The world’s on fire, and some 50% of Americans can’t be bothered to do anything about it. They’d apparently rather pay $.50 less for eggs than acknowledge climate change. Fun!
Clearly, the country’s exurbanite F-150 drivers aren’t willing to ditch their bad habits. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck wondering how to tidy our respective corners and hopefully lay the foundations for a better future under less-than-ideal circumstances. As the Big Boy Truck crowd continues their automobile arms race and Amazon vans clog our roadways, Pittsburghers who care about lowering emissions are left with a seemingly Sisyphean task.
However, there’s an obvious solution to some of our woes hiding in plain sight: electric-assist cargo bikes.
I’ve already extolled the virtues of e-bikes in this column. As local TikToker Saxboybilly18 puts it, an e-bike “is the hack” for navigating Pittsburgh without a car. But, as it turns out, it may also be the hack for last-mile deliveries, short-distance transit, and car-free grocery shopping.
The range of e-bike offerings has exploded in recent years, such that Downtown Pittsburgh is now home to Fierro eBikes, a store dedicated solely to them. Concurrently, cargo bikes with pedal assist — and often with built-in seatbelts for young passengers — have risen in popularity and fallen in price. Some newer models retail for under $2,000, making them a more attractive alternative to cars for families considering the switch.
When paired with restrictions on vehicle size and weight in dense urban corridors, these hardworking e-bikes can replace a significant portion of delivery vehicles in a given area.
It’s annoying to always have to point to Europe to see examples of functional transit, but, sure enough, cities such as London have experimented with the widespread introduction of cargo bikes and restrictions on car traffic. The city’s pedal-powered fleets have cut down on congestion and delivery time in some cases. U.S. companies including UPS and Jeff Bezos’ juggernaut have also gotten on board.
But there are also plenty of domestic examples worth mentioning. New York is teeming with couriers, gig workers, and delivery people riding e-bikes. This year, the city updated its laws specifically to make cargo e-bikes safer to use. Elsewhere, metro Boston has seen the introduction of bicycle delivery of Christmas trees in time for the holidays. Talk about going green!
For Pittsburgh, where narrow streets combine with abysmal driving and parked delivery vans to create the optimal conditions for road rage, introducing cargo bikes would face challenges. But they have some marked advantages over delivery vans when it comes to handling packages, takeout food and drink, and time-sensitive documents.
For starters, you can park them on the sidewalk on arrival — no having to cross the double yellow line to go around an inconvenient FedEx truck! Cargo e-bikes can also make use of trails and dedicated bike lanes, thus bypassing car traffic and the potential for accidents altogether. Purely in terms of logistics, I doubt drivers would notice a difference in conditions with a few more cargo bikes sharing local roadways. Bikes also often have an easier time navigating Pittsburgh’s seemingly endless street repairs.
Moreover, e-bikes are a boon to public health. Using cargo e-bikes would keep DoorDashers and Amazon drivers active and engaged instead of sitting in a hot van. Winter weather and rain can be a pain for overworked delivery people gigging for tech giants, but even offsetting a percentage of deliveries with bikes in nicer weather would save companies money, cut back on diesel fumes, and improve gig workers’ health.
Imagine never having to weave around parked Amazon vans on your way down Butler St. on a Saturday. Instead, couriers pull up to your door with a cheerful jingle of their bell! Then, they pedal off, using a dedicated lane to bypass the suburban brunch crowd who can’t parallel park despite 30 years on the road, and, as you set your package inside, you wheel out your own e-bike, child buckled in safely, for an emissions-free ride to the park.
We may live in a stupid time, but we also have a remarkable number of solutions staring us in the face. Why stick your head in the sand when you could get your butt in the saddle? After all, making something you like cool can be more effective than making something you dislike illegal…
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2024.
