1Feb
With the start of the new year, Kansas City is at the forefront of another new exciting service. This time, the city rolled out a new fleet of electric bikes. Drop Mobility, a Canadian micro-mobility company, has partnered with RideKC and BikeWalkKC to launch its first e-bike operation.
While scooters are still all the rage, especially in the downtown area, these new e-bikes may be just the right mix of convenience and value to finally compete with the whizzing transportation beasts.
Kansas City does already have an existing bike share system: B-Cycle. The new fleet of electric bikes will operate alongside the existing bike share stations, but B-Cycle only uses conventional bikes and requires riders to purchase online memberships.
Smart e-bikes provide an electric assist, boosting pedaling efforts to help riders travel faster and farther with less effort. This is great for riders with physical limitations or stiff joints.
Just as users have enjoyed the ease and fun of zooming around on electric scooters with little to no effort, the new electric bikes also take you for a ride – no huffing or puffing required
In order to use the new electric bikes, riders simply have to download the Drop Mobility App. All of the bikes are equipped with GPS, so users can quickly find an available bike using the app and scan a QR code to unlock it.
The service only costs $5 for the entire day, or $2 per hour.
Once finished, the rider must return and lock the bike at one of the designated hubs located throughout Kansas City.
Dockless scooters have gained a reputation for being a bit of a litter monster. There is no designated space for them, so they repeatedly get left in inconvenient places, blocking sidewalks and entryways. Some cities have even started to impound scooters.
Even though scooters are technically not supposed to be ridden on the sidewalk, that rule is rarely followed or enforced. Riders continuously weave around pedestrians and through crosswalks and have become quite a hazard to both pedestrians and drivers.
Scooters also get crashed. A lot.
If you’ve ever tried to ride a scooter up a hill then you understand the struggle. Kansas City is not a flatland, and scooters simply can’t handle steep inclines like bikes can. They’re also not great for long distances.
The new fleet of electric bikes adds to the growing list of convenient transit options available to Kansas City residents. It’s also an important new source of data for Kansas City’s pilot program for shared active transportation. The program is working to meet social equity goals for lower income neighborhoods and improve existing infrastructure.
If you’d like to try out an electric bike, you can download the app on Google Play or the App Store.
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