BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's welcome news in the middle of the national bike shortage due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A Buffalo-based organization has secured thousands of e-bikes once owed by Uber, and have a plan to introduce them that could be unlike anything we've ever seen.
Uber once had a program where it placed electronic bikes in cities and made them available to rent. They decided to transition away from the the bike though, meaning thousands of e-bikes needed new homes. That's where Shared Mobility came in. The local organization that operates car share and other shared transportation services was already working with NYSERDA to research electronic bikes, which just became legal to operate in New York State on August 2nd. They acquired 3,000 of the bikes, and plan to make them available for the public to access for free through a new concept called a "transportation library."
"We're not exactly sure what that's going to look like yet, but we know we want to make these bikes as accessible as possible to people and we think this is a pretty innovative model to try here," Shared Mobility's Program Director, Mitch LaRosa, told 2 On Your Side. "Transportation libraries and bike libraries have been tried in other cities but never at this scale, so we're looking at doing something here in Buffalo that hasn't been done anywhere else before, and we're really excited to be doing it in our hometown. "
The plans for the transportation libraries are still in the very early stages, so there is no word on where they'll be located, how many there will be, or when they may open.