Eric Adams bikes to work on second day in office: ‘On the road again!’ (A.K.A The NY Bike thread)
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The Smallest New Yorkers Join the Pandemic Biking Surge
The Smallest New Yorkers Join the Pandemic Biking Surge
Electric cargo bikes have become a popular way for parents to ferry their children to school and play dates, even if it means navigating city traffic.
Savannah Wiza, her son, Felix, and daughter, Coraline, rode to school in Manhattan in February on an electric bicycle.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
By Kendra Hurley
- April 15, 2022
“We’d wave, because it seemed like such a strange thing,’’ said Ms. Weinstock, who lives in Carroll Gardens. Today, she added, “you see them all over the place, every day.”
Bikes of any kind carrying children on New York City streets were once a relatively rare sighting. But in many neighborhoods, children on the front and back of cycles zipping past traffic, or coasting alongside grown-ups, are becoming a routine part of rush hour bustle.
The availability of electric cargo bikes designed to hold passengers is one factor fueling the growth, said Ms. Weinstock, a transportation planner and director of programs at People-Oriented Cities, an urban planning advocacy group. The pedal-assist technology makes it easier and safer to haul children long distances and up hills.
The expansion of bike lanes in the city has also made cycling feel more accessible to families.
Then there is the coronavirus pandemic. Families avoiding public transportation and school buses while no longer commuting to work helped fast-track the use of bikes as family transportation, local bike shop owners said.
“A lot of mothers are trying to transport their children to school,” said Damon Victor, owner of Greenpath Electric Bikes in South Brooklyn. “I didn’t see it coming.”
Coraline and her brother Felix getting ready for school. Ms. Wiza started taking them to school on an e-bike to avoid publc transit.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
Another mother in the neighborhood convinced Ms. Wiza to use a bicycle to ferry her children. Ms. Wiza bought an e-bike on Craigslist for $1,200.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
In late 2020, Savannah Wiza and her husband were deliberating how to get their children, who were 4 and 7 at the time, from their home in Harlem to their elementary schools on the Upper West Side once schools resumed partial in-person learning.
The family was avoiding the subway and did not want to deal with the parking headaches that owning a car in the city brings. Riding scooters uphill was not working so they considered biking, an option that at first “terrified’’ Ms. Wiza.
But after listening to another neighborhood mother rave about biking with her children, the Wizas ended up buying an electric bike on Craigslist for $1,200.
Two years later the entire family is vaccinated and back on the subway, but their cargo e-bike continues to serve as de facto school bus.
“When it’s nice out, it’s wonderful,” said Ms. Wiza, who sometimes takes detours through Central Park.
As in many cities around the world, biking in New York surged during the pandemic as residents sought alternatives to public transportation.
Peter Brown and his son Kenzo on the bike path at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Mr. Brown takes his son to pre-school by bike.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
The city’s bike-share program, Citi Bike, recorded nearly 28 million rides last year, an increase of about 32 percent from the 21 million rides in 2019, before the pandemic.
No reliable bike ridership data is available that focuses on the age of riders or people riding together, making it difficult to gauge the popularity of parents carrying children on bikes.
But companies that manufacture bikes and local bike store owners say the uptick in New York seems undeniable. Biking as family transportation has “become a lot more mainstream,” said Chris Nolte, owner of Propel Bikes, which sells electric cargo bikes.
When he opened Propel in 2015 in Brooklyn, almost none of his customers were parents looking to carry children. Now they are a large share of his clientele, with e-bikes built to haul passengers accounting for 30 to 40 percent of sales, Mr. Nolte said.
Peter Kocher, the owner of another bike shop, Ride Brooklyn, said an uptick “in families using cycling for their transportation needs,” which began before the pandemic, had been turbocharged over the past two years.
And Rad Power Bikes, a large direct-to-consumer e-bike company based in Seattle, said one of the fastest growing models sold in New York was an electric cargo bike that can seat two children.
The growth in bicycling comes at a moment when transportation advocates and city officials are promoting alternative travel modes to address climate change and New York’s chronically gridlocked streets.
“Biking reduces carbon emissions and it doesn’t require the same amount of physical space or road maintenance that cars do,” said Sarah Kaufman, associate director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University.
But for many parents the main appeal is often logistics.
Before the pandemic, Peter Brown, 45, had grown impatient navigating Brooklyn’s “sidewalks in crummy weather with a stroller.” A seasoned cyclist, he had long wanted to ride with his son Kenzo, 4, but his partner and Kenzo’s mother, Yuka Yamashyta, was “nervous about putting him on a bike seat.”
Mr. Brown said his son’s mother had been nervous about taking their son on a bike, but a new preschool’s rules led to their new routine.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
Mr. Brown often takes Kenzo on bike rides on the weekend to explore the city.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
Then Ms. Yamashyta, a hospital psychiatric nurse, was reassigned to a wing where Covid patients were being treated.
Kenzo’s day care decided it was too risky to keep serving the family so his parents found a new preschool but it required children taking public transportation to change clothes when they got to the school.
Instead the family bought a child seat to attach to Mr. Brown’s bike and now he pedals Kenzo to school every day. His son loves riding and on some weekends the two explore the city by bike. In those moments, Mr. Brown said, “the background anxiety and stress kind of fade away.”
For some families, bicycling went from a solution to pandemic challenges to a way to forge closer bonds.
“It’s not just a way to get from point A to point B, it’s a form of exercising, and being outdoors, and enjoying being here, with your kids,” said Selam Czebotar, 39, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen and bikes with her husband and four children, who range in age from 4 to 10.
Biking also eliminates the need to lug strollers down subway stairs, or fold them when riding public buses to abide by transit agency rules. Travel to neighborhood play dates or the local pediatrician are far quicker on bike than on two feet.
Cycling opens up parts of the city that would otherwise require complicated maneuvering to reach, said Madeleine Novich, a professor at Manhattan College, who is known as Cargobikemomma to her nearly 3,500 followers on Instagram, where she documents her adventures as a stylish New York biking mother. “I’m a full-time working mom of three. I’m very protective of my time,” Ms. Novich said, adding that she loathes waiting for subways or buses. “Biking allows me ownership over my time.”
Still, like many other cyclists, parents say they have had close calls with cars on the city’s crowded streets. “It’s kind of the Wild West,’’ said Hilda Cohen, who lives in Brooklyn and has two teenage children.
During the pandemic, car ownership also increased in the city, a boom that has coincided with an increase in traffic deaths. Last year, 274 people were killed on city streets, the highest level since 2013, the year before the city launched its Vision Zero initiative to make streets safer.
Transportation advocates say a safe biking infrastructure has failed to keep pace with demand, but some believe a surge in families biking together could help address the issue.
“When it’s nice out, it’s wonderful,” said Ms. Wiza, who after dropping off her children at school while sometimes take a detour through Central Park.Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
In the 1970s, parents in the Netherlands protesting children killed by cars helped transform Amsterdam into one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities.
“Having more parents as cyclists helps the movement of developing safer biking infrastructure,” Ms. Kaufman said.
New York City officials say they are accelerating plans to create safer spaces for cyclists of all ages.
“This administration recognizes the urgency to address traffic deaths and we’re committed to building better and safer bicycle lanes,” said Vin Barone, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation.
At Greenpath Electric Bikes, Mr. Victor continues to see a strong demand for electric bikes among customers who want to haul their children around even as the pandemic has eased.
“It’s the freedom of moving their children in and out of school easily, the freedom of getting to work on a bike, the freedom of bypassing parking, the freedom of bypassing the traffic,” Mr. Victor said.
New York banished cars during Covid – could its open streets be preserved?
New York banished cars during Covid – could its open streets be preserved?
People walk through an area where restaurants operate outdoor spaces for dining that spread onto sidewalks and streets as part of continued COVID-19 economic impact mitigation efforts, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020, in New York. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Campaigners hope to both and expand and entrench the re-imagining of streetscapes that occurred in the early part of 2020
Oliver Milman
Thu 5 May 2022 06.00 EDT
As an emergency measure for the pandemic, New York City’s banishment of cars from certain streets saw unexpected space open up for pedestrians, restaurant tables and playing children. A campaign backed by the city’s new mayor now aims to permanently wrest dominance away from vehicles and preserve these new outdoor havens.
The alternative vision for America’s largest city demands that 25% of its street space is converted from car use to walkable pedestrian plazas, green space, bus lanes and dedicated cycle paths by 2025. The campaign, called 25x25, has now also been adopted by activists in Los Angeles, an indication of how some Americans are questioning the long-held primacy of cars amid a surge in cycling since the start of the pandemic.
Cities should consider a formula of “space minus cars equals quality of life” according to Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. The group, which is heading the 25x25 campaign, cites the climate crisis, air pollution, the death toll from car crashes and community cohesion as urgent reasons to hand room from cars to people.
“If you live in a place where buying a car and spending $10,000 a year on car-related payments is your only way to get around, then your leaders have failed you and your children,” said Harris.
“Using streets to simply move and store cars is not optimizing that space. We just got blinded by the car industry and this belief that we should put an SUV in every garage.”
With its dense neighborhoods, heavy use of public transport and a majority of households not owning a car, New York City would appear an obvious wellspring for car-free space.
And yet three-quarters of street space is given over to cars, according to Transportation Alternatives, with New York’s roads lined with 3m free car-parking spaces, more than one space for every car in the city. Millions of pedestrians have to traverse narrow sidewalks that often are obstructed by the city’s infamous penchant for leaving bags of rubbish for collection by the curb.
Cyclists ride through Central Park on the annual five-borough bike tour. Photograph: Ron Adar
“Right now, we give most of New York to cars – but imagine if sidewalks were bigger, if you could bike or quickly take the bus anywhere you wanted, if you didn’t have huge mounds of garbage on every single street,” said Harris. “As New Yorkers, we think of ourselves as being tough. But that doesn’t mean we have to live in filth, or that we should fear death or injury every time we cross the street.”
The plan, which would create the equivalent space of 13 Central Parks to be used for 500 miles of dedicated bus lanes, 500 miles of protected bike lanes, new secure garbage containers and widespread community use of car-free roads, has been backed by Eric Adams, the New York City mayor who wobbled to work through car traffic on a bicycle on his first day in office in January and has pledged to make the city greener, both figuratively and literally.
“These are our streets, and it’s about riding, skateboarding, walking,” Adams said last month as he unveiled a new $900m plan for the city’s 6,300 miles of road to improve intersections and upgrade bike paths and bus lane infrastructure. “You know, this is a good place you could come shop, sit down, spend time, and just enjoy the outdoors,” he said at the announcement at a plaza in Brooklyn.”
Campaigners hope to expand and entrench the re-imagining of streetscapes that occurred in the early stanzas of the pandemic in 2020, where temporary barriers were placed on a clutch of streets to block off cars and ensure social distancing for people. The program, called Open Streets, has since blossomed across 150 different locations in New York, bringing a dose of communal European-type city space to previously car-choked streets.
“People really embraced the idea, it’s essentially created a park space where people can gather, kids can learn to ride bikes and so much more,” said Carlina Rivera, a New York City council member who introduced the first Open Streets proposal. Rivera is now pushing for the adoption of a “superblock” – a cluster of city blocks where street space is shared and non-resident cars are banned, popularized by Barcelona – in her Manhattan district.
“This current imbalance of space isn’t serving us the way it should,” she said. “There shouldn’t be this supremacy of vehicles in a largely pedestrian city whose residents rely heavily on public transit.”
Car-free ‘summer streets’ just south of the MetLife building in Manhattan. Photograph: Ryan Rahman
Attitudes about transport among New Yorkers can often seem contradictory – the city has one of the largest subway systems in the world and its most walkable, cycle-friendly neighborhoods are the most desirable, and yet car congestion is so bad that the average traffic speed in midtown Manhattan is under 5mph. Congestion pricing has been bitterly fought, and vocal car advocates successfully stymied attempts to ban vehicles from the city’s two great parks, Central Park and Prospect Park, for decades.
The Open Streets concept was initially opposed by some restaurants, fearful that removing parking spaces would deter customers. Plans to make permanent the most celebrated of the Open Streets, a one-mile stretch of avenue in the borough of Queens, has been attacked in Facebook posts and via a small protest march by residents who want the cars back.
“My daughter sees people drinking and smoking weed,” Gloria Contreras, who co-founded the protest group Resisters United, said in October. “I moved to 34th Avenue because it was a beautiful, quiet residential neighborhood. I never had the issues I have now.”
This sort of desire for untrammeled access and space for cars is common across the US. This year, in Texas, a plan by San Antonio to transfer some lane space from cars to bike paths was halted by the state government, while in Florida, Miami passed an ordinance to demand developers build more parking.
“This is not a pedestrian and bicycle city,” said Manolo Reyes, a Miami city commissioner. “We don’t have a mass transit system, period.” Parking takes up around a third of land area in US cities, with around eight spaces installed for each car across the country.
Joe Biden’s administration has sought to encourage public transport, and even raised the idea of tearing down certain highways, but is still handing out $350bn to the states to upgrade and expand roads for car use. The president, meanwhile, has also championed the adoption of electric vehicles in order to cut planet-heating emissions rather than phase down car use itself.
Allies say this is the most expedient climate approach given many Americans’ fixation upon driving increasingly large cars and even 25x25 campaigners concede it will take plenty of time and investment to see a major cultural shift where cars are widely viewed as an equal, or even inferior, transport option to other ways of getting around.
“The amount of large SUVs and lights trucks being sold now is unsustainable and deadly. We work with families every day who are simply standing on a bus stop or trying to cross the street and their entire world is destroyed forever,” said Harris.
New York banished cars during Covid – could its open streets be preserved?
People walk through an area where restaurants operate outdoor spaces for dining that spread onto sidewalks and streets as part of continued COVID-19 economic impact mitigation efforts, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020, in New York. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Campaigners hope to both and expand and entrench the re-imagining of streetscapes that occurred in the early part of 2020
Oliver Milman
Thu 5 May 2022 06.00 EDT
As an emergency measure for the pandemic, New York City’s banishment of cars from certain streets saw unexpected space open up for pedestrians, restaurant tables and playing children. A campaign backed by the city’s new mayor now aims to permanently wrest dominance away from vehicles and preserve these new outdoor havens.
The alternative vision for America’s largest city demands that 25% of its street space is converted from car use to walkable pedestrian plazas, green space, bus lanes and dedicated cycle paths by 2025. The campaign, called 25x25, has now also been adopted by activists in Los Angeles, an indication of how some Americans are questioning the long-held primacy of cars amid a surge in cycling since the start of the pandemic.
Cities should consider a formula of “space minus cars equals quality of life” according to Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. The group, which is heading the 25x25 campaign, cites the climate crisis, air pollution, the death toll from car crashes and community cohesion as urgent reasons to hand room from cars to people.
“If you live in a place where buying a car and spending $10,000 a year on car-related payments is your only way to get around, then your leaders have failed you and your children,” said Harris.
“Using streets to simply move and store cars is not optimizing that space. We just got blinded by the car industry and this belief that we should put an SUV in every garage.”
With its dense neighborhoods, heavy use of public transport and a majority of households not owning a car, New York City would appear an obvious wellspring for car-free space.
And yet three-quarters of street space is given over to cars, according to Transportation Alternatives, with New York’s roads lined with 3m free car-parking spaces, more than one space for every car in the city. Millions of pedestrians have to traverse narrow sidewalks that often are obstructed by the city’s infamous penchant for leaving bags of rubbish for collection by the curb.
Cyclists ride through Central Park on the annual five-borough bike tour. Photograph: Ron Adar
“Right now, we give most of New York to cars – but imagine if sidewalks were bigger, if you could bike or quickly take the bus anywhere you wanted, if you didn’t have huge mounds of garbage on every single street,” said Harris. “As New Yorkers, we think of ourselves as being tough. But that doesn’t mean we have to live in filth, or that we should fear death or injury every time we cross the street.”
The plan, which would create the equivalent space of 13 Central Parks to be used for 500 miles of dedicated bus lanes, 500 miles of protected bike lanes, new secure garbage containers and widespread community use of car-free roads, has been backed by Eric Adams, the New York City mayor who wobbled to work through car traffic on a bicycle on his first day in office in January and has pledged to make the city greener, both figuratively and literally.
“These are our streets, and it’s about riding, skateboarding, walking,” Adams said last month as he unveiled a new $900m plan for the city’s 6,300 miles of road to improve intersections and upgrade bike paths and bus lane infrastructure. “You know, this is a good place you could come shop, sit down, spend time, and just enjoy the outdoors,” he said at the announcement at a plaza in Brooklyn.”
Campaigners hope to expand and entrench the re-imagining of streetscapes that occurred in the early stanzas of the pandemic in 2020, where temporary barriers were placed on a clutch of streets to block off cars and ensure social distancing for people. The program, called Open Streets, has since blossomed across 150 different locations in New York, bringing a dose of communal European-type city space to previously car-choked streets.
“People really embraced the idea, it’s essentially created a park space where people can gather, kids can learn to ride bikes and so much more,” said Carlina Rivera, a New York City council member who introduced the first Open Streets proposal. Rivera is now pushing for the adoption of a “superblock” – a cluster of city blocks where street space is shared and non-resident cars are banned, popularized by Barcelona – in her Manhattan district.
“This current imbalance of space isn’t serving us the way it should,” she said. “There shouldn’t be this supremacy of vehicles in a largely pedestrian city whose residents rely heavily on public transit.”
Car-free ‘summer streets’ just south of the MetLife building in Manhattan. Photograph: Ryan Rahman
Attitudes about transport among New Yorkers can often seem contradictory – the city has one of the largest subway systems in the world and its most walkable, cycle-friendly neighborhoods are the most desirable, and yet car congestion is so bad that the average traffic speed in midtown Manhattan is under 5mph. Congestion pricing has been bitterly fought, and vocal car advocates successfully stymied attempts to ban vehicles from the city’s two great parks, Central Park and Prospect Park, for decades.
The Open Streets concept was initially opposed by some restaurants, fearful that removing parking spaces would deter customers. Plans to make permanent the most celebrated of the Open Streets, a one-mile stretch of avenue in the borough of Queens, has been attacked in Facebook posts and via a small protest march by residents who want the cars back.
“My daughter sees people drinking and smoking weed,” Gloria Contreras, who co-founded the protest group Resisters United, said in October. “I moved to 34th Avenue because it was a beautiful, quiet residential neighborhood. I never had the issues I have now.”
This sort of desire for untrammeled access and space for cars is common across the US. This year, in Texas, a plan by San Antonio to transfer some lane space from cars to bike paths was halted by the state government, while in Florida, Miami passed an ordinance to demand developers build more parking.
“This is not a pedestrian and bicycle city,” said Manolo Reyes, a Miami city commissioner. “We don’t have a mass transit system, period.” Parking takes up around a third of land area in US cities, with around eight spaces installed for each car across the country.
Joe Biden’s administration has sought to encourage public transport, and even raised the idea of tearing down certain highways, but is still handing out $350bn to the states to upgrade and expand roads for car use. The president, meanwhile, has also championed the adoption of electric vehicles in order to cut planet-heating emissions rather than phase down car use itself.
Allies say this is the most expedient climate approach given many Americans’ fixation upon driving increasingly large cars and even 25x25 campaigners concede it will take plenty of time and investment to see a major cultural shift where cars are widely viewed as an equal, or even inferior, transport option to other ways of getting around.
“The amount of large SUVs and lights trucks being sold now is unsustainable and deadly. We work with families every day who are simply standing on a bus stop or trying to cross the street and their entire world is destroyed forever,” said Harris.
(continued)
“This is not a pedestrian and bicycle city,” said Manolo Reyes, a Miami city commissioner. “We don’t have a mass transit system, period.” Parking takes up around a third of land area in US cities, with around eight spaces installed for each car across the country.
Joe Biden’s administration has sought to encourage public transport, and even raised the idea of tearing down certain highways, but is still handing out $350bn to the states to upgrade and expand roads for car use. The president, meanwhile, has also championed the adoption of electric vehicles in order to cut planet-heating emissions rather than phase down car use itself.
Allies say this is the most expedient climate approach given many Americans’ fixation upon driving increasingly large cars and even 25x25 campaigners concede it will take plenty of time and investment to see a major cultural shift where cars are widely viewed as an equal, or even inferior, transport option to other ways of getting around.
“The amount of large SUVs and lights trucks being sold now is unsustainable and deadly. We work with families every day who are simply standing on a bus stop or trying to cross the street and their entire world is destroyed forever,” said Harris.
“This is not a pedestrian and bicycle city,” said Manolo Reyes, a Miami city commissioner. “We don’t have a mass transit system, period.” Parking takes up around a third of land area in US cities, with around eight spaces installed for each car across the country.
Joe Biden’s administration has sought to encourage public transport, and even raised the idea of tearing down certain highways, but is still handing out $350bn to the states to upgrade and expand roads for car use. The president, meanwhile, has also championed the adoption of electric vehicles in order to cut planet-heating emissions rather than phase down car use itself.
Allies say this is the most expedient climate approach given many Americans’ fixation upon driving increasingly large cars and even 25x25 campaigners concede it will take plenty of time and investment to see a major cultural shift where cars are widely viewed as an equal, or even inferior, transport option to other ways of getting around.
“The amount of large SUVs and lights trucks being sold now is unsustainable and deadly. We work with families every day who are simply standing on a bus stop or trying to cross the street and their entire world is destroyed forever,” said Harris.
The E-Bike Effect Is Transforming New York City
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reached the word limit to postAn electric bike can still draw a crowd in New York City.
At least, it can when it’s one of Citi Bike’s next-generation models, which will begin appearing in docks across the bikesharing network this week. With a sleek silver frame and an LCD screen atop the handlebars, the new bikes are a noticeable upgrade from the standard cobalt-blue two-wheelers that have become so familiar on the city’s streets. As I rode one up Eighth Avenue with Laura Fox, the general manager of Citi Bike at Lyft, we drew stares from the sidewalk and an entourage of curious riders in our wake.
“Something that's been top of mind for us is this idea that everyone’s a bike person,” Fox said, as we arrived in Central Park. “People are like, ‘Oh yeah, bike lanes and bikes are nice, but not everyone is going to ride.’ And when you look at other countries’ contexts, that’s just not true. So we wanted to bring the principle of simplicity to the bike ride.”
Capped at 20 miles per hour, this new e-bike can go 60 miles before needing a charge, twice the range of the previous model. It’s 20 pounds heavier, too, with hydraulic brakes and a sturdier frame.
The new Citi Bike models feature LCD displays and reflective silver paint.
Image credit: Lyft
New York is the third U.S. city to get the model, which premiered under the Lyft banner in San Francisco in June 2021 and later with Chicago’s Divvy system. But Citi Bike — the largest bikeshare system outside of China — will be its biggest proving ground. In New York City, bikes can be used 10 to 15 times per day, says Fox. (In 2018, Lyft acquired Motivate, which owned Citi Bike.)
According to Lyft’s 2022 Multimodal Report, Citi Bike’s 5,000-strong electric fleet made up 32% of the nearly 28 million rides taken in 2021, even though they only make up 20% of the fleet. On average, they’re used three times more often per day compared to classics.
The surge of Citi Bike’s battery-powered rides mirrors a larger trend unfolding on the streets of New York City. Practically everywhere you look, people are riding electric two-wheelers — delivery workers bearing take-out orders, sightseers on Citi Bikes, families on e-cargo bikes, or just individuals on their own models. Three electric bike dealerships have opened within a few blocks from my apartment recently. There is little data on e-bike usage itself, but the nearly 7 million rides on Citi Bike last year, compared to 2.7 million in 2020, is probably a good indication of how electrification has boosted the overall popularity of bicycles in the city.
Electric Citi Bikes, which make up 20% of the system’s fleet, are much sought after.
Photographer: Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images
It’s been a remarkable transformation for a city where all e-bikes were technically illegal until 2018. E-bikes, whether you ride them or not, stand to play an outsized role in shaping the city’s transportation picture for years to come. They could help tame the city’s resurgent traffic and reduce the sector’s stubbornly large carbon footprint by replacing shorter trips now taken in private cars, cabs or ride-hailing vehicles. And their rapid uptake could place greater pressure on planners to adjust city streets accordingly. But thorny issues around costs, infrastructure, equity and safety persist.
Now, as the pandemic bike boom enters its third year, it’s worth asking: How far can e-bikes go from here?
The Cost Factor
Pamela Martinez, who recently immigrated to the Bronx from the Dominican Republic, always considered e-bikes too expensive. New ones average $1,500 or more; cheaper models exist, but Martinez didn’t trust their durability. She had a pedal-only bike, but the hills of her Hunts Point neighborhood were intimidating. Especially with two kids in tow.
“Here, you have to have a really good body to pedal,” she said. “And with the kids at school, sometimes I had to go back and forth from work, because a kid is sick or they leave for lunch.”
That was before she obtained a RadWagon, an electric cargo bike popular with families because of its kid-hailing potential. It lists for about $2,000, but Martinez only paid half that, thanks to the Equitable Commute Project, an initiative led by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives that links residents living in neighborhoods known for long commutes to subsidized electric mobility options. She learned about the program through her workplace and paid her share of the purchase price with the help of a loan by SpringBank, the CDFI that acts as a financial partner. “It was the easiest process of my life,” she said.
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