The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors to the country’s carbon emissions. However, the fastest growing form of electric vehicle made to combat climate change is not an electric car.
Electric bicycles, also known as e-bikes, are emerging as reliable, low-carbon alternatives to road trips for short trips. E-bikes also alleviate the challenges of public transportation and encourage healthier lifestyles, among other benefits currently being studied in an extensive pilot program in Colorado.
Building on a Successful Colorado Energy Office (CEO) Can Do Colorado E-Bike Mini Pilot To encourage energy-efficient transportation among 13 essential low-income workers during the pandemic, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has once again partnered with the CEO to collect and analyze travel data as part of a comprehensive, two-year e-mail. bike pilot.
The CEO funded five projects for the large-scale pilot that kicked off in the spring of 2021, including the distribution of 181 e-bikes and 50 e-bike share memberships to essential low-income workers in various locations across Colorado. As the program enters its second year, preliminary results for the first year are encouraging.
E-Bike Pilot Expansion Highlights NREL OpenPATH’s Capabilities
The expanded pilot will include six additional locations in Colorado, including Fort Collins, Boulder, and Pueblo. The ongoing data collection and integrated analytics elements of this project leverage a modular, open-source platform called NREL OpenPATH† The platform automatically detects participants’ travel via a smartphone app, creates a travel diary and displays it to participants for labeling. This information is used by both NREL and CEO to understand e-bike usage patterns and general travel habits, as well as evaluate data on the CO2 emissions savings that can be achieved by switching from single-person vehicles to e-bikes.
Spurred on by the success of the CEO’s e-bike efforts, NREL made the OpenPATH capability widely available to public authorities. Program managers may ask participants to install the publicly available version of the NREL OpenPATH-based app from the Google Play or Apple app stores and use it to participate in their research through a program-specific page. A “open access” version features a built-in carbon footprint tracker that allows individuals to track their impact on travel emissions and shift their travel choices toward more sustainable options. The open-source nature of the tool also makes it accessible to anyone who wants to modify it and use the tool for more specific investigations.
Help identify micro-mobility options
Understanding the role that micromobility options, including e-bikes, can play in meeting the mobility needs of underrepresented, rural and remote communities holds great potential for addressing some of the most difficult transportation challenges. The unique data collected by the OpenPATH tool can help formulate policies needed to support the growth of the micromobility market.
“Travel mobility tends to focus on larger vehicles, and the lack of data revealing people’s travel behavior in these types of communities is creating disparities in how infrastructure and transportation projects are funded,” said Andrew Duvall of NREL, project leader and transport behavior analyst. “OpenPATH is democratizing the collection of mobility data, empowering policy makers to make investment choices, such as adding a cycle path on a bridge once it is built, rather than expensive retrofitting; taking into account how people travel and ensuring that energy-efficient options are included in the infrastructure.”
Testing and improving e-bike ownership models
The potential for NREL OpenPATH and the CEO e-bike pilots to shape public planning and investment is significant, but not without challenges. Each e-bike pilot program in Colorado tests different programs, models, and incentives with their participants to capture different kinds of insights.
One program that includes Adams and Broomfield counties is: Smart commute† The program opted for a two-phase lending model, where participants can use e-bikes for a trial period before transitioning to full ownership. One of the findings of Smart Commute’s first year in the large-scale pilot was the realization that infrastructure (including bike racks and charging stations) compatible with e-bikes was scarce.
“When I asked them during the [e-bike] loan exit interview, ‘Why didn’t you take your e-bike for more shopping?’ the main factor that came up was that they were afraid of losing the e-bikes. They didn’t want to take them where they couldn’t be properly secured,” said Jeanne Shreve, the e-bike program manager for Smart Commute.
Those concerns prompted Shreve’s team to develop a database for e-bike-friendly developments and connect participants with other resources they were interested in.
“Our thinking was that if we were to ask them to do this, we had to give them the right equipment to be successful,” she said.
On the other side of Colorado, 4Core is leading CEO’s e-bike pilot in the city of Durango. Their program”Roll-to-Restaurantsserves low-income restaurant workers, including members of the LatinX community, Native Americans, students, and essential workers in the foodservice industry who were deeply affected by the pandemic and are vital to Durango’s tourism economy. 4CORE also leveraged a loan-to-own program that pre-delivered the e-bikes and accessories and allowed participants to fully own the e-bike after several months of consistent data collection.
“Our participants are very grateful for the program and have reported enjoying riding their e-bike to work, running errands, social activities and more,” said Laura Haidet, program manager at 4CORE. “We have shown that e-bike rides have replaced many vehicle rides.”
Despite this success, however, Haidet said that motivation to continue providing data was one of the main challenges 4CORE faced. To address the decline in manual user input, an automatic labeling feature with an error meter will be integrated into the next phase of the NREL OpenPATH public app.
Still, 4CORE and Smart Commute are optimistic that the pilot program will expand to increase access to e-bikes. The state of Colorado is also optimistic. Colorado’s Roadmap Pollution Reduction outlined plans to reduce vehicle travel and emissions statewide, and the use of e-bikes — especially through this pilot program — will play a critical role in achieving this vision. The findings of this pilot have already led to the establishment of new e-bike incentive programs in Denver, Colorado, and e-bike loan programs in partnership with the New Haven, Connecticut, Clean cities Coalition.
“The lessons we learned from the CEO e-bike pilot have been incredible. I now look forward to seeing how we can maximize the impact of NREL OpenPATH outside of Colorado,” said K. Shankari, a co-director of NREL who developed the tool. “It’s exciting to imagine how future analytics based on travel pattern data on how e-bike programs work could help shape local, state and national policies about what and how to encourage with regard to e-bike use. bike.”
Learn more about NRELs research into sustainable transport and mobility and Transport secured data center†
Article courtesy of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)†
By Natasha Nguyen
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