E-Bikes Are Good For You & Lower Transportation Emissions Too!

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In 2023, British Columbia began an incentive program for e-bikes that provided rebates of from $350 to $1400, depending on the income level of those purchasing electric bicycles. A year ago, Alex Bigazzi, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of  British Columbia, began a survey of 1,004 people who participated in that rebate program.

In a UBC blog post on September 23, 2025, Bigazzi said, “E-bikes make cycling a practical travel option for a wider range of people and trips, but the purchase cost can be a substantial barrier, especially for those with low income. Our study found income-based rebates made sustainable travel an attractive option for many people who were not previously cycling.”

The data showed that those who took advantage of the rebate program for e-bikes drove their cars an average of 17 kilometers less each week and rode their e-bikes an average of 40 kilometers a week, mostly for commuting, running errands, and shopping. 87% had access to a car as well, so the e-bikes did not replace motor vehicles, they just allowed them to be used less.

The study claimed several benefits attributed to riding e-bikes:

• Emissions from travel dropped 17% per year overall, equivalent to 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide
• Travel costs fell 12%
• Physical activity during travel rose 13%
• Rebates cut e-bike purchase costs by 43%, with the greatest benefits going to lower-income households
• $6.5 million in rebates generated $8.7 million in new retailer revenue

So, did the citizens of British Columbia get their money’s worth? Gristsays a report on the e-bikes rebate program shows that “rebates [for] EV purchases and rebates that [for] e-bikes can be equally effective, both costing about a dollar per ton of avoided carbon dioxide emissions.”

Bigazzi added, “Electric car incentives actually have some downsides, because we know it incentivizes even more driving, which makes congestion worse and leads to more sedentary lifestyles and…..higher infrastructure costs.”

Lloyd Alter Is Vindicated

Here is something Lloyd Alter, the sage of Toronto, will really appreciate. Grist claims that cities could start to think about bike-share programs as an extension of their public transportation systems. “It really is a public benefit to get people from point A to point B without needing to park or drive a car,” said Kendra Ramsey, executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition. “There is an argument that having some sort of public subsidy, like public transit does, could greatly increase the number of folks that are able to use those systems.”

Alter has been a fierce champion of more and better bike lanes in cities and roundly criticized Doug Ford, the Ontario premier, who is busily tearing up what bike lanes exist in Toronto to make room for more cars.

Greg Rybarczyk, a professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, told Grist, the challenge is “the infrastructure needs to be somehow retrofitted for these faster mobility devices. I think there’s a long way to go in terms of driver education and marketing campaigns.” Making sure bike riders and drivers know the rules of the road is also critical, he said.

The gold standard, Bigazzi said, is protected infrastructure for bikes — a lane which is physically separated from motor vehicles. Intersections in particular need “protective movements” that allow bikes and cars to move through at different times.

Cities face a choice — invest in relatively cheap improvements to make cycling safer, thus encouraging people to cycle more, or double down on car infrastructure to accommodate EVs, thus encouraging people to drive more and endanger pedestrians and cyclists, he said.

“Cities can build out almost their whole bike network for the cost of rebuilding one or two freeway interchanges, so the cost of cycling infrastructure — even high-quality, protected infrastructure — is relatively cheap in terms of providing mobility in cities.”

E-Bikes Become A Political Issue

And yet, things are never quite what they seem. When San Francisco voted recently to abandon a highway expansion and build bicycle lames instead, motorists were furious and organized a successful campaign to recall the city council representatives who voted for the plan.

“E-bikes bring benefits to users in cost, mobility and physical activity,” Dr. Meghan Winters of Simon Fraser University said in the UBC blog post in discussing a similar rebate program in Saanich on Vancouver Island. “But the impacts of this rebate program are also more broad, with societal benefits of reduced emissions, replacement of car trips, and generated revenue.” The researchers estimated that the almost 5,000 rebate recipients in the program saved approximately $2.3 million in travel costs annually despite an overall increase in the amount of weekly travel.

Comparing these results to an earlier study on e-bike rebates in Saanich, the researchers found similar drops in car use and increases in e-biking. They suggest a few potential tweaks to B.C.’s rebate program that could make it more effective, such as shifting eligibility from personal to household income to reach those who need it most, partnering with employers to target commuters, prioritizing regions with limited public transit, and adjusting rebate values to improve cost efficiency while keeping e-bikes accessible to low income households.

“We found it interesting how often people reported fun and enjoyment as key factors in their sustained shift to e-bike use after one year, which are aspects of travel largely ignored in transportation engineering and planning” said Bigazzi.

E-Bikes Are About More Than Fun

E-bikes are not just for fun, however. Many are cargo models that can transport groceries home from the supermarket or young children to school. But what about weather? When it’s cold or rainy out, nobody wants to ride a bicycle of any kind, do they? Piffle, many Europeans would say.

In the Netherlands, where the average person rides a bicycle about 680 miles a year, folks have learned to dress appropriately for the weather. “In the Netherlands, we say there’s no bad weather — there’s only bad clothing,” Joost de Kruijf, a researcher at Dutch Cycling Intelligence told Grist. “Once you reach a kind of threshold where you do all your trips by bicycle, then it just becomes a habit.”

Rebates have led to a dramatic increase in the number of e-bikes in America, which benefits communities because of lower transportation emissions and benefits rides because of improved physical health. Surfing social media offers none of the physical benefits of getting off the couch and going for a bike ride.

Some suggest snidely that e-bikes are not as healthy as pedaling for yourself, but the research suggests otherwise. In fact, e-bike riders go further, on average, than people who use conventional two-wheelers. And for those who have physical limitations, going for a bike ride is preferable to sitting home watching reruns of My Mother The Car.

The fact remains, however, that people on bicycles are at risk of personal injury from automobiles unless the two forms of transportation are kept separate and apart by physical barriers. A painted line on asphalt doesn’t do much  to deter a 2 ton automobile from wandering into a so-called “bike lane.”

Lloyd Alter has been a tireless advocate for safer infrastructure that protects bicyclists, but the cult of the car is still a powerful force in society. Rebate programs can help people afford e-bikes, but cities and towns need to do much more to keep riders safe. Perhaps as more riders take to the road, they will develop enough political clout to make those safety upgrades a higher priority.