By Charles Pekow
Planners take note: E-bikes are here to stay. So you’d better take them into account when designing communities. Or so says a study from Norway, which may be ahead of the United States in e-bike use and planning. The Institute for Transportation Economics at the Norwegian Centre for Transportation Research looked at Norway’s four largest cities and advises that by integrating e-bike usage, “municipalities and regional development authorities can steer urban mobility to a more sustainable direction.”
The research team calculated that people will be able to get to thousands of jobs by e-bikes that they couldn’t or wouldn’t ride a regular bike to because of the speed differential. And with greater job accessibility, planners should account for more jobs in a given city center, says Land Use Development Potential and E-bike Analysis: A Study of Cycling & Land Use Planning.
Find the study in English and Norwegian at https://www.toi.no/getfile.php?mmfileid=50260.
