A family e-bike plan for San Francisco
Owning a car costs a San Francisco family about $12,000 a year. SF in Motion is one affordable plan: a six-month e-bike or cargo bike subscription with maintenance, secure parking, and safety training included, a mobility wallet for the trips that don't work by bike, and financing to buy your own.
How it works
Five things stand in the way: cost, financing, safety, parking, and knowing how. Solving just one isn't enough, so the plan takes care of all five together.
Pick up your bike at a participating local shop. A standard e-bike is $100 a month and a cargo bike is $150, with half price or free plans for income-qualified families and employers able to help cover the cost. The shop handles maintenance and swaps in another bike if yours needs extended repairs. Electric trikes and handcycles are available at the same price.
Parents practice handling a loaded cargo bike with an instructor before riding in traffic, and families learn safe routes to school. Teenagers get e-bike safety education through the Bicycle Coalition, and teens riding illegal electric motorcycles get a way to switch to a legal e-bike.
Secure parking is part of the plan: about 500 locked neighborhood hangars and 50 charging stations across the city, with locations set with SFMTA. Bikes are tracked and theft is covered. Spare spaces in each hangar are rented to neighbors, so the parking serves the whole block.
Every plan includes a mobility wallet covering Clipper transit fares, with the Clipper START discount applied for eligible families, Lyft bike share, car share, and occasional rides home. The goal is not to bike everywhere. It is a practical alternative to owning a car.
Paid parent ambassadors lead school bike buses, and group rides help people build confidence commuting. One app brings together trip planning, classes, group rides, parking, and the mobility wallet.
Families ready to buy use program credits, available rebates, and Redwood Credit Union financing at a local bike shop, with a loan-loss reserve that helps families with limited credit histories. Your subscription bike goes to the next family and is eventually resold, with current riders getting the first chance to buy it.
What it costs
Think of it as a monthly bill. A car runs about $1,000 a month. The plan runs $100 to $150, or less.
About $12,000 a year to own a car in San Francisco, with the loan, insurance, gas, and parking.
Maintenance, secure parking, safety training, and the mobility wallet included. A standard e-bike is $100 a month, and income-qualified families pay $75, $50, or nothing.
It already works
Since 2019 the Paris region has rented e-bikes to residents for six months at a time through local bike shops, with an employer able to pay half. The program is called Véligo, and it is the largest of its kind in the world.
SF in Motion follows the same shape and adds what Paris did not have to solve: secure parking in dense neighborhoods, safety training for teenagers, a mobility wallet for the trips a bike cannot make, and financing to buy your own.
Rented six months at a time through about 250 local shops across the Paris region.
Half of Véligo riders buy a bike after their rental ends. That is the habit this plan is built to create.
Friiway subscription bikes on the street today at 95% utilization, with a waiting list. The plan scales what already runs here.
Over five years
bikes in the fleet
households served, up to
neighborhood hangars
charging stations
Families who give up a car could save close to $10,000 a year, and fewer car trips mean less traffic for everyone.
Safety
SFMTA is connecting every school to the bike network through Safe School Connections. SF in Motion helps families use those routes as they open, starting in Chinatown and Bayview Hunters Point, where many families have nowhere to keep a bike.
Parents learn to handle a loaded cargo bike with an instructor before riding in traffic, and families learn safe routes to school.
Teenagers get e-bike safety education through the Bicycle Coalition, and teens riding illegal electric motorcycles get a way to switch to a legal e-bike.
UC Berkeley's research team uses SFMTA's school and traffic safety data to pick locations where families can ride more safely.
Who we are
SF in Motion is owned by a San Francisco nonprofit, with The New Wheel, Tranzito, Redwood Credit Union, and the Bicycle Coalition Education Fund delivering the services. UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies is the lead applicant, leads the research, and helps launch the program.
Lead applicant
UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation StudiesITS leads the research and helps launch the program. The Human Mobility and Networks Lab produced the commute analysis and designs the five-year study, PATH brings the applied transportation research, and SafeTREC measures safety outcomes and identifies where streets need work. Berkeley steps back from operations as the San Francisco nonprofit takes over.
Join
Tell us your neighborhood and we will let you know when demonstration days and bikes arrive near you.
Thanks. We will be in touch when bikes are coming to your neighborhood.
Where things stand: SF in Motion is a proposal to Boundless San Francisco, submitted in October 2026. Finalists are named in 2027 and awards follow that fall. Signing up now puts you first in line and helps us show the demand.