Cincinnati getting electric-assist bicycles

Hannah K. Sparling | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption What NOT to do (and what to do) on a Cincy Red Bike Enquirer City Hall reporter Sharon Coolidge, a novice rider, gets tips from Cincy Red Bike Exec. Dir. Jason Barron as she takes a spin Downtown. Coolidge, who has been riding to and from City Hall, says she doesn't mind riding in heels and a skirt.

In Cincinnati, we embrace our hills. They’re part of our heritage and our name.

But when you’re on a bike, huffing and puffing trying to reach the top, Cincinnati’s “seven hills” are decidedly less romantic.

Fear not. Help is coming.

In early November, Cincinnati will get 10 electric-assist bicycles, part of a pilot through BCycle, the company that makes the bikes for Cincy’s Red Bike program.

Those e-bikes will be white, parked at regular Red Bike docking stations around the city. Riders can check them out at the dock computer or with their Red Bike pass.

It will be a roughly three-month pilot, said Red Bike Executive Director Jason Barron, who has been pushing for longer than a year to bring e-bikes to the city. Cincinnati is one of six cities in the pilot, along with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Los Angeles, California; Austin, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Broward County, Florida.

And, Cincinnati has already placed the first order with BCyle for 100 permanent e-bikes. Those, in keeping with the brand, will be red. They’ll arrive in the winter and be available to ride in spring 2019.

Barron said he's confident e-bikes will get more people to try biking, either for fun or as transportation.

Plus, he said, “it’s fun to be first.”

E-bikes are not like the electric scooters that landed on Cincinnati streets this past summer. The scooters are completely motorized – squeeze the throttle and off you go. The e-bikes use a side-mounted battery that gives the rider a pedal assist. Basically, when you push down on the pedal, the battery multiples your force, pushing the bike faster than it would normally go.

The boost goes up to 17 miles per hour before it kicks off, leaving the rider to his or her own pedal power.

By comparison, a typical Red Bike rider might go around 10 miles per hour Downtown.

The e-scooters go up to 15 miles per hour.

“We’ve got a lot of hills,” Barron said. “I think e-bikes are going to be transformative in the ability of folks to use bikes as transportation."

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Red Bike launched in Cincinnati in September 2014 with 260 bikes at 29 stations.

It now has 442 bikes at 57 stations.

There are about 1,200 Red Bike pass members and about 25,000 to 30,000 single-day riders a year.

The ridership numbers are great, Barron said, but they’re also relatively flat. Riding a bike requires certain levels of physical fitness and confidence, and he thinks those who are comfortable using Red Bike are already using it.

His hope is e-bikes will make others more comfortable giving biking a shot.

It’s good exercise, he said. It’s good for the environment. And it’s one more transportation choice and one more potential draw for developers.

“I think it helps add to the overall ‘it’ factor of Cincinnati," he said.

The battery makes an e-bike about 3 pounds heavier than a traditional Red Bike. The e-bikes will require more maintenance – at the very least, swapping out the batteries to recharge. And, e-bikes are about two-thirds more expensive.

Barron wouldn’t give specific cost numbers, but Trek, the company that owns BCycle, sells its e-bikes individually for anywhere from $2,300 to $7,000.

“Red Bike is a nonprofit," Barron said. "We’re trying to put bikes in the world and let people use them. But, we gotta pay the bills.”

Red Bike got $200,000 from the city for this first fleet of e-bikes, along with $25,000 from Duke Energy and $100,000 from The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation.

That more than covered it, Barron said, but his long-term goal is to raise $1 million to buy more e-bikes and expand Red Bike to additional neighborhoods around the city.

Lower Price Hill is on his mind, as are Avondale and Bond Hill.

“It’s going to take a long time to cover all of the city,” he said, “but we want to expand out.”