in urban environments with more or less zero protection for the cyclist/scooterist, and who are closer to pedestrians. And e-bike or scooter with a human weighs at most 200kg total. That 20% of the weight of small car (1000kg), which means 20% of the energy in a collision. The e-bikes and scooters would need to travelling well in excess of 30mph before their deadliness to pedestrians in a collision would get even close to a car. Something backed up by the stats, if you can even find them. So few pedestrians deaths are caused by bikes and scooters that most countries and municipalities don’t even bother tracking the data. In the UK an upper-bound on bike caused pedestrian deaths is about 2 per year, and more likely number is 0.5 per year.
- bradleyjg 4y agoI’m not exactly sure what counts as an e-bike but here in nyc we have people riding vehicles that are significantly heavier than a typical bike, go 20ish miles an hour, and require no peddling in bike lanes. Can’t say I care for that.
- maxerickson 4y agoExceeding the speeds expected by other users is the only issue really. I guess if the weight is way out of proportion that can start to be a problem.
- lm28469 4y agoIn Europe they mostly solved that through regulation, ebikes can't provide power if you're not actively pedalling, they're caped to 25kph (~15mph) and can't exceed 250w, if they go faster or provide power by another mean they're considered like 50cc mopped or motorcycles depending on the speed/power which means you need an insurance and a license plate
- bradleyjg 4y agoI believe something like this is technically the law here as well. But it goes completely unenforced.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoThe NYPD does pretty regular publicity about taking these off the road. Which would be fine if they did anything at all about protecting vulnerable users from motor vehicles. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/11/29/nypd-seizes-illegal-mopeds-then-disseminates-misinformation-lies-and-anti-cycling-propaganda/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/11/29/nypd-seizes-illegal-m... https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/01/when-seconds-count-nypd-is-busy-harassing-e-bike-owners/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/01/when-seconds-count-nypd... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/the-nypds-new-efforts-to-police-e-bikes-and-e-scooters/3647468/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/the-nypds-new-efforts-to-pol...
- alwayslikethis 4y agoI wonder how well would small motorcycles or scooters (not the stand-up kick scooter type, but the step-through motorcycle) work for the same purpose. They have many of the advantages that e-bikes do, but largely does not require dedicated infrastructure because they can travel at speeds similar to cars.
- wonder_er 4y ago[flagged]
- nobodyandproud 4y agoHow do they solve the parking problem? In Manhattan, I have zero consistent options.
- throwntoday 4y agoPlease make more bike/bus only lanes. And require some kind of testing for ebike use. The grey area small EV's live in presents danger to those unwittingly renting one and everyone around them.