I've helped put 40+ families on the Abound in the last 6 months: it's a great entry-level cargo bike, and this is probably the best deal you'll see on an entry-level cargo bike.
today, i rode a bike from the Camberville E-Bike Library to the Roslindale library; picked up a trike from there to take to our maintenance partner (NEMO), picked up a bike from NEMO and went to the office, left the office to come back to NEMO, went from NEMO to the Rozzie E-Bike Library again, then took a bluebike e-bike back from Rozzie to Somerville.
This is what it looks like to be your own inter-library loan program.
There are 295 people signed up for public comment at the Cambridge City Council tonight, most of whom will be speaking on a policy order to delay the city's implementation of bike lanes.
A speaker who has a bike lane in front of their house says: Yes, sometimes I have to walk slightly further because there's not parking directly in front of my home -- but the important benefit of this is that cyclists don't die in front of my house.
I made a pivot table of people who are currently waiting for each e-bike in the e-bike lending library and ... it's a lot.
Thankfully, it's also a more event distribution than I had thought! Like, given that I have 58 people in line, having no particular bike with more than 9 in line is pretty good!
Sure, if you’re in New York I’m sure there are good restaurants. But there’s also margaritaville in Times Square, with the Statue of Liberty holding a margarita glass.
Today, @Streetsblog published an article about E-Bike Libraries, and I could not be more pleased with how it came out. It did a great job of summarizing the work that we do in the library, and what the experience of running an e-bike lending library is like, why we do it, and how it's done.
If you're going to run an e-bike rebate program, it's probably important to pick a goal that you want to hit with it, because what your goal is should drive how the rebate program is designed.
Is your goal to provide economic benefit to low income households? Is it to reduce vehicle miles traveled (my recommendation)? Is it to get more bikes on the road and build a mass movement? (rebates probably not the right tool)
I think that a well-designed program with $1M in funding can likely reduce VMT by 1 million miles/year, if that's the goal.
I also think that MA Is going to invest that amount of money and achieve very little in VMT reduction, because of the design of the rebate program as described isn't designed to maximize that.
This morning, I handed off three e-bikes to borrowers from the library, one each from RadPowerBikes, Velotric, and Aventon.
All three went to comfortable cyclists looking to figure out if an e-bike will help them expand the range of trips they take by bike, replacing current car trips for things like longer errands.
This is one way we replace car miles on e-bikes: by targeting the trips that are far enough to be annoying on a normal bike, in the 2-4 mile range.
@crschmidt That first photo suggests to me that there might be a market for bicycle gyrostabilized cup-holders. Possibly with a cup warmer powered by the bike's battery.
The Camberville E-Bike Lending Library just crossed two years of bike loan-days since October 1st, with 4200 tracked miles on the odometers of the library bikes.
The first loan from the library was a year ago this month, but I didn't get serious about tracking loans until October. Since then, more than 144 different loans have happened... and more than 45 people bought e-bikes after borrowing one!
This accessory adds the ability to tow a bike, and I'm adding it to the library to let folks who have a kid bike to haul explore; and also to explore the utility of being able to tow a bike with a bike.
If all goes to plan at the moment, this coming week, I will have 8 of 10 bikes out on loan from the Camberville E-Bike Lending Library; this includes all of the non-cargo bikes.
I was worried that I would have trouble keeping the library active throughout the winter months, but despite the overall weather, there's a lot of folks still interested in including biking in their regular routines.
The 34th Ave slow street through Queens is a really terrific route, and makes getting through there really lovely; on the other hand, getting to that street seems a bit of a mess. Northern Blvd. in particular has a great looking bike lane, but its wide enough that it effectively acts as a short-term parking lane that is blocked by vehicles on almost every block.