Sharon Vanorny for Destination Madison
Two people riding BCycle electric bikes.
In April 2024, my wife, Stephanie, and I took a vacation to Puglia (the heel of the boot of Italy). It is a beautiful landscape, with whitewashed houses in fields full of poppies, scattered among large olive groves. It’s as bucolic as anywhere I’ve ever been, with hill towns every bit as old and as charming as Tuscany.
Stephanie booked us a bike tour. There are hills and valleys, and the tour featured e-bikes. When we arrived at our check in, we were one of four couples, the rest of whom were retired, and some of them didn’t look like they spent a lot of time on two wheels.
Our tour guide, Damiano, ran the group through the basics of an e-bike. You get power assist only when you’re pedaling, and you use the controls to choose power settings, from ECO to TOUR to SPORT to TURBO. Other than that, it’s a bike. Away we went.
I have guided groups of people before, and for a guide the worst thing that can happen is for the group to spread out, whether it’s hiking, paddling or cycling. Damiano had nothing to worry about. The group stayed together easily, even when climbing up the steep switchbacks to the top of the quaint hill town of Cisternino.
There are some cyclists who consider riding an e-bike somehow cheating. I may have been one of those cyclists at one point in my life, but age and experience have convinced me otherwise. Several retired friends were active cyclists when they were younger, but they aren’t capable of riding the distances and elevations to which they were accustomed. Now many of them are getting e-bikes, and they keep on rolling. For them it’s not just a convenience; it’s a way to keep doing what they love. Call it an electronic tailwind, if you will.
Jake Jones, general manager for the Madison West Trek Store, thinks e-bikes “definitely bridge a gap and allow cyclists, young and old, to remove barriers to get out there. Maybe the trip was a little longer than you thought, and your body isn’t what it used to be. If you get a little tired, you just hit the turbo button.”
They can also be faster. In 2007, England’s quirky automotive show Top Gear featured an 18-mile race across London between an e-bicycle, the Tube (subway), a car, and a 225 hp speedboat on the Thames, because you know, we all use speedboats. The bicycle arrived 15 minutes ahead of the car. A statement from the BBC said “the bicycle came first, then the speedboat, then the [Tube], and finally the car. Ahem.” Other data I found shows that trips less than two miles are often faster on a bicycle, once you factor in the stop-and-go nature of auto traffic and the time needed to find a parking space.
If an e-bike is a car, then a cargo e-bike is a truck. My cargo bike has a longer wheel base than a standard cycle, big balloon tires, and can only be described as overbuilt, with front and rear racks that have held, on various occasions, more than 100 pounds of used books to sell, eight bags of groceries, and once, a large chop saw. I don’t think of my e-bike as a bicycle; I have a regular road bike for exercise. I think of it as an hybrid car with no doors, roof, windshield or body. The hybrid is part legs, part Bosch motor.
So around these parts, an e-bike could make the scenic but sometimes steep hills of the Driftless area doable — every country road! — without needing to stick to the flat rail trails like the Military Ridge Trail. Or stick to the rail trails but do ‘em all because the distances will seem shorter, and it will be easier to head off the trail to campgrounds or a cozy inn. Cycling from Madison to Governor Dodge State Park poses no problem, though you might need a spare battery or to plug the charger in for a while. In town, finding parking for a concert at Breese Stevens will no longer be a problem. No more waiting to get a parking spot in the Capitol Square North Garage for Concerts on the Square, or the Art Fairs On/Off the Square, or even the Dane County Farmers’ Market. With a cargo bike, you can even tote home an ungainly lawn sculpture or a hanging flower basket.
Want to try one? Madison BCycle has converted from the non-electric red bikes to white e-bikes, and has 500 bikes in 90 stations. They’re used often, with more than 500,000 trips in 2024. Checking one out involves downloading an app; prices range from $7-$8 for a half hour to less than $20 for a day pass.
