In September 2023, when Portland City Council voted to approve the five-year, $750 million Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund Climate Investment Plan, they also gave a green light to using $20 million of those funds to implement an electric bike rebate program.
As BikePortland reported in May 2023, that’s enough money to help Portlanders purchase 6,000 e-bikes over the five-year timeframe of the plan.
The rebate program lives in a part of the CIP known as Strategic Program 6: Comprehensive E-bike Access and Support (SP 6). In the past year, staff from the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability have been building the framework for how the program will work and now we’ve finally got news of an important update.
On June 26th, Portland City Council will host the first hearing for the e-bike program. According to BPS PCEF Transportation Decarbonization Program Lead Seetha Ream-Rao, they’ll bring an outline of the program scope to council in order to release a Request for Proposal (RFP) from organizations who might administer it.
E-bike rebate programs have proven to be extremely popular across the U.S. Just yesterday, when the State of Minnesota launch their new program — that gives qualifying individuals up to $1,500 and is funded with $2 million a year for two years — the website that handles requests crashed due to a technical issue. It is widely believed that intense demand overwhelmed the server.
In addition to the e-bike rebate program, the PCEF CIP includes over $80 million for bikes and climate-friendly transportation. Learn more in the stories below or in the BikePortland archives.