There are no longer 50 e-bikes coming to two northeast Johnson County cities.
The cities of Mission and Roeland Park in the past two weeks have decided to pull back from $500,000 worth of federal grant funding that would have paid for 50 e-bikes to be shared between the two cities.
With the grant, administered through the Federal Highway Administration’s Carbon Reduction Program and originally awarded last year during the Biden administration, Roeland Park would have received 20 e-bikes and Mission would have received 30.
However, confusion over what exactly the grant would pay for — chalked up to “an error in the award process,” according to city leaders — prompted both cities to nix the e-bike venture.
The cities discovered that the grant funding would only have applied to the purchase of the e-bikes, as well as other physical equipment, and would not have paid for the annual operation and maintenance costs over the life of a proposed five-year pilot program.
Originally, the cities had planned to use the “lion’s share” of the grant money to pay the costs of maintaining and operating the e-bike fleet but were dissuaded from moving forward with the grant once they discovered the funds could only be used to purchase the bikes themselves.
Beyond that, officials said that even if the cities moved forward with the grant (and found another way to cover annual maintenance costs), there was still uncertainty over whether the second Trump administration would approve dispersing the funds anyway.
That, combined with the confusion over what exactly the grant money would pay for, convinced the cities to pull back from the project entirely.
Maintenance costs were to be “lion’s share” of grant funding
Mission City Administrator Laura Smith told the city council on April 16 that the cities originally planned to use “the lion’s share of the grant funds” for maintenance and operating costs over five years and not the purchase of the actual bikes.
Smith later told the Post that the city learned only after being awarded the grant that maintenance and operating costs were ineligible to be covered by the money.
If the cities accepted the grant funding for the e-bikes — about $500,000, according to Roeland Park city documents — then the cities would be responsible for operation and maintenance costs for the five-year program.
Jennifer Jones-Lacy, Roeland Park’s assistant city administrator, told that city’s city council during a workshop meeting on April 21 that the program would have been administered under a contract with BikeWalk KC.
That contract called for roughly $1,600 in maintenance costs per bike, annually.
In one year, Roeland Park would have spent $32,000 on maintenance and operating expenses for its 20 e-bikes under the program, or $160,000 over five years, she said.
For Mission, the city would have spent $48,000 annually for its 30 e-bikes, or $240,000 for the five-year life of the program.
The cities pulled back on the grant funding
Both cities recently agreed to decline the funding largely due to concerns over having to pay the ongoing costs of operating and maintaining the e-bikes.
At its meeting in mid-April, the Mission City Council discussed either declining the grant funding or accepting it and deferring installation until figuring out how to pay for ongoing operation and maintenance.
Ultimately, Mission opted to decline the grant money, Smith told the Post.
Without a concrete plan on how to cover the operating and maintenance costs, the city “didn’t feel it was responsible to take on the bikes,” Smith said.
Roeland Park also decided to pull back on its portion of the grant because they were no longer able to partner with Mission and expand the footprint of where to use the e-bikes.
Roeland Park plans to use $50,000 in local match funding it has already received for future mobility and microtransit projects, though specific projects are not identified at this time.
Federal funding uncertainties also played a role
Jones-Lacy told the Roeland Park City Council that the Kansas Department of Transportation informed municipal leaders that there is still uncertainty about federal grants under the second Trump administration.
As a result, Jones-Lacy said that KDOT was waiting on cities like Mission and Roeland Park to decide whether to move forward with the e-bike program — while agreeing to pay the maintenance costs themselves — before requesting the funds from the federal government.
In Mission, Councilmember Josepha Haden Chomphosy asked during the April 16 meeting whether declining the grant would impact any willingness to award the city a carbon reduction program grant should the city apply for one in the future.
Smith told Haden Chomphosy that she believes the availability of the funds is what would determine awarding it to Mission for future applications.
“I think it’s difficult to predict right now because every grant program is receiving so much scrutiny and things are being changed and altered, so it’s hard to predict what will be available and what it will be available for in the future,” Smith added, speaking about grant funding generally.
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