THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION on Tuesday awarded $5 million for “equitable clean transportation projects,” with a heavy focus on the deployment of electric bicycles in low-income communities and electrification of rideshare vehicles and taxis.
Nearly $3 million of the funding will go to programs promoting e-bike ownership and usage in Greater Boston, the Pioneer Valley, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Worcester. The city of Boston is getting nearly $500,000 for a pilot project using e-cargo bikes to make deliveries in Allston.
An official at the Clean Energy Center, the agency charged with dispensing the funds, said the environmental justice community is interested in e-bikes as a clean transportation initiative that is affordable for low-income consumers. The official said the commuting range for a non-electric bike is about 2 to 3 miles, while the range for an e-bike is about 10 miles.
Slightly more than $1 million of the grant money will be split between Logan International Airport and the Way Forward Taxi Alliance to incentivize taxi and rideshare drivers to shift to electric vehicles.
A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which oversees Logan, said over the next two years the airport plans to add charging infrastructure and provide incentives to taxi and rideshare drivers to get them to embrace electric vehicles. One possibility would be to mimic a 2007 Massport initiative that encouraged taxi drivers to adopt hybrid vehicles by offering them “front of the line” privileges so they could get more fares from the airport.
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Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
The spokeswoman noted Uber and Lyft plan to convert to electric vehicles by 2030 and Hertz is buying 100,000 Teslas and plans to make half of them available for Uber drivers to rent.
The remaining $1 million will go to educational campaigns promoting electric vehicle adoption run by the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, Quincy Asian Resources, and the Electric Vehicle Discovery Center in Sturbridge
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