While non-motorized transportation is an important tactic for reducing emissions, many people still associate biking with something that kids do — or think of it as the last resort for people who can’t afford cars.

In BIPOC communities, that is compounded by external factors such as perceived or realistic safety issues, police harassment, and lack of access and infrastructure due to decades of disinvestment.

Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of the Equiticity Racial Equity Movement in Chicago, aims to change that.

“There are some systemic barriers that keep Black and Brown people driving, that keep Black and Brown people driving by themselves, that push Black and Brown people away from transit or cycling or walking. So, we’ve got to think about this holistically and at the systemic level … some of the systemic barriers that keep us from getting rid of our cars,” Reed said.

Based in North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side, Equiticity is a multifaceted, multi-racial organization focused on eliminating racial inequality. Reed, along with his staff and an active board of directors, guides the organization in its pursuit of racial justice — largely pedal-powered by bicycle.

For Reed and for Equiticity, getting more Black and Brown people on bikes is about more than recreation or even transportation. He sees it as a vehicle for enhanced community cohesion, economic development, and improved health outcomes for Black and Brown residents, whose life expectancy is a full decade lower than that of White residents of the city, in part due to poor air quality generated by fossil fuel combustion.

From Slow Roll to Equiticity

Reed, along with childhood friend Jamal Julien, launched Slow Roll Chicago — a local outpost of a global bicycle movement — in 2014 as a means of encouraging more Black, Brown and Indigenous people to embrace bicycling for both recreation and transportation. While Reed has stepped away from leadership, Slow Roll Chicago continues to work to strengthen community connections and development.

There are some systemic barriers that keep Black and Brown people driving … that push Black and Brown people away from transit or cycling or walking.

 

– Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of the Equiticity Racial Equity Movement

In 2017, Reed expanded his vision of promoting racial equity beyond Slow Roll Chicago with a well-attended soft open of Equiticity in Chicago’s tony River North neighborhood. A number of delegates from the National Association of City Transportation Officials conference, along with local advocates, supporters and members of the media, were in the audience. The new organization was initially tasked with a plan to establish bike libraries on the city’s predominantly Black and Brown South and West Sides.

Since then, the organization has expanded its programming reach while remaining firmly rooted within a framework of advocating for BIPOC communities. Today, Equiticity encompasses advocacy, social enterprises, and programming, along with “community mobility rituals” where Black, Brown and Indigenous people take to the road on two wheels.

Three of its major programs — the Mobility Opportunities Fund, GoHub Community Mobility Center and BikeForce Workforce Development Program — are specifically designed to make biking more accessible and affordable for Black and Brown riders by addressing inequities, disinvestment and disparities, along with promoting economic development. 

The Mobility Opportunities Fund

In November 2022, Equiticity launched the Mobility Opportunities Fund, supported by a grant of $448,950 from ComEd. The fund initially provided $350 for the purchase of a conventional bicycle, $750 for the purchase of an electric bicycle, $1,500 for the purchase of an electric cargo bicycle and $3,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle. (Stipends were later increased to $8,750 for EVs.)

Only four EVs were purchased using resources from the fund. However, community members bought 111 bikes, 85 electric bikes and 57 electric cargo bikes with their stipends, according to an August 2023 report on the program.

“When I came on board, I was very excited, because I understand being someone who resides in North Lawndale,” said Remel Terry, director of programs at Equiticity. “I understand the benefit of having alternative modes of transportation especially if you can’t afford a bike or even the cost of, as we’ve seen, gas and things of that nature.

“And then the overall climate-friendly aspect is also a big deal, in my opinion, and helping us to understand how to be more environmentally friendly without having to harp on things in the way sometimes it gets communicated.”

The GoHub Community Mobility Center

Equiticity is developing the GoHub Community Mobility Center to help address EV charging deserts along with other mobility and transportation needs for residents of North Lawndale.

“The GoHub would have charging stations accessible to the community who may have electric vehicles,” Terry said. “So, it’s really like a one stop shop bringing all of the various programs into a physical space within the community of North Lawndale.”

But the GoHub is not limited to facilitating EV adaptation. Reed envisions multiple functions to address transportation-related inequities that Black and Brown low- and moderate-income residents experience, some of which may not be readily apparent.

That includes “hardware” — physical infrastructure — and “software,” which Reed describes as “the work we do to socialize people around the act of mobility.”

“For us, that’s our community mobility rituals. We do community bicycle rides, neighborhood walking tours, public transit excursions, group scooter rides, and open streets festivals,” Reed said.

“We also, as a part of the GoHub, want to have a hyper-local advocacy coalition. So, these are people at the neighborhood level who identify the needs to grow our mobility. And then we organize ourselves to move the stakeholders and policy makers in the city to bring the resources to bear that we need to grow our mobility in our neighborhoods,” Reed said.

North Lawndale suffers from a high crime rate, which is highly publicized in local and national media. In acknowledging the prevalence of violence in the neighborhood, Reed also envisions the “software” of the GoHub as a means to reduce the presence of violence that can discourage residents from biking.

Equiticity’s research found that between 2014 and 2019, police disproportionately issued citations for bike riding on sidewalks on the West and South Sides, which are predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“Violence in our neighborhood is not something that we are able to pontificate about often. It is pretty close to us. Trauma is driving our concerns around mobility. So, we want to address trauma.

“We want mental health services to be a significant part of our work in the GoHub… We want space in the GoHub where that space is dedicated to other forms of healing to help people move through their trauma and begin to consider other modes of travel that, heretofore, they weren’t focused on,” Reed said.

Workforce development

Equiticity launched BikeForce in 2022 as a workforce development program for teens between the ages of 15 and 19 living in North Lawndale and adjacent communities. The apprenticeship program focuses on the emerging electric transportation sector, through the mechanics of e-bicycle construction, along with electric vehicles, e-scooters, battery systems, and electric motors. The Cook County Justice Advisory Council awarded Equiticity a $600,000 grant earlier this year, which allowed the program to expand to serve 60 trainees over 18 months.

“BikeForce is providing these participants with comprehensive and targeted mentorship, career services and workforce training in an emerging, environmentally sustainable sector — all while increasing access to climate-friendly mobility devices in North Lawndale,” Terry said in an email.

The apprenticeship program also provides networking and opportunities for living-wage jobs to as many as 30 young people each year. Participants who complete the program also receive a cash stipend of $1,100 and a non-electric bicycle, Terry said.

“They’ll be able to leave this program and be hired as a bike mechanic somewhere with the experience of also understanding the battery aspect of the electric bike, which is a very big deal,” Terry told Streetsblog in September.

Ongoing advocacy

Equiticity launched the Free 2 Move Coalition during the summer of 2022 to advocate for improvements in biking infrastructure and policy changes, especially around the issue of police harassment of Black and Brown bike riders, including aggressive enforcement of street crossing regulations and prohibitions against riding on the sidewalk. These types of stops increased exponentially as an alternative to stop-and-frisk, said Jose Manuel Almanza, director of movement and advocacy building at Equiticity.

“Right now, the Chicago Police Department can stop vehicles for a number of reasons, including a busted taillight, no registration or expired registration, [or] no city sticker — stuff that we think that should not be in the hands of the Chicago Police Department” Almanza said.

Equiticity’s research found that between 2014 and 2019, police disproportionately issued citations for bike riding on sidewalks on the West and South Sides, which are predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“At the same time, those areas have little to no biking infrastructure. So, it makes sense that people just feel safer riding on the sidewalk,” Almanza said. “So, we want to eliminate the CPD’s ability to ticket folks for these offenses, and at the same time invest in these neighborhoods to give them the space and the safety they need to ride their bike safely on the road.”

Like many Black and Brown communities, North Lawndale has suffered the effects of decades of disinvestment. However, dollars intended to mitigate disinvestment frequently don’t make their way to areas where they are most needed.

At the same time, initiatives to mitigate disparities are sometimes met with pushback — driven by mistrust and anxiety about displacement, and exacerbated by the failure of municipal and other entities to engage community stakeholders, Almanza said.

We really want to expand biking infrastructure. However, a lot of people on the West Side and South Side see biking infrastructure as a sign of gentrification. A lot of people think, well, who are these bike lanes really for?

 

– Jose Manuel Almanza, director of movement and advocacy building at Equiticity

“We really want to expand biking infrastructure. However, a lot of people on the West Side and South Side see biking infrastructure as a sign of gentrification. A lot of people think, well, who are these bike lanes really for? It just seems that whenever the city does any kind of improvements in, for example, North Lawndale or Little Village, we get priced out. And I think just seeing that over and over and over again, it just creates suspicion in people that, well, in the past, everything they’ve done was not for me. So why is this for me now?

“Different communities in Chicago have different needs and people who live here know what’s needed, know what’s working, know what isn’t. However, we just keep seeing a lack of engagement from city agencies when it comes to creating a plan around infrastructure. A lot of our communities have been here for a very long time, so there’s a lot of history in it, and it seems like a lot of that history isn’t taken into consideration.” Almanza said.

For Reed, advocacy, education and improving biking infrastructure are all integral to Equiticity’s mission of getting Black and Brown people on bikes — and having them feel safe riding.

“How are we going to convince somebody not to drive and they should walk or bike, and there’s no sidewalk? This is not a rural community. This is the city of Chicago. People consider this the welcome center to the country,” Reed said.

“Corporations are headquartered here. And we’ve got a neighborhood in our city with no sidewalk. And it’s been like that for decades. The intersection [at] 79^th and Stony [Island] is one of the most dangerous intersections in the state of Illinois. It’s been like that for generations. And we’re supposed to convince somebody in that neighborhood to ride a bike. I wouldn’t dare tell somebody to ride a bike on Stony Island. I wouldn’t ride a bike on Stony Island. So, we’ve got to improve the quality of our infrastructure. We’ve got to use infrastructure to reduce all types of violence, interpersonal, police, and vehicular. And this is taking place.”

This story originally appeared on Energy News Network and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

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The concrete new rules will accelerate the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) in  the car-centric state where transportation is responsible for 41% of greenhouse gas emissions. The ban, which followed similar prohibitions in British Columbia, Quebec and the European Union, will mean that car manufacturers could face a fine of US$20,000 for every vehicle they sell in the state that doesn’t comply. But, in the meantime, it’ll be up to consumers whether they want to keep burning petrol or make the switch to an EV.

One huge barrier for many is initial cost, although Corporate Knights analyses show that EV owners will eventually save on total costs over 10 years versus what they would have spent on the equivalent gas-burning model. Tax credits coming from the recently passed U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (US$7,500 for a new EV and US$4,000 for used ones) will help put a dent in sticker shock, but roadblocks to EV uptake remain.

Another hurdle for consumers is the amount of time it takes to charge an EV. But a new report shows that this might not be a concern for long. Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have devised a new way to charge EV batteries to 90% within 10 minutes.

“Fast charging is the key to increasing consumer confidence and overall adoption of electric vehicles,” said researcher Eric Dufek, who presented his findings last week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. “It would allow vehicle charging to be very similar to filling up at a gas station.”

The challenge to finding fast ways to charge the lithium-ion batteries found in EVs has been that a speedier charge can damage the battery. To get around this, the researchers used machine learning to figure out the specific conditions that would lead to the failure of different types of batteries as they age. They then used that information to optimize the amount of energy they could quickly put into a battery cell.

Researchers say this model could be used to help design new batteries, but they likely won’t make their way into EV markets for another five years. Of the products currently out there, Tesla has claimed that its network of superchargers can charge up to 200 miles (322 kilometres) worth of battery space within 15 minutes, but its chargers don’t currently work with other EVs. (The company has said that it will start producing new equipment that will let other EVs use its superchargers.)

In Canada, the speed at which chargers operate is only half the battle, as a recent study compiled by the federal government found that the country would need 200,000 EV chargers by 2030 to have one charger for every 24 EVs on the road. The country has a lot of work to do to meet that target, as the International Energy Agency found that, as of 2021, Canada had only around 0.06 public chargers for every EV.

While bans on new gas cars in places such as California and Quebec, coupled with the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, are sure to shift the transition to electric vehicles into a higher gear, charging technology seems set to keep pace.

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As an environmentalist who totes kids around town, I would love to buy an electric car. But here in South Carolina, the cheapest electric vehicles (EVs) are at least three times as expensive as my used VW Jetta. What about those big government subsidies, you ask? The truth is that EV subsidies overwhelmingly benefit the rich, not moderate-income people like me.

The U.S. federal government will give you up to a $7,500 tax credit for an EV, but you only get this money at tax time, and you only get it all if you pay a lot in taxes. In 2016, 78% of federal EV tax credits went to taxpayers with incomes over $100,000.

My research has shown that most of these tax credits, as well as state subsidies, are paid out to consumers who would have bought the EV even without the extra benefit. And often, they go to people who treat them as additional cars rather than replacements for gas guzzlers, or who don’t drive them often enough to make the gas savings outweigh the environmental cost of making the car in the first place.

This is a waste of government money.

In the face of climate change, we need to accelerate the transition to electric transport (assuming the U.S. makes enough renewable electricity to power it). The Biden administration’s goal is for EVs to account for 50% of new car sales by 2030, but the current share is less than 5%. Subsidies as they stand aren’t helping to get enough new EVs on the road. They are also unfair for poor communities.

Lower-income households already suffer more from the poor air quality that comes from tailpipe emissions. They also pay a larger share of their household budgets on gasoline, and so could reap more savings from driving EVs if they could only afford them.

Here are six things that policymakers could do to make EV subsidies more effective and more equitable:

1. Place a price cap on eligible vehicles. The point is to get more EVs on the road, not to get luxury cars on the road. This would free up more funds to target lower- and moderate-income households. Some places are doing this already. Since 2019, California has had a price cap of $60,000, which it recently lowered to $45,000 for passenger cars, qualifying popular models like the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Bolt and the base Tesla Model 3, but disqualifying most luxury EVs and higher-end Teslas. A $40,000 cap sounds reasonable to me.

2. Ramp up subsidies for lower-income households that couldn’t otherwise afford EVs (and eliminate them for the highest-income households). California has also been doing this for several years. My research on one of the state’s pilot programs found that increasing EV rebates for lower-income households improved program cost-effectiveness by 1.7 times, while increasing subsidies for the lowest-income households from $2,500 to $9,500. Just this year, Oregon substantially increased its rebates for low- and moderate-income households; other states, and countries, should follow suit.

3. Give the subsidies closer to the point of sale — through a rebate, for example. Lower-income households often can’t claim much of the benefit of income tax credits (because their income is low), and are more sensitive to upfront costs. Subsidies shouldn’t make them wait. Many states do offer rebates, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Others should do the same.

4. Offer cheaper loans. Making subsidized, government-backed loans available to lower-income households with poor credit could help them access reasonable financing for EVs at a relatively low cost to the government. After piloting such a program, California has recently partnered with a lender to offer loans with a maximum interest rate of 8% regardless of credit history.

5. Scale subsidies by mileage. To maximize environmental benefits of EVs, ideally they’d be driven by people who drive the most. This might also help with equity: Since lower-income consumers often can’t afford to live in urban cores, they can face longer commuting distances. This would be a trickier policy to implement. One option would be post-purchase annual “bonus” subsidies based on the EV odometer. So far, I’m not aware of anyone trying this out; it’s worth experimenting.

6. Subsidize used EVs. Until recently, subsidies were entirely for new EVs. Subsidizing used EVs makes them much more accessible. Such policies need to be designed with care to prevent sellers from jacking up prices. California, Connecticut, Oregon and Pennsylvania have recently started offering subsidies for pre-owned EVs.

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Ontario cities such as Hamilton and London remain on the fence, while e-scooters have already become ubiquitous in Calgary and Edmonton. In Vancouver, the door has been opened somewhat more tentatively, with privately owned e-scooters just approved for use on a pilot basis. Toronto, however, recently landed on a seemingly hard “no.”

When concerns were aired this spring at Toronto City Hall, the city cited “a lack of protections for pedestrians” and the particularly pressing need during the COVID era to “prevent potentially serious injuries on Toronto streets and sidewalks.” These are, of course, entirely valid concerns to raise. But they call for careful and balanced consideration, given the compelling decongestion and decarbonization benefits e-scooters offer.

Assessing the safety impacts of e-scooters

Safety data specific to e-scooters is gradually accumulating and variable conclusions have been reached, but some assessments suggest that the rates for emergency department visits and fatalities are similar to those for bicycles.

A 2020 report by the International Transport Forum concluded, “A trip by car or by motorcycle in a dense urban area is much more likely to result in the death of a road user – this includes pedestrians – than a trip using a micro-vehicle.” With advancing technological safeguards (such as the uploading of “helmet selfies” before starting a ride), rigorous user education, and carefully thought-out regulation and enforcement around where and at what speed e-scooters can operate (and park), the safety picture is also likely to improve materially.

Concerns have also centred on where e-scooters go when not in use. Haphazard parking – which is both unsightly and a particular risk for seniors and the disabled – was a major problem in many European cities as fleet operators rushed to market. But in Canada, in contrast, operators have typically collaborated with cities and implemented common-sense solutions such as vehicle docks and corrals.

Less congestion, less carbon

The reality is we need a range of e-vehicles and other low-impact transportation options if we are to have any hope of meeting key urban-planning and climate objectives. Vancouver, for example, has set targets for half of all kilometres driven to be in zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2030. To get there we’ll need a lot of those kilometres to be on e-scooters. They’re an inclusive option for people who can’t or don’t want to use active transportation such as cycling and who can’t afford a heavier-weight ZEV. And while they don’t work for all trips, the car displacement effect is real.

One-for-one replacement of full-size gas vehicles with ones powered by electricity will do nothing to alleviate road congestion or to free up more of the real estate occupied by parking. Meanwhile, in a report released last month, the City of Kelowna estimated that 40% of e-scooter trips replaced driving and projected 274,000 kilometres of avoided vehicle travel annually.

Micro-mobility is also an excellent solution to the first-and-last-mile challenge, effectively bridging distances that otherwise block access to public transit. And micro-mobility is in a league nearly all of its own on energy use and emissions. A 2020 EY study, focusing on a European fleet of shared e-scooters, quantified their full life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions at 35 grams of carbon dioxide equivalency per person per kilometre, compared to 50 to 60 for a train, up to 300 for an electric car, and up to 350 for a gas-fuelled car. And their energy efficiency is an important consideration even as fossil fuels fade away, since ongoing electric car adoption has the potential to stretch the capacity constraints of our electricity grids.

Research is uncovering additional knock-on benefits. This includes an uptick in local impulse buys of such things such as food and drink in areas served by e-scooter fleets – an outcome no doubt particularly welcomed by many small businesses in this challenging late-pandemic period.

To fully capture all these benefits, we need the right combination of sound operating practices for shared fleets and smart and effective regulation. Municipalities need to continue to develop and re-allocate lanes and other transportation infrastructure to safely accommodate the full range of ZEV vehicles – recognizing that users will gravitate to where they feel safest. Cities and transit authorities in turn can benefit from the data that can be generated automatically by e-scooter fleet users, and which can be used to identify both transit service gaps and potential pinch points where there’s a high risk of conflict between different transportation modes.

Today, most Canadians see scooters as a youthful indulgence, an occasional lark or a hipster trend. But what they really are – or certainly have the potential to become – is an essential component of a more diversified and sustainable urban transportation ecosystem. Policy-makers need to help make that happen, with equal enthusiasm for ZEVs big and small.

 E-scooters: Who’s using them and how?

• Users of shared micro-mobility services skew young (McKinsey says about half are younger than 34, with relatively few above 55) and male (in the range of 66% to 81% of all users).

• Aggregated statistics suggest that 30% to 40% of e-scooter trips replace a car trip.

• The National Association of City Transportation Officials in the U.S. puts the average trip at 12 minutes and 1.6 kilometres  and says e-scooter ridership grew from 38.5 million trips in 2018 to 88.5 million in 2019.

Sandra Phillips is founder and CEO of movmi, a Vancouver-based shared mobility consulting firm.

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In a speech to the United Nations in late 2019, Plante pointed out that cities are on the front lines of climate change, having to deal regularly with negative impacts like flooding and heatwaves. “The [United Nations] Secretary-General has set a target for states to reduce their emissions by 2030 and commit to being completely carbon neutral by 2050,” said Plante. “I’m ready to go further.”

Plante has now followed through in magnificent fashion, introducing a plan that not only aims for carbon neutrality by mid-century but that cuts her city’s emissions by more than half by 2030. Montréal’s plan includes forty-six actions to help drive ambitious reductions, including banning non-electric vehicles from the city’s downtown core, removing parking around Metro stations, implementing an innovative system for disclosing building energy ratings and adopting strict energy efficiency standards for new construction. In fact, the city is already planning a zero-carbon neighbourhood on the site of the old Hippodrome horse-racing track.

There are a few unique aspects to Montréal’s approach. In keeping with the collaborative nature of Plante’s administration, the plan is being backed by a number of major civil society organizations, including the Trottier Family Foundation and the Foundation of Greater Montréal, who will lead an effort to engage major economic players and institutions in implementing the plan as a critical part of building a healthy and equitable city. It also includes a requirement for annual progress reports, something the federal government has only recently committed to in its Climate Accountability Act after years of missing targets. More importantly, the Montréal plan includes a “climate test” for all government decision-making. Requiring that all city decisions around spending or infrastructure consider climate implications “sets a standard for all public administrations,” according to Marc-André Viau of the Quebec-based environmental organization Équiterre.

Though the current “best in class,” Montréal is not unique amongst Canadian cities for tackling the climate challenge. For instance, Vancouver is looking to deter cars from travelling into its core with a congestion charging system and by putting a strong emphasis on a shift to “active” transportation like walking and cycling. It’s aiming for a city in which 90% of people live within “an easy walk or roll” of their daily needs and two-thirds of trips are by active transportation or transit by 2030.

Montréal and Vancouver will be well served by the bans enacted by their respective provincial governments on the sale of internal combustion vehicles (2035 in Quebec; 2040 in BC). This provincial action will, for example, help put Vancouver well on the road to achieving its goal of having 50% of the distance driven on the city’s roads be by zero emissions vehicles by 2030. Montréal will, in turn, lead by example by converting all city vehicles to electric by 2030 and will simultaneously encourage residents to switch to car sharing with the added goal of seeing a 25% decrease in single-occupant vehicle trips over the same time frame.

Toronto has an official goal of reducing citywide emissions by 65% by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050 “or earlier.” Thanks in part to Ontario’s coal power phase out, Toronto’s emissions have already declined by 37% since 1990, a benefit Edmonton may also be about to reap as Alberta accelerates its own move away from coal and the city strives to reduce its emissions by 35% from current levels by 2035.

Climate change is a uniquely complex challenge and one that will require simultaneous interventions from all levels of government. Canadian cities, though chronically cash-starved and dramatically impacted by COVID and climate change alike, are punching well above their weight when it comes to solutions. Our country is well-served by this ambition.

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