In Denver, e-bike vouchers are snapped up as fast as Taylor Swift tickets

This story was originally published by Gray and appears here as part of the Climate desk collaboration

At 11 am on the last Wednesday of February, Denver opened the first application window of the year for its e-bike reimbursement program, which offers residents upfront rebates of $300 to $1,400 for a battery-powered bicycle. Within three minutes, all vouchers for low and moderate income applicants were claimed. At 11:08 am, the matches for everyone else were also gone, and the portal closed.

Even in its third year, Denver’s ambitious campaign to get residents to trade some of their driving for riding remains as popular as ever. “It’s exciting that people are really interested in this technology,” said Mike Salisbury, the city’s transportation energy chief. Gray. “Every trip we can convert to an electric bike will be a big climate win.”

Transportation is among the largest sources, if not the largest source, of a city’s carbon emissions. To cut that footprintofficials often turn to costly, intensive transit projects and build outside electric vehicle infrastructure. Denver does these things, but also offers smaller forms of mobility. It has spent more than $7.5 million in just two years on e-bike vouchers, supporting the purchase of nearly 8,000 of the battery-powered bikes, which can zip up to 28 mph, power up hills and carry passengers or loads

“We’re just very optimistic about e-bikes,” Salisbury said. “They have this huge potential to replace vehicle travel.”

The vouchers save about 170,000 miles in car trips per week and about 3,300 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the city. Its Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency calls it “one of the most effective climate strategies the City and County of Denver has implemented to date.”

There are about 160 of these incentive programs in the United States and Canada, and while Denver was not the first to implement one, the size and success of its enterprise have attracted the attention of other governments and utilities. Congress is also taking note: California Representative Jimmy Panetta has reintroduced the Federal Kickstart of the Electric Bicycle Incentive for the Environment Act, or E-BIKE Actwhich offered a 30 percent federal tax credit for e-bike purchases last year.

Funded by a voter approved $40 million Climate protection fundwhich directs a portion of the city’s sales tax toward decarbonization initiatives, the program offers income-based discounts that can be redeemed at designated bike shops. Providing the discount at registration helps those who would otherwise not be able to pay the initial cost, which typically starts around $1,200 and can reach several thousand dollars.

Residents earning less than 60 percent of the area’s median income of about $52,000 can get $1,200 for a standard e-bike and $1,400 for a cargo model (useful for hauling gear, running errands or transporting children). Recipients of a moderate income receive between $700 and $900, and everyone else can get $300 or $500. Online applications open several times each year and vouchers are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. served

The goal is to reduce emissions from the transportation sector, Denver’s second largest contributor of greenhouse gases, by targeting short vehicle trips. According to Salisbury, 44 percent of residents’ trips are under five kilometers and most are under 10, feasible distances to travel on an electric bicycle.

“E-bikes are not going to replace every trip for every person,” he said. “But there is this huge potential to replace, especially in an urban environment, shorter distance trips that someone makes on their own. Or they can use an e-cargo bike to take their children to school.”

It’s one of the many ways that Jeff Gonzales, a marketing professor and father who lives near the University of Denver, uses the assisted bike he bought two years ago with the help of a voucher.

At the time, Gonzales drove a customized Toyota Tacoma pickup. “It was amazing, but it was a gas guzzler,” he said Gray. Gas was so expensive that he and his wife tried to minimize their driving as much as possible. But their two children were too heavy to tow with the family’s bicycle trailer, affectionately called “the wagon.” When an employee at his local bike shop mentioned rebates for power-assisted bikes, he decided to take one for a test ride.

“I was like, ‘This is pretty cool,’ and then I asked him, ‘Can I put the cart behind? They say “Absolutely”. Gonzales sold his truck, applied for a voucher and bought the bike. He started riding to the grocery store, taking the kids to school, and even making the 24-mile trip to his office twice a week.

“The first summer we had it, I think there were times we didn’t get in the car for about two weeks at a time,” he said.

In a 2023 survey of voucher recipients, 43 percent of respondents cited transportation as their primary reason for getting an electric bike and 84 percent said the machines replaced at least one commute of vehicles per week. The city estimates that recipients remove a weekly average of 21 kilometers in their cars.

Transport on two wheels often allows riders to avoid traffic or take more direct routes than those offered by public transport. “People share feedback with us about how it has allowed them to get to their work much faster, easier, at a much lower cost, without having to make two or three transit transfers to get somewhere,” said Salisbury.

Gonzales said he often finds the bike to work faster, but even when the commute doesn’t save time, it’s more enjoyable. “It sucks to sit in traffic,” he said. “I prefer to move on a bike, and if I get tired, I can increase the power level, but I’m still moving.”

tea clean energy non profit RMI found that if the country’s 10 most populous cities shifted a quarter of all short vehicle trips to e-bikes, they could save 4.2 million barrels of oil and 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 in a year. That’s the equivalent of taking four natural gas plants offline. As an added bonus, those riders also save a combined total of $91 million a month in avoided fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, according to RMI.

Purpose a recent study from Valdosta State University and Portland State University question the cost-effectiveness of achieving greenhouse gas emissions this way. “Even when e-bike incentive programs are designed to be cost-effective,” the authors concluded, “the costs per ton of CO2 reduced still far exceed those of alternatives or the reasonable social costs of GHG emissions “. A reimbursement program can also be beneficial, the study concludes, but may need to be justified for its additional benefits, such as promoting exercise and relieving traffic congestion.

Salisbury said the report’s criticism overlooks how cities have to deal with emissions in several ways. “There are a lot of other things the city is working on, like building bus rapid transit and other infrastructure, but those are taking a long time,” he said. “If we want to see reductions as soon as possible, we need to look at programs that can contribute to this immediately.”

He also said that increasing access to e-bikes has a specific purpose to one of the most difficult sectors of the city to decarbonize. “Yes, it’s cheaper to invest in a solar array, but that won’t do anything for transport emissions.”

This does not mean that getting residents to trade four wheels for two is as simple as giving them a voucher. E-bikes require infrastructure, including bike lanes that can accommodate both motorized and analog riders, as well as places to safely charge and store the bikes.

In the last five years, the city has added 137 kilometers of “high comfort” bike lanes.. Recently, he launched the Denver Mobility Incentive Programwhich offers grants to non-profits and other organizations to install bike storage lockers, plug-in places, and even install e-bike libraries where residents can borrow rides for free.

“It’s all part of an ecosystem,” Salisbury said. “Leaving 8,000 e-bikes on the road would be much less effective if we didn’t have this co-developed infrastructure.”

Gonzales uses that infrastructure when he has to cut through busy downtown Denver to get to his office. “About 90 percent of the time I’m on protected bike lanes,” he said. “It makes me feel a lot more comfortable to bike 12 miles across town.”

The city also had to deal with how to ensure that all residents can access the program. While more than 44 percent of the vouchers went to low-income applicants, the first-come, first-served application process has been criticized for favoring people with time and access to the computer to access as soon as the portal opens. And so far, the racial demographics of the recipients have not been reflective of the city’s population. In 2023, only eight percent of survey respondents were Latino and three percent were Black, while Denver’s population is 29 percent Latino and nearly nine percent Black. Despite offering up to $1,400 for adaptive bikes, the program has only distributed about 20 so far.

In response, Denver worked with community-based organizations to funnel refunds directly to people who might not otherwise know or be able to apply. It is planned to distribute 600 vouchers through such groups this year.

The people least able to access the program may also be those who would benefit the most. Survey results indicated that applicants who received vouchers through community organizations replaced 80 percent more vehicle miles than standard voucher recipients.

This also marks the first year Denver has offered a specific rebate amount for moderate-income applicants, an attempt to address the “missing middle” of people who earn closer to the city’s median income but need a little more help to allow a ride.

What the city will continue to struggle with this year is a demand for all levels of vouchers that far exceeds supply. The next round of applications opens on April 30.

One of these applications could come from the Gonzales family. With a third child now in tow, they plan to get a second assisted bike to transport the whole family.

“When the little guy gets bigger, we’ll probably get another one,” Gonzales said, especially if the city keeps offering goodies. “They’re not the cheapest things in the world, so the rebate program certainly helps.”