The city of New Orleans will receive a $1.7 million grant from the United States Department of Energy to expand the city’s Blue Bikes e-bike sharing system and provide worker training to new mechanics, the DOE announced last Thursday (Sept. 5).
The funding comes through the DOE’s Local Government Energy Program, from an initiative called Communities Sparking Investment in Transformative Energy. The funding opportunity, which was announced in February, has offered $31 million to 12 local governments and tribes across the U.S. to advance community-led clean energy projects.
The DOE will also offer each grantee technical assistance and on-site community energy fellows. Louisiana Green Corps, an organization that provides green job skills training to youth in the greater New Orleans area, will be the city’s partner in using the funds for bikeshare expansion and workforce development.
The funding is meant to help the city work toward its climate action plan goals by reducing the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, said Matthew Rufo, the transportation policy and program manager with the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability. It comes after the United States Environmental Protection Agency granted the city almost $50 million in August to tackle various climate pollution reduction policies, including efforts to expand bikeways and the Blue Bike fleet. Investing in bikeshare will help the city encourage residents to get around town in more environmentally friendly ways instead of driving, Rufo said.
“Bikeshare is a tried and true form of public transportation that’s available in many other cities nationwide,” Rufo said. “It has a long track record across the country and around the world, and is a proven way to give people another option to move about in a clean way that also connects people to their destinations.”
Allene La Spina, the executive director of Bike Easy, a bike safety advocacy group, said she is happy about the recent investments to expand bike sharing. Still, she said the city should focus on expanding infrastructure that keeps cyclists safe. New Orleans has the highest number of bicyclist fatalities per capita in the United States, according to an analysis by the League of American Bicyclists.
“My main concerns with all the money that is coming to our city to invest in bikeshare, and some bike infrastructure is that it means more multimodal users in the road, and not enough shift on behavior when it comes to people driving and the increased traffic violence that has become the norm,” La Spina wrote in a message to Verite News.
Rufo predicts that the city will be able to obtain around 800 new e-bikes over the next 2-3 years, which would double the amount of available vehicles. Blue Krewe, a local nonprofit, has operated and managed the program since 2021, after Uber stopped operating the bike-sharing service during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. At the time, Uber operated 1,350 e-bikes in New Orleans.
Patrick Urbine, the interim executive director for Blue Krewe, said that the company’s goal is to expand bike access into areas of the city where people are less likely to have cars and to connect residents with job opportunities. Urbine said that more than 70% of about 750,000 total Blue Bike trips in New Orleans are taken by local residents. The Blue Bikes program offers two membership options: a $25 per month option and another $4 per month option for those who use Medicaid or SNAP. There is also a pay-as-you-go option that charges one dollar to unlock the bikes and 15 cents per mile traveled on them.
“The monies awarded through this grant are going to be able to help us continue to expand equitable access to bikeshare, and we’re hoping to be able to, with these investments, continue to expand some of these other ridership programs and just make it easier and easier for folks to access bikeshare here in New Orleans,” Urbine said.
The DOE funding will also ensure that students in the Louisiana Green Corps’s training program can pursue a $15-per-hour paid internship at Blue Krewe near the end of their curriculum. The internship will provide on-the-job training in e-bike repair and maintenance.
E-bikes “require maintenance, in many cases, a different level of training and skill sets than traditional pedal bikes require,” Rufo said. “The goal is really to, you know, not only provide customers and users with the option to ride an e-bike, but really to take our workforce along with us, and, you know, be a part of the overall strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions citywide.”
Rufo said that the training program will give graduates access to union-paying jobs, as the company’s union, Blue Krewe United became the first e-bike ride-sharing union in the U.S. after the group received union recognition from Blue Krewe last August.
Blue Krewe United’s demands included improved worker safety protections and higher compensation, including raising the hourly wage from around $15-$17 to $23. Urbine said that Blue Krewe is engaging in negotiations with Blue Krewe United, but declined to comment on how the union’s concerns about safety will be addressed as the company plans to expand its bike fleet to 2,500 vehicles by next year.
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