FILE PHOTO - A Spin shareable e-bike is seen in this photo submitted by the City of Kelowna.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/City of Kelowna

After a highly successful e-scooter summer season, Spin has expanded by launching an e-bike rental service in Kelowna today, Nov. 8.

Spin is currently one of the companies offering e-scooters for rent in the city.

“After the successful shared bike pilot in 2018, council has been interested in delivering an e-bike share program for Kelowna,” states a City of Kelowna news release issued today.

In 2018, Dropbike attracted 35,000 riders in a pilot project but pulled out after an e-scooter program was launched in 2019.

While city councillors have lobbied for a bike share program ever since, they were told by staff that there were few such programs around and those had to be subsidized by municipalities. A 300-bike program in Kelowna would likely require a subsidy of $1 million, council was told in June of 2020.

READ MORE: Why bikeshare and rental may never return to Kelowna

The world has changed dramatically since then and e-bike programs have become popular in a number of North America's cities, including North Vancouver and Windsor, Ontario, Mark Worona, the city's active transportation coordinator told iNFOnews.ca.

"That's been a little bit of a trend over the last four or five months," he said. "It's exciting to see, definitely. Who knows how long that stays around but, in general, people are making pretty big bets on this. These vehicles are pretty substantial, they're robust so, I think, the intention is to be around for awhile."

This means that there is no subsidy from the city for the services with Spin just adding it to their e-scooter operations. The rental fees are also similar with it costing $2 to unlock the bikes and 35 cents a minute to ride. That's the same as the e-scooters except the unlocking fee is just $1 for the scooters.

The e-scooter program that was launched in 2019 ground to a halt because of COVID in 2020. It did not restart until the spring of 2021, after the province agreed to pilot projects in Kelowna, Vernon and some other B.C. cities that allowed the e-scooters to use public roads.

While there was an immediate uptake in the use of the scooters there was also a backlash as people complained about things like irresponsible use of the e-scooters and having them parked incorrectly, blocking sidewalks.

That led to significant changes and a reduction in the number of scooters available.

READ MORE: New rules cut Kelowna e-scooter program by more than half

The new e-bikes have a range of 160 km, come with wireless charging for smartphones and have dual kickstands so they don’t have to be parked on sidewalks.

Spin has geofenced the bikes so they can't be taken beyond city limits, Worona said. They have detachable batteries so the operator doesn't have to take the bikes back to the shop to be recharged, meaning fewer miles driven in trucks to service the fleet of bikes.

While winter may seem like a strange time to launch a cycling program, the e-scooters operate year-round in Kelowna so the bikes will do the same.

Spin launched the service today with 20-40 bikes, mostly in downtown Kelowna and expects to grow to 100 bikes within a month. If all goes well, Worona expects Spin to expand beyond that in the future.

Spin has e-scooter and e-bike rentals programs in more than 100 cities in North American and Europe, the city said.

— This story was updated at 2:57 p.m., Monday, Nov. 8 to add more information from Mark Worona.

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