Following a successful pilot project last year, the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is moving ahead with a permanent e-bike share program for the resort, beginning in summer 2023.
In a 4-2 vote on Jan. 10, Whistler’s mayor and council decided to move forward with a Request for Proposals (RFP) to make the service permanent.
The Evo electric bike share pilot ran for 84 days from July 25 to Oct. 16, during which 774 unique riders took more than 1,000 individual trips (covering more than 2,600 kilometres).
According to a report to council, 43 per cent of users were from Metro Vancouver, while 19 per cent were from Whistler and 35 per cent were from other communities.
The busiest times were from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the most active days were on the weekend, with Mondays being the quietest day of the pilot. The e-bikes were available for use any time of day or night.
The Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre proved the busiest hub for the bikes, with 27 per cent of all trips starting and ending at the museum, followed by Whistler Olympic Plaza at 20 per cent. Trips to and from the municipality’s parks made up about 33 per cent of all trips, and 57 per cent of trips had different start and end locations.
When the municipality first announced the pilot, local bike shop owners were concerned it would cut into their revenue from tourists. The pilot results indicate that fear was not unfounded, with 81 per cent of all trips taken by people who do not live in Whistler.
According to David Wilcox, co-founder of Premium Mountain Rentals, Whistler’s bike shop owners are not necessarily against an e-bike share program, but want to be part of the program and don’t want to compete with a large company for business.
“We’re supportive of the program; our key point is we just want to be involved,” Wilcox said. “We want to be heard, and we want to have a voice.”
Especially now, as the program is just getting off the ground, it’s important for local shop owners to be at the table, “so that a couple of years down the road, we don’t find ourselves in sort of this David versus Goliath-type scenario where the program’s really expanded and has completely sort of undercut commercial operators that are already in Whistler,” Wilcox added.
“We’re paying some of the highest commercial rents in the country to have a presence in Whistler. Through the pilot, this summer demonstration, the Resort Municipality of Whistler gave these locations to a large [rental] company for free, while the small independents are paying big commercial rates.”
Councillors Jen Ford and Ralph Forsyth voted against the proposal, citing the potential impact to local rental companies.
“I see the value of a program like this. These are winning operations in urban settings. They get people out of cars for short cab trips or inconvenient bus schedules, so I think that there’s some real value in having a system like this that is recognizable to the people visiting from elsewhere,” Ford said.
“However, we have a very short window for bike rental operators and sellers in this community to do their business. It is an expensive business to get into.”
Ford added that she doesn’t want the RMOW “to compete with any of the local operators,” and that the upcoming RFP “needs to be very focused on bringing local operators into this and making it viable for them to be a part of this and lead on this.”
Coun. Arthur De Jong cited the need to get more people out of their vehicles as imperative for the municipality to fight climate change, as single-use vehicles continue to make up more than half of Whistler’s total emissions.
“The only way that we’re going to turn the corner and reach our goals is to get people out of cars, on the buses, on the bikes,” he said.
“We have to compete at a much higher level. We really have to raise the tide on bike use here, and we need to become the Copenhagen of the mountains. If we don’t do it with buses and bikes, we lose.”
While mindful of the potential effects the e-bike program will have on local businesses, Mayor Jack Crompton believes nothing is stopping local rental outfits from proposing to create an e-bike share like Evo’s summer pilot.
“We want to have our local operators in this RFP process, and I hope they’re successful. It would be unfortunate if, at this point, we decided against moving forward with the RFP because this is one of the first steps towards taking action on our climate action plan,” Crompton said.
“It’s one of the first and probably one of the most straightforward. I think it gets harder from here. So I hope we’ll put this RFP out, and I hope there are some phenomenal, creative, impressive proposals from local business operators.”
The RFP will officially go out sometime between now and early spring, with the service expected to start sometime in May or early summer 2023. Staff will approve the RFP based on various metrics, such as the cost of the proposed service to the RMOW.
