UVA doctoral candidate T.C.A. Achintya needed a better way to get around. A new program from the City of Charlottesville made it happen.
“I had contemplated buying a regular bike, since I don’t own a car,” Achintya says. “But with how hilly C’ville can get, I never quite got around to it, since I could do most things via the city and the university’s bus networks, and I hated the idea of showing up to class or meetings sweating and out of breath.”
He looked at e-bikes—battery-packing bicycles that supplement human pedal power with a small electric motor—but says they seemed out of reach. “As a graduate student, it wasn’t an expense I could afford.”…