It’s been just about four months since the first pedal-assist bicycles rolled out in New York City as part of the DOT’s dockless bike share pilot, and the two-wheelers—which give riders a slight boost, propelling them at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour—have already proven incredibly popular with city riders.
In fact, according to the New York Post, Citi Bike has been having trouble keeping its 200 pedal-assist bikes out on the streets, due to high demand. Per the Post, the e-bikes average 14 trips per day, while traditional bikes average only seven rides. (Supply is, of course, a factor here; there are around 12,000 traditional two-wheelers available.)
And it can be tough to find an e-bike at one of Citi Bike’s many docks; a quick scroll through the app on Monday morning shows that the new wheels are few and far between. High demand is one part of the problem, but the other is the nature of pedal-assist bikes—when the battery for one is kicked, it needs about 45 minutes to recharge.
“[R]ight away, the batteries haven’t been able to handle the demand because they have been ridden so much,” a Citi Bike spokesperson told the Post.
The company plans to roll out even more e-bikes as part of the larger mitigation efforts around the L train shutdown, for which biking will be a critical alternative. There will be an additional 800 pedal-assist bikes on the streets, clustered at stations in Williamsburg and lower Manhattan.
Citi Bike isn’t the only service that has seen big interest in pedal-assist bikes: Jump, the Uber-owned e-bike operator that’s part of the city’s dockless pilot program, says that users have taken more than 20,000 trips on Staten Island since the pilot began, and more than 10,000 in the Bronx. Earlier this month, the DOT announced that it would extend the dockless bike share pilot for another 90 days, which means those bikes will be sticking around through the beginning of next year.
It’s also worth noting that the clarification in city law that allows for pedal-assist bikes on streets does not apply to throttle bikes, which are still illegal (much to the chagrin of delivery workers who use them to get around—and feel they’re unfairly targeted by the city).
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