Bird, the global micro mobility company famous for its electric scooters, has added 100 electric bikes to its fleet of rentable micro transit vehicles in Cleveland. The Bird e-bikes arrived yesterday and now join Lime, which currently has between 100 and 200 e-bikes for rent in Cleveland and hopes to get up to 400 later in 2022.
Bird’s blue e-bikes are pedal assist and have a motor built into the frame. By ordinance, the max speed for the e-bikes in Cleveland is 20 mph, but reaching higher speeds on an e-bike requires far less effort than on your standard-issue bicycle, because the motor is helping out your legs.
As with the e-scooters, e-bikes are meant to be ridden only in the street, not the sidewalk, and need not be deposited in specific locations when customers complete their rides. (But our friends who use wheelchairs have kindly asked that you not be a jackass and leave them in the middle of the sidewalk when you’re done.)
The Bird bikes can be accessed via mobile application. They cost $1 to “unlock” and then 45 cents per minute for the duration of the trip, (meaning that they are optimized for very short rides). Lime is the slightly cheaper option, at 35 cents per minute after the $1 unlock fee.
Having a bounty of convenient, affordable transit options available should be the goal of any city, and Mayor Justin Bibb registered his enthusiasm in a brief statement welcoming the Bird bikes and championing sustainable transit alternatives.
E-bike sales are on the rise at area bike shops, too, and that trend is likely to continue if gas prices remain this high.
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This article appears in Mar 23 – Apr 5, 2022.