Portland Is Donating Some of Its Disused Biketown Fleet to Canada

The original Biketown bikes were pulled off the street last September and replaced with e-bikes.

Biketown IMAGE: Wesley Lapointe. (Wesley Lapointe)
By Shannon Gormley

Now that Portland’s bike share program has gone electric, those chunky orange bikes that first hit the streets in 2016 are about to get a second life in a new city.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation announced today it will donate the out-of-commission manual Biketown bikes to Bend, Ore., and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The original Biketown bikes were pulled off the street last September and replaced with e-bikes. Out of the 750 rides that are still in good shape, 625 will go to Hamilton, which has a bike share program with a similar setup, and the rest will go to a new program in Bend.

“By reusing our equipment, these bikes will keep serving the public and providing a sustainable transportation option,” PBOT director Chris Warner said in a statement. “Portlanders should be proud that Biketown is able to help other communities in this way, and I hope this kind of creative reuse of bike share technology becomes the standard across the nation.”

The Hamilton City Council has already approved the agreement, but it still has to go before the Portland City Council, which is expected to consider the plan this Wednesday.

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