Wheels down at Micromobility Europe
By Walter Brown
Micromobility Europe exhibition hall at the Kromhouthal. Courtesy Micromobility Europe
Goede middag from Amsterdam! The Atlanta e-bike ambassadors have hit the Netherlands with freewheels spinning. And the world capital of micromobility hasn’t disappointed.
Micromobility Europe is a non-stop feast of cutting-edge mobility concepts and hands-on experiences, taking place this week at the Kromhouthal exhibition hall. Before attending the annual conference, my Better Atlanta Transit compatriot, Jeff Rader, and I borrowed a couple of Ampler Urban e-bikes from fellow Georgian Jon Woodroof and rode them all over this ever cyclist’s Mecca.
We conquered the hills – er, bridges – of the otherwise flat city, mingling with the flowing fish schools of native cyclists. The latest transportation innovation: the "Fietstrast, Auto Te Gast” (literally ”bicycle street, car guest”), where cyclists enjoy a full, marked lane that car drivers may only enter as respectful visitors – kind of the flipside of “sharrows” on American roads, where cyclists often feel like the endangered interlopers. It’s yet another step toward securing the bicycle as Amsterdamers’ primary form of transportation.
At Micromobility Europe, we’re tag-teaming with fellow Atlantans Jim Durrett, executive director of Buckhead CID, and Ed Andrews, a retired UPS logistics engineer, as we hear from experts from the for-profit and government sectors, and test ride scooters and e-bikes. Especially interesting were the Amsterdam officials responsible for giving bicycles a role in the campaign to turn Amsterdam into a carbon-free city. As for those test rides: Jeff's favorite has been the Dutch-made Veloretti e-bike, which unfortunately is not yet available in the US.
This is truly an international event with attendees from all over Europe, Asia and the Americas (Jeff and I know because we volunteered to check people in on Day One). Presenters from France, Poland and Finland spoke about growing employer-based e-bike share programs in their respective countries. The programs partner with benefit-card issuers and even offer financial incentives – in one case paying commuting employees 25 cents Euro per kilometer traveled.
We also learned that the market for e-cargo bikes has grown so rapidly that there’s a now a separate International Cargo Bike Festival, also in the Netherlands.
Technology and innovation are a big part of Micromobility Europe, with companies competing for attention for their latest products. Yamaha unveiled a scooter and plans to soon offer a branded e-bike with the Japanese company’s own proprietary mid-drive motor and continuously variable internal hub shifter. The cutting edge can be a little overwhelming, from micro-folding electric bikes to ones powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
But the most amazing thing about this event and about experiencing the bike infrastructure of Amsterdam is how normal it feels for everyone to get around in an active, healthy, fun, pollution-free fashion. It’s true that Atlanta isn’t as flat, isn’t as compact and can get downright stick in the summer. But surely we can do a lot more to get micromobility to play a role in our mobility solutions.
We’re also collecting intelligence on best practices. For instance, one cargo-bike expert declared that the ideal standard width for a true two-way light electric vehicle (LEV) track is six meters (about 20 feet). For comparison, the Atlanta Beltline’s hard service is 14 feet, with soft-track shoulders on parts of the Eastside Trail bring it to 18 feet.
Now for the fun part. As if Micromobility Europe and the fish-school flow of Amsterdam cyclists weren’t enough, off we four Atlantans pedal this weekend to Utrecht to see the charms of that city southeast of Amsterdam from the perspective of a cyclist.
Walter Brown is the president of Better Atlanta Transit. A dual citizen of the Netherlands and the United States, he’s worked for more than three decades toward a more sustainable Atlanta.
