By next summer, low and medium-income Portlanders will be able to walk into a bike shop and receive a significant rebate when they purchase an electric bike. That timeline was just one thing we learned yesterday as staff from the Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability presented new details to City Council about their forthcoming e-bike rebate program.

In addition to funding an estimated 6,000 new e-bikes (and adaptive e-bikes!) over the next five years, the program will train mechanics, and launch a program for e-bike parking and storage at multi-family apartment buildings.

Portland’s e-bike rebate program is part of the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund Climate Investment Plan. That plan, adopted by council in September 2023, pumps $750 million into projects and programs that help Portlanders with low-incomes and Black, Indigenous people of color fight climate change.

The plan includes $20 million for an e-bike rebate program. How exactly the program will be implemented came into clearer focus at the council meeting yesterday. The ordinance will authorize BPS to hire people and/or organizations to run the program. It was a first reading, so councilors and Mayor Ted Wheeler won’t discuss or vote on it until next week.

PCEF Transportation Decarbonization Lead Seetha Ream-Rao framed the program to council as a way to reduce fossil fueled car trips that is, “Absolutely essential to meeting Portland’s net zero goals.”

Ream-Rao cited recent Oregon Household Activities Survey data that the average daily trip in the Portland metro area was six miles and 80% of those are completed with a car. “That [distance] is well within the range of any e-bike on the market today and one of the biggest opportunities for carbon reductions,” she said.

For lower-income Portlanders, an electric car is way too expensive. E-bikes however, would be within reach with a little help in the form of a purchase incentive. Not only would these bikes open up mobility opportunities for more Portlanders, they’d save their owners lots of cash by being able to replace car trips — or in some cases allow families to not own a car or buy a second one.

When the rebate program is in place next summer, people will be able to visit a website, get a voucher, and then receive a point-of-sale rebate at a verified bike retailer. BPS also plans to establish a program to train 50 new e-bike mechanics. The third aspect of the program would create a pilot project aimed at residents of existing mulitfamily buildings to make sure they have secure storage and charging available for e-bikes on the ground floor.

How much will the rebate be? That detail is still unknown. Ream-Rao said they’re discussing the proper amount with retailers and other experts. Portland has modeled parts of its program on the City of Denver, where lower-income participants can receive up to $900 off an e-cargo bike.

Portland’s program will have two brackets, low and medium income (higher wage workers won’t be eligible). While the income brackets haven’t been shared, we learned yesterday the low-income rebate will have three tiers, depending on which type of bike someone wants: standard e-bikes will receive the (unknown) base rebate amount; cargo e-bike buyers will receive the base amount plus $750; and those who have a disability and need an adaptive e-bike will receive an amount based on a percentage of the final cost of the bike (up to a specific amount).

Ream-Rao said they want to remain flexible on the adaptive bike piece of the program, “Rather than trying to make a one-size-fit-all.”

For medium-income folks, there will be a single base incentive that will be less than the low-income incentive. 

Whatever the base rebate amount is, Hayes Kenny, who manages River City E-Bikes, said during invited testimony that it should allow participants to buy a bike in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. Kenny said that’s the cutoff for bikes that will be easy to service and will last customers a long time.

Another thing we learned yesterday is that every voucher will come with a $200 “safety incentive” to purchase essentials. “We don’t want to see folks not be able to afford the helmet that they need to be riding these bikes, or a good lock, or the lights,” Ream-Rao said.

Making sure people ride the bikes will be key. In the city of Denver, where an e-bike rebate program was launched in 2022, a survey found that voucher recipients replaced 3.5 car trips and drove an average of 23 few miles in their cars per week.

You can multiply that behavior change by 8,644 because that’s how many Denverites have taken advantage of the program in just two years, said Elizabeth Babcock, who runs the city’s climate office and was invited to speak at council yesterday. Babcock said the program has been, “wildly successful.”

Sarah Iannarone, executive director of the nonprofit The Street Trust, said in her testimony that all these new e-bike riders will need more and better infrastructure. Iannarone said the Portland Bureau of Transportation needs to step up to handle the coming demand. “I think [this program] is going to be incredibly popular here. I also want to talk about the fact that I don’t see PBOT as actively involved as they should be in this,” she said.

The Street Trust has experience getting people on e-bikes through their Ride2Own program. Based on rider data from that program, Iannarone estimates BPS’s e-bike rebates will lead to over 180,000 miles traveled by bike, over 100,000 new bike trips and over 17,000 fewer car trips. “And the infrastructure is not increasing exponentially with it,” Iannarone said, “So we need to tap into the existing infrastructure and capacity at PBOT to make sure these programs roll out in tandem. I cannot stress that enough.”

Having too much demand on bikeways sounds like a good problem to have. But with different types of bikes and a new, battery-powered future, PBOT would be wise to do as much as possible to get ready before the latest phase of the e-bike revolution hits the streets next summer.