The San Francisco Bay Area plans to adopt an experimental electric bike sharing program.  The e-bike sharing program will launch first in San Francisco and Berkeley this summer.  Now, people who are looking to avoid pedaling up hills on their human powered bike or renting a car have another option.  Through the City CarShare website, Bay Area citizens now have the option to rent an electric bicycle.

The rates will be less than cars and is great for people looking to do a few errands around town, but don’t want to deal with parking, pedaling or driving.  Bike trailers can be rented for an added cost for those who want to get groceries too.

The planed intent of this experiment is to see how many car share rentals will be replaced with electric bike rentals, thus determining if there is a larger market for this type of electric bike program.

Part of me thinks that this is just the lazy person’s excuse to say they rode their bike to the store.  But, if it takes more cars off the rode, then I am all for it.  The only concern I have is that these electric bikers may not know much about bike etiquette and might piss off a bunch of the regular bike commuters in the bike lanes.

But, like getting into any new activity, there is a learning curve.  As a biker who lives in San Francsico,  I’ll be looking to see how these new e-bikers handle their new commute.

Thanks togreen.blogs.nytimes.com and inhabitat.com for the photo.