Date
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Time
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Name
The CanBikeCO Full Pilot: Long-Term Results and Analysis
Session ID
A7 - Lightning: Transportation
Track
Transportation
Description

The CanBikeCO program recorded travel survey data from July 2021 to December 31, 2022, from low-income Colorado households who were given e-bikes for personal use by the Colorado Energy Office. Data was collected in six different communities across Colorado following the mini-pilot program. The Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (OpenPATH) application was used which combines passive data collection with semantic information such as mode and purpose. To date, there is little research on personally owned e-bikes, primarily due to a lack of supporting data. To understand the impact of personal e-bike ownership, it’s critical to investigate how e-bikes are used, what modes they replace, what their net energy impact is, and how the use behavior varies across geographies. Here, we present an overview of the longitudinal findings from this program, focused use rates across different demographics, trip characteristics, and geographies. We update the descriptive findings from a preliminary report and examine the geographical variations. We find that commute trips among participants had nearly 17% higher share of e-bikes than all trips combined. E-bikes were stated to replace cars (34%) most often and personal micromobility (22%). Walking was favored for trips less than 1 mile, e-bikes for trips 1-3 miles, and e-bikes, cars, or shared rides for trips 3-20 miles. Seasonality accounted for a 10% decrease and subsequent recovery in e-bike mileage. E-bikes are appealing across age groups and see decreased utilization like regular bikes or walking during winter. We also find that e-bike use may be related to land-use and urban form, occupation and income, and household car ownership. We conclude that the emissions added using e-bikes (in the case of replacement of non-motorized modes) are outweighed by the strong single occupancy vehicle (SOV) travel replacement. Our findings suggest a considerable potential for energy savings from personal e-bike ownership.

Supporting Document 1