Growing up, I never expected to call myself an “organizer”. In the Asian American world that I knew, it was always “scientist”, “engineer”, and later on, “software engineer”. To this day, it still feels strange for me to claim the title and mandate as an organizer — it is still a mode of action that feels foreign to who I am, though increasingly more familiar.
This is a multi-part story of how I:
started RVA E-Bikes, a non-profit that funds an electric bike library and an electric bike rebate program for public school teachers and Richmond city employees
2023
Land use and transportation are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have good bus service in a single family sprawling suburb and you can’t have massive parking lots downtown and have a functioning metro. As long-time readers of the substack know, I’m a big fan of e-bikes: they’re affordable and clean, they cover the median range of most trips, and you won’t run someone over while riding one. In particular, supporting e-bikes seemed to be an easy, marginally additive path to supporting alternatives to car-oriented transportation. While I would love to support public transit e.g. Richmond’s Bus Rapid Transit, it’s something that either requires lots of time as an advocate or capital investment that only the federal government can bring.1
Over the past year, I was already investing significant amounts of time into RVA YIMBY (and indeed, YIMBY organizing is one of those things where only time makes a difference; money was never something we needed). I still wanted to find a way to utilize some of the tech money I had made to support e-bikes in whatever way I could.
In January 2024, I launched RVA E-Bikes!, a non-profit focused on promoting e-bikes in Richmond. With this non-profit, I launched an e-bike rebate program specifically for Richmond city employees and public school teachers, and an e-bike library where anyone could borrow an e-bike and try it out for themselves for two weeks for free. The e-bike rebate and the library were in partnership with two different local bike shops in Richmond.
E-Bike Library
The theory of change for the e-bike library is that they help derisk a relatively expensive purchase (>$1000 generally) and allow people to try out this new, more joy-filled way of getting around. By giving people a risk-free trial period (and fronting the capital for the e-bikes in the library), it can hopefully help incentivize adoption.
Early on, I found a supportive local bike shop in Richmond run by one person who was willing to help operate this e-bike library, through the recommendation of a friend in RVA YIMBY. Setting it up was pretty straightforward: I bought two e-bikes, drafted a liability waiver (with some help from ChatGPT) and now anyone can check out an e-bike from the library!
Special thanks goes to Josh Carp, who founded the Charlottesville E-bike Library, and is whom I learned about the e-bike library model from. It was incredibly helpful to have someone else say “I have done this before and it works!”
E-Bike Rebates
E-bike rebates are a powerful policy tool to do demand-pull for e-bike adoption (Colorado in particular is leading the charge here) but haven’t arrived in Richmond. I spent all of 2023 talking to various bike shops and bike advocates in Richmond, exploring what a philanthropically-run rebate program might look like, as well as an e-bike library. This was honestly a very stochastic process of emailing random bike shops and talking to different people I ran into through RVA YIMBY about e-bikes, but over time, I found willing partners.
Designing an e-bike rebate program was a bit tricky - one of the sticking points was how to design a philanthropically run e-bike rebate program that was equitable, accessible, and a low lift for me to set up. I wanted to make sure the rebates would go to Richmond-based folks who actually needed it, but I also didn’t want to impose administrative burdens for proof of residency or need on prospective applicants. While other rebate programs administered by localities, states, or utilities have far more resources to address these trade-offs and lower applicant friction, I had to find a simple and scalable solution that I could pull off on my own. Ultimately, I identified a target audience of Richmond public city employees and public school teachers, as their salaries are public information (eligibility is restricted to those with annual income <$80,000), their employment is easily verifiable (via work emails) and also live in the Richmond area.
Finally, the rebate is tied to the 2024 Richmond city council election. I don’t believe philanthropies should be a substitute for the state and I don’t want this program to allow elected representatives an excuse not to do something. I include this on my website:
The rebate program will last until funding runs out or until the November 2024 Richmond City Council elections, whichever comes first. If you want to see more e-bike rebates for RVA residents, tell Richmond city council and mayor by emailing them!
Currently, the e-bike rebate status as of 02/2024:
Note that we are already heavily oversubscribed. If you know of any small dollar grant programs that could help fund this rebate program, please do send them my way!
A Note on Demand-Side Incentives
I created RVA E-Bikes! because I think there is a missing niche for e-bike advocacy. While there are bike safety and recreational bike advocates, there aren’t really groups that advocate specifically for e-bikes, and especially not from a climate perspective2.
Much of bike advocacy also focuses on infrastructure and supply-side e.g. more bike lanes. This is a good thing! Most bike lanes in America are downright dangerous and not part of integrated networks.3 But I think this has led to a lack of focus on demand-side incentives, which help create a broader constituency for supply-side infrastructure. And these two policy levers are not equal: while you can spreadsheet-math your way to “for X many e-bike rebates, I could have built Y miles of bike lanes”, that ignores the political economy of public funding. Specifically, doling out rebates immediately provides a political return i.e. people get a rebate, compared to bike lanes which benefit a more diffuse constituency and has a longer return timeline from “policy-passed” to “constituent-realizes-benefit”.
And it makes sense if you only think about bikes to not think about demand-side incentives. After all, bikes are relatively cheap. Hence, I’ve seen many bike advocates continue to be stuck in a “if we build it, they will come” mindset.4 But e-bikes are more expensive (but still far cheaper than cars) and do require some de-risking, which is where demand-side incentives can help. What you get in return for that cost is a transit mode that appeals to a wider base.
If you want to support e-bikes: a climate-friendly, safe streets transportation solution, that reduces economic cost of living, lowers carbon emissions, and sparks joy for those who ride them, you can donate here! If you want to sign up for email updates on the rebate program, you can sign up for the mailing list here.
This concludes my three-part writeup on all the local organizing and urbanism advocacy I’ve been doing over the past two years.5 There’s certainly more to write here (e.g. generalizable lessons I’ve learned, the political economy of local politics and the role of non-profits) but I wanted to at least share some of the blow-by-blow details of how local organizations can be created and how anyone, even you dear reader, can make a difference in your local community!
Another reason I wrote this series now is because I am likely entering a new season in life and wanted to give this unexpected season at least some measure of justice and share about it before it potentially fades into the background. More updates to come!
I feel similarly about adovcating for bikeshare networks. That kind of infrastructure is honestly more equitable and efficient than having everyone own a bike, but while Richmond has a nascent bikeshare, advocating for it is rather difficult. I think my theory of change here is that not only are pathways to incentivizing e-bike adoption more marginal and granular, but also it helps create the needed critical mass of early, individual adopters, some portion of whom convert to advocates that push for larger scale infrastructure like bikeshare stations.
I would love to be corrected here! As I’ve written previously, e-bikes are a great climate solution and should be talked about in the same breath anytime someone mentions electric vehicles
FWIW, I think Richmond has probably the best bike lane network in Virginia, minus Arlington. Now thats not saying much, but I did feel like there was enough of a core network to run a demand-side program that can hopefully flywheel into greater support for more bike lanes in general.
I’ve found that some bike advocates can’t believe that not everyone will sell their car and hop on a bike for their 5 mile commute in the city if you just build bike lanes.
And thanks to EY for making the logo!