San Francisco is hoping to entice UberEats and DoorDash drivers to stop using cars and start riding electric bicycles while delivering food, part of a larger city trend towards reducing congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.
The San Francisco Environment Department is offering 30 free e-bikes to app-based food delivery workers as part of a pilot program to study the effects e-bikes may have on food delivery. Applications for the program close this Friday, April 14.
Selected delivery workers must be able to work for one or more food delivery platforms, like Uber Eats, DoorDash and GrubHub, for at least 20 hours per week over a four-month period. They would also be required to take surveys and participate in data collection to help the city understand their experience with e-bikes deliveries.
In exchange, workers will receive bike helmets, bike locks, bike bags, and training on how to safely use e-bikes. They would also keep the e-bikes, which routinely cost hundreds of dollars and can sometimes be several thousand dollars, at the end of the program.
“This is really our first step to work with delivery partners to get data to really inform potential policy of the future,” said Joseph Piasecki, a spokesperson for the environment department.
The data collected from this project will be important for future environmental policy “if we’re able to prove that an emissions-free mode of transportation may increase the amount of trips a delivery driver is able to do, whether it’s per hour or per time they choose to work” Piasecki said.
Cars dominate food delivery
The overwhelming majority of delivery workers in San Francisco use cars, according to 2020 research from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Just 26 percent of all delivery workers in San Francisco used a bicycle as their main mode of delivery in 2020, up from 18 percent pre-Covid-19. Of those who did, 11 percent used an electric bike.
Bryan Goebel, the former executive officer of the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission, which commissioned the 2020 study, said drivers may consider ditching their cars and picking up a bike “if they were given a financial incentive to purchase an e-bike.”
He believes getting delivery drivers onto e-bikes could free workers from soaring gas prices, expensive traffic tickets, and the constant anxiety of circling the block, looking for parking. Congestion, pollution, and road accidents could also be reduced: On-demand vehicles like Ubers and Lyfts accounted for 51 percent of the rise in San Francisco congestion between 2010 and 2016, according to data from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
One driver in a WeChat group of 500 Chinese delivery and ride-hailing drivers in the Bay Area agreed that bikes are faster on San Francisco streets. “Actually, it’s inconvenient to drive to deliver food,” he said. “E-bikes, motorcycles and scooters are faster in the congestion.”
Faster, but still expensive. One of the goals of the pilot program “really is to help transition folks that may not otherwise be able to afford e-bikes, because we know it is a costly investment for a lot of people,” said Anna Sciaruto, a clean transportation specialist at the department involved in the e-bike program.
Asked to comment on the new program, another driver in the WeChat group mentioned the range of an electric bicycle. “The battery range of an e-bike can be a huge problem. How far can I go on a single charge?”
According to Sciaruto, the pilot program is looking at bike models with a 60-mile battery range. Most e-bikes can be charged from standard wall outlets at home, though it’s unclear what model the city will use.
The 30 selected workers will be divided into two cohorts, with the first 15 receiving their e-bikes in May and the rest starting in the summer. Participants must be San Francisco residents 18 or older, have experience riding a bike in San Francisco, and have access to a smartphone and health insurance.
For data collection purposes, participants will also be asked to open an app called Driver’s Seat each time they open their delivery apps. Staff at the Department of Environment will collect and compare anonymous data on routes, pickup and drop-off locations, costs, emissions, and so-called “deadheading” time — the time workers spend driving (or, in this case, biking) without a fare.
The pilot program is expected to cost the California Energy Commission $559,000, according to the Department of Environment. It is part of a series of pilot programs to test a variety of electric vehicles, including school buses, waste haulers and delivery vehicles, to help achieve the city’s goal of making all transportation emissions-free by 2040.
I’ve been riding my “regular” (non-electric) bike for Door Dash for over 3 years now. I’m glad I also have a part time job because Door Dash has given me fewer deliveries for about a year now. I used to make about $100/week; now I make less than $10/week and often go all week without a call. When it rains heavy, I get a few calls but when the weather is good, Door Dash goes back to neglecting me. Other bicyclists have noticed the same thing. Two tried using their e-bikes and made a little more for awhile and then also got fewer calls. Door Dash seems to favor cars for downtown deliveries which makes NO sense. If the City wants to be effective about this, it needs to follow up and make sure these e-bike riders get enough calls to make the project worthwhile for them AND without allowing Door Dash to continue penalizing those “dashers” already using “regular” bikes and e-bikes. Otherwise, the corporation may just use the riders on new e-bikes to take work from those already doing the right thing (riding bikes and e-bikes).
Wonderful news!! Bicycles, including electric-assist bicycles, have helped eliminate traffic congestion, car usage, air pollution, parking shortages, water pollution, poverty, economic inefficiency, climate change, traffic crash deaths, road rage, heart disease, and obesity in Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and around the world. While consumers’ unnecessary obsession with delivery is itself a major problem, the elimination of motor vehicles can erase those problems.
30 bikes – $559,000.
Ebike batteries are likely not big enough for people delivering stuff all day. They’ll probably run out 1-2 hours in, especially given the hills. Could they partner instead with baywheels to give them free access to those ebikes? That way they can swap out into a new bike when the battery dies. Baywheels coverage is not great outside SF proper (and limited parts of Oakland and Berkeley), so that could be an issue. Also, the commenter who rides his own bike for door dash makes a good point: people order out more when the weather is bad, precisely when riding a bike is more dangerous and generally unpleasant.
Anything to get the techie-serving gig-slaves out of their death and congestion machines is OK by me.
Did anyone involved take into consideration the hills of SF, the danger of riding out amongst the congestion on those small streets with those large bags; and also the fact that they would be sitting ducks, out in the open, for any homeless person or drug addict wanting their goods/bike/money?? Especially at night! And the food would be cold 🙁 No logic here.
This is great, and something we should be doing more of to really address the climate crisis and the societal costs of the automobile.
E-bikes are really the superior method of transportation within the city, and triply so for short trips like food delivery. The cost per bike here is interesting and I echo the questions raised by others. A top-end ebike is around 3000, with many lower end models costing much less than that. Is the administration of this program really 6x the cost of a bike? At what point is it not better to simply give more bikes out over trying to means-test and control the whole thing? I don’t really have answers but I am always curious why things cost what they do.
I am glad people are adopting e-bikes as a eco and traffic friendly alternative to cars. Ebikes are expensive, yea. But cars are VASTLY more expensive, not even taking into consideration fuel, maintenance costs, and other externalities like environmental and safety impacts. These things are never compared against each other though, as if an ebike is not a valid means of transportation. They are! *Especially* in a small, dense city like San Francisco.
This is really exciting. These are the types of initiatives I wish city leaders were aggressively testing and pushing for in this climate crisis. Leas cars is better for everyone in literally every single metric. I hope that the delivery drivers who are eligible know about the program and apply.
I would love to see an initiative at some point where there are “bike vouchers” or something of the sort where the city helps individuals or households to ditch their cars or decrease their use by providing residents with bikes. I hope something of the sort can be piloted by the SF Environment Department in the future.
nice idea, but $18,000 per bike? What else is the money paying for?
It’s a pilot. Data collection, data evaluation, oversight. All of which takes staff that needs to be paid.
sounds like 10 hours a week for one person. So, maybe 50k per year?
That’s great!!! I hope this becomes the norm. If only they followed that up with a valencia bike lane next to the curb instead of the middle to make their lives easier and safer riding…