Everett nonprofit to launch e-bike lending program in Snohomish County
Published 11:30 am Friday, July 31, 2026
EVERETT — A Snohomish County nonprofit will launch a e-bike lending program in the coming weeks as part of a move to provide new transportation options to people throughout the county.
The new program will be known as the Snohomish County Bicycle Library System, offering free usage of e-bikes at the sites of 10 community organizations and service providers across Snohomish County. Each organization will receive three e-bikes, and people who use them can check out a bike for up to 72 hours.
It will be run by the Snohomish County Transportation Coalition, an Everett-based nonprofit that advocates for improvements to multimodal transit across the county. The nonprofit received a state grant of up to $600,000 to create the library system, the organization’s director, Brock Howell, said in an interview Wednesday.
Of the 30 e-bikes the nonprofit bought as part of the program, half of them include large storage devices to allow for carrying bags of groceries, small children or pets, while the other half are more traditional e-bikes. All of the e-bikes have a range of at least 50 miles and are classified as either Class 1 or 2 under state law, meaning they can be ridden wherever a traditional bicycle can go.
The head of the new library program, Forrest Baum, said Wednesday that the new bike offerings could allow lower-income residents in areas of Snohomish County make larger grocery runs or close the “last mile” gap between residents’ doorsteps and the nearest transit option.
“We’re really trying to just have the options there and see what happens,” Baum said.
There are two requirements to meet before someone will be able to check out one of the bikes. First, they have to be a client of the service provider or community organization the bikes are located at. Second, they have to go through a training program, which will show riders how to properly use the bike, store it, protect it, and how to navigate through nearby streets — a task which can be a challenge in Snohomish County, where many areas lack significant bicycle infrastructure.
The training will also help riders because the e-bikes, especially large ones, can have a bit of a learning curve. Some, particularly the ones with lots of cargo space, are significantly larger than a traditional bike. Baum, who has ridden an e-cargo bike, as they’re called, have a wide variety of uses.
“There are just so many different ways that you can make stuff easier,” Baum said. “I think the e-bike part of it really gets impressive once you’re moving a bunch of stuff.”
The program will allow people, particularly those with lower incomes, to get access to another transportation tool they can use for their daily needs, Howell said. E-bikes can be prohibitively expensive — the cost of the bikes in the library is in the $1,000 to $7,000 range — but a library solves that problem, he said.
“It’s community-owned, it’s free for the users,” Howell said. “They can use the bikes when they need them, the bikes are maintained by SnoTrac in our bike shop. This is a really good option for low-income folks to get to use e-bikes and e-cargo bikes.”
The nonprofit can’t yet announce the ten locations where the bikes will be located, Howell said, but the program is expected to launch in phases soon, with about five or six sites up and running within the next six weeks.
The grant funding will end in the middle of next year, barring an renewal from the state Legislature in the coming session. Howell said the hope is that funding for the program will continue in the coming years, but if the grant lapses, the bikes will continue to be available to the public for community use in some way, shape or form.
“I mean, we’re stoked about it,” Howell said of the library program. “I think it’s going to be a huge asset to the communities where we are able to have the sites.”
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
