For a Westchester resident who couldn’t afford the high cost of a car, “a bike is perfect!”
Carina De La Cruz of suburban Ossining scored her new ride, thanks to a first-in-the-state rebate program for low-income New Yorkers looking to purchase an electric bike.
De La Cruz is a full time nanny and commutes to Briarcliff for work — just two miles, but many hills, away. She used to have a car, but said the lease was too damn high, and there's no easy public transportation, so mostly she relied on walking almost an hour or taking expensive cabs.
“My income is not enough [to cover the cost of a car],” De La Cruz told Streetsblog. "A bike is just perfect. Because I don't need to go places that are super far, mostly short distances."
De La Cruz got her state-of-the-art e-bike through a pilot subsidy program called Project MOVER from Shared Mobility. The premise is simple: provide people who would not normally be able to afford an e-bike with a monetary incentive to buy one. It's not the right tool for every commuter, but for some, it's the only tool, especially for lower-income residents living where there is little public transportation.
The program is the first baby step for New York to catch up to programs in Colorado, Washington, Minnesota, and Maine, among others, where state and city governments have learned that e-bike subsidies are effective in improving quality of life by reducing car dependence.
New York’s pioneering program is one of three Project MOVER programs, funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Clean Transportation Prize initiative. The program will serve the river town communities of Ossining (lucky for De La Cruz), Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Croton-on-Hudson, and Dobbs Ferry – towns with excellent Metro-North commuter rail lines but with weak bus service. The application will stay open until May 1, and result in about 200 residents getting vouchers of $1,000 to use towards the purchase of an e-bike at select retailers.
"Affordable transportation is the foundation of thriving communities," said the program’s director, Tyler Madell. "This is a model of fairness, empowering low-income individuals with sustainable mobility options."
De La Cruz, the first person in the state to use the voucher, isn't focused on sustainability or saving the planet. For her, it's about getting to work in just 10 minutes instead of having a 50-minute. Plus, she can use the e-bike to get around town, travel to and from the train station, and get to better grocery stores that aren’t within walking distance of her home.
“I have a supermarket that is close, but they don't offer a lot of things and there is a better one further away,” said De La Cruz. “I’m going to ride the bike to the train station and then go to other places in Westchester. I’ll be able to go places I usually don't go.”
Ossining has a large immigrant community, so Madell's organization has a work-around for residents who are too afraid of the federal government’s deportation policies to submit personal information on an application.
To counter the fear, the organization developed a “letter of recommendation” option; applicants can submit a letter from someone vouching for their need. De La Cruz said the simplicity of the process was encouraging; she had a brand-new e-bike within a few weeks.
“I felt so lucky,” she said.
The program comes at a time when New York City is also just starting to research its own e-bike subsidy program to serve a similar need in the more transit starved outer borough areas. Bike New York received money from the same Clean Transportation Prize to study feasibility and eventually set up a pilot program in the five boroughs.
The state’s energy research authority sees the Ossining program as a great opportunity to prove that subsidies like the one given to De La Cruz can make a difference in the lives of people all across the state.
“NYSERDA ... looks forward to working with all partners to enhance affordable, zero-emission transportation options locally,” NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris said in a statement. “This pilot will demonstrate how providing point-of-sale vouchers can help make the cost of owning an e-bike more affordable while expanding accessibility for residents to meet their daily living and commuting needs.”
