The Normie Case for E-Bikes

A car and an e-bike are a lot cheaper than two cars

Realistically, for most people in the United States, it is not feasible or desirable to live without a car. You simply must have one to get around. And in fact, about 60% of households own more than one car. But here’s the thing, a lot of trips are shorter than people think. Almost half of all trips (45.9%) are four miles or less and more than a quarter (27.7%) are two miles or less.

That combination of facts opens up a real opportunity to save many Americans a lot of money. One way to ease the cost-of-living is to make it easier for households to own a car and an e-bike rather than feeling forced to own multiple cars.

The cost difference between owning a car and an e-bike is substantial. According to AAA, between depreciation, financing, gas, insurance, maintenance, registration and fees, the average total cost to own a new car is about $12,000 a year. Even owning a used car can easily cost $6,000-$8,000 per year.

Conversely, the annual cost of owning an e-bike is dramatically lower. Electricity runs about $10-$30, insurance around $100, and maintenance $100-$300. Even if you pay $2,000 for a higher-end model e-bike and spread that over 5 years (so $400 a year), the annual costs total up to around $600-$850. Even assuming low mileage usage for the car, the e-bike still saves a household $5,000–$6,000 a year. And that’s a very low-end estimate.

E-Bikes are a Game Changer

For most people, the idea of replacing short car trips with bike trips has always run into some basic practical problems though. Regular bikes (or ‘acoustic’ bikes as the kids call them these days since they are non-electric) require real physical effort, leave you sweaty and tired, and make anything beyond a short distance feel like a workout rather than transportation. Hills are a nightmare and carrying groceries or kids is difficult. And let's be honest: if you're over 45 or not in great shape, traditional biking can feel more like punishment than convenience.

E-bikes solve these problems in a straightforward way. The electric motor doesn't do all the work (you still pedal), but it makes everything dramatically easier. That hill that would normally leave you huffing? No problem. The three-mile trip to the grocery store? Actually pleasant. Carrying a week's worth of groceries in the bike bags or cargo basket? Totally doable.

This is especially transformative for middle-aged and older adults who might have written off cycling years ago. A 55-year-old who hasn't been on a bike in decades can hop on an e-bike and comfortably ride three or four miles to meet friends for dinner. Parents can bike to work without showing up drenched in sweat. Commuters can…..enjoy their commute.

The result? Bicycle infrastructure suddenly becomes useful to a much broader slice of the population. Those bike paths and protected lanes that might have seemed like amenities for spandexed cycling enthusiasts are now practical transportation options for regular people looking to save money. And, when more people can actually use bike infrastructure, investment into them makes a lot more sense.

Bicycle Infrastructure Should, Wherever Possible, Be Separated From Cars

Here’s the next layer of challenge though: most people are understandably somewhere between skittish and terrified of biking alongside cars, and they're not wrong to feel that way. A 2,000-pound vehicle traveling 35 mph (or more!) next to a person on a 50-pound bike is an inherently dangerous situation, and that danger is overwhelmingly borne by the person on the bike. Add in distracted drivers, road rage, and the unfortunate reality that many drivers view cyclists as obstacles rather than as fellow travelers, and you have a recipe for anxiety at best and tragedy at worst.

This fear is the single biggest barrier preventing that broader population from actually using e-bikes for transportation. A suburban mom might love the idea of biking to the grocery store on her new e-bike, but if that means sharing narrow roads with SUVs driven by people scrolling through their phones, she's going to drive instead. The 60-year-old who could easily handle a three-mile e-bike commute will stick with his car if the route involves competing with impatient car commuters for space.

Paint on the road —those skinny bike lanes squeezed between traffic and parked cars —doesn't solve this problem. Regular people (i.e. not daredevils) want real separation: protected bike lanes with physical barriers, car-free dedicated bike paths, or at minimum,wider bike lanes that give everyone breathing room. When bike infrastructure feels genuinely safe, that's when normal people will actually start using it, and that's when the cost-of-living benefits turn from theory to reality.

Building Better Bike Infrastructure is Cheaper Than You Think

A lot of infrastructure is pretty expensive to build and seems to be getting more expensive over time. To give just one example, light rail construction in Charlotte went from about $50 million per mile in 2008 to $110 million a mile in 2018 to $300 million a mile in 2023. Boston’s extension of the Green Line cost $484 million per mile even though none of it was tunneled. Light rail construction has gotten so expensive that Austin, Philadelphia, and Atlanta have all had to scale back projects.

Roads aren’t cheap either. A new elevated interstate in an urban area can cost around $70 million per mile. Just adding a lane to a minor arterial road can cost between $2.6 and $7.7 million.

Conversely, fully separated bike paths in urban areas only cost about $1 million per mile. In other words, we can build 70 miles of fully separated bike lanes for the cost of one mile of interstate and we can build hundreds of miles of those paths for the cost of one mile of light rail. The benefit to cost ratio here is very strong! One creative way to do this what’s called “rails to trails.” Many cities have disused railroad corridors that already have graded paths and established rights-of-way, making them ideal, cost-effective candidates for new separated bike infrastructure.

Carmel, Minneapolis, and Madison Show How to Do This

Three cities demonstrate just how effective smart bike infrastructure investment can be, and they're not the places you might expect.

Carmel, Indiana (a suburb north of Indianapolis) has built over 200 miles of bike paths and trails. Mayor James Brainard took a refreshingly practical approach: "There is no conservative or liberal way to provide good city services. If we find our people want to use bicycles to get from one place to another, it is up to us to build the infrastructure economically that allows people to do that." Carmel started with the Monon Trail, a former railway converted into a bike path, then built connecting infrastructure so residents could actually bike to it safely. The result? It’s been an enormous boon that has helped attract $250 million in investment into the town.

Minneapolis shows that bike infrastructure works even in places with real winter. The city has built an extensive network of protected bike lanes and even maintains heated bike paths for winter riding. Residents bike year-round for transportation, not just recreation. Madison, Wisconsin has created bike paths around its lakes and throughout the city, with many routes separated from car traffic. The infrastructure connects neighborhoods to downtown and the university, making it practical for daily trips. The city’s automated cyclist counters show more than 7,000 bicycle riders on an average day.

All three cities prove the same point: when you build separated, well-connected bike infrastructure, people use it. And when people use it, they save money.

This Isn’t Radical, and That’s A Good Thing

The final hurdle is political. Put simply, e-bikes and bike infrastructure have a branding problem. They’re too often wrapped up in the language and sentiment of “f*ck cars”, but most Americans don’t hate their cars and would feel stranded without one. The biggest use case for e-bike is as a replacement for a second car, not a replacement for all cars (though that can be true for some e-bike owners). They’re too often wrapped up in climate politics, but that makes it seem like a sacrifice instead of a pleasant way to go to the store. They’re too often left-coded, but there’s every reason for politically moderate and even red leaning suburbs to build bike paths. And finally, they’re sometimes perceived as niche or elite when actually they’re a great deal for taxpayers and consumers.

Building better bicycle infrastructure so that everyday Americans can take advantage of the advances in e-bike technology isn’t radical, and that’s the point. It’s just smart policy that helps families save money, one trip at a time.

-GW