Updates from Project MOVER

Last week, our team at Shared Mobility Inc. visited Ossining, NY to conduct an e-bike demonstration and meet with local stakeholders engaged in bringing Project MOVER to life. 

Project MOVER (Moving Onto Vast E-micromobility Replication) is a $7 million project funded by the New York Clean Transportation Prizes that aims to fill mobility gaps in five socio-economically diverse Westchester County communities with e-bikeshare, e-bike library, and e-bike ownership programs.

SMI’s e-bike demo in Ossining was supported by staff members from our partners at EIT InnoEnergy, Nelson/Nygaard and Cityfi.

Over the past few months, we have been developing an implementation plan for the bikeshare program, working closely with our project partners at Nelson/Nygaard, Cityfi, EIT InnoEnergy and staff at the Village of Ossining. This includes reviewing community suggested locations for bikeshare stations, evaluating bikeshare vendor options, and building out a program framework guided by feedback from local stakeholders. 

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During our visit we had the pleasure of meeting with local government officials from the five Project MOVER communities, as well as leaders of community based organizations. We also conducted site analysis for various locations throughout Ossining that had been suggested to us for bikeshare stations.

My highlight of the trip was the e-bike demonstration. I always enjoy seeing the smiles people inevitably have when trying a pedal assist e-bike. Local stakeholders including local government officials and leaders of community based organizations had the opportunity to test ride e-bikes from the handful of e-bike vendors being considered by the project team for the bikeshare program. Everyone had the opportunity to test ride each e-bike, seeing how it handles going up the hill from the Metro North station up to the village center. 

It was great to see excitement from many of the stakeholders we met with for the coming e-bikeshare program. We had great discussions with local municipal staff members about plans for road and bicycle infrastructure improvements, as well as other plans associated with Ossining's Downtown Revitalization Initiative. We also had great meetings with community based organizations, including Neighbors Link where we talked about various opportunities to increase access to the bikeshare program amongst the Ecuadorian communities in Ossining.

Drusilla van Hengel, Senior Principal at Nelson/Nygaard and Mitch LaRosa, Chief Development Officer at SMI meeting with Luisa Granda-Rodriguez, Director of Operations and Community Engagement at Neighbors Link.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with our partners to move forward with implementing MOVER’s bikeshare as well as the other e-bike access programs. Stay tuned,more exciting updates soon to come from Project MOVER as we get ready to launch bikeshare!