Staff photos / Ed Runyan This was the view from a YoGo e-bike on the bike lane along Front Street near the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater in downtown Youngstown on Tuesday.

YOUNGSTOWN — YoGo Bikeshare, which rents e-bikes from four locations in downtown Youngstown, has been in business for two years, but it may have found its best opportunity so far at a beautified and improved location next to the main Youngstown fire station.

Ronnell Elkins, owner of YoGo Bikeshare, says the location at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West Federal Street has been its best location so far because of its visibility by motorists and proximity to Youngstown State University.

A rack full of e-bikes is easily visible from Fifth Avenue and West Federal Street, and is a busy transportation hub because of the WRTA bus station on the other side of Fifth Avenue and being close to the Mahoning County jail and main fire station.

The location used to be a nondescript parking lot, but it has been upgraded with landscaping, trees and plants, two electric vehicle charging stations and a bike-repair station. The YoGo Bikeshare operation began there in April.

“It has become by far the most popular station because of the amount of traffic and visibility it gets right there on that corner,” Elkins said. “With that location, we have definitely seen a volume increase since then.”

Elkins said over the two years he has operated his business, he has focused on overcoming a few “bumps in the road” that still stand in the way of the public endorsing the use of rental bikes to get around in Youngstown.

Rental bikes and scooters have become commonplace in many urban areas because of health and other benefits, but there is a learning curve in any location that has not had such a service before, Elkins said.

“We can’t assume that everyone understands the use of a bikeshare,” he said. “With it being new, people have to go through a learning curve. I’ve had people who took a bike to their homes because they didn’t understand it was a shared bike that they had to return to a docking station. They thought they would just keep the bike and ride it at their leisure,” he said.

His company has had good fortune so far in operating the bikeshare, despite some people’s predictions the bikes would end up in the Mahoning River. “We haven’t lost any bikes,” he said.

He has found, however, that many people in the community need help to understand how to use his product. It’s one reason he provides his phone number at the rental stations so that anyone having any difficulty in downloading or using the YoGo Bikeshare app can get help over the phone.

It’s also the reason he and his company have helped organize community events like the one on Sunday that begins at the Youngstown Playhouse off Glenwood Avenue.

It is a free, family-friendly event from 1 to 4 p.m., providing food trucks, a disc jockey and a community ride along Glenwood Avenue and Midlothian Boulevard with a police escort, to help grow the bicycling community in the city.

A goal of the event is to promote bicycling as a safe, accessible and healthy mode of transportation, and mobilize residents around the Midlothian Boulevard corridor bike lane and advocate for bike-friendly infrastructure, education on cycling safety and creating inclusive opportunities for cyclists of all backgrounds and abilities.

Elkins said the event will also enable people who want to ride their bicycle in Youngstown or rent an e-bike from him to learn from others with more experience.

An e-bike has some differences compared to a traditional bicycle in that it has a motor that assists the rider. It can enable a rider to go longer distances because it takes less effort.

Ekins said the event is also an opportunity for people who have bicycles — e-bikes or other kinds — to socialize and learn from each other.

“There is a sense of community,” Elkins said. “People get to engage on another level that they may not get to do when they just ride on their own or with a significant other.”

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION

Elkins said he also tries to help the public understand that e-bikes can do more than provide ways to enjoy leisure bike riding. It can be seen as a “mode of transportation,” he said.

“We want to have these as a mode of transportation for people who may not have access to motor vehicles but still need to get around in the downtown area,” he said. “So instead of walking or driving your car to pick up lunch, you hop on a bike to go pick up your lunch and then just dock it back” at the rental station and return to work, he said. His goal is to help people broaden their horizons and say, “‘Hey, we have another way to get around down here.'”

The city and organizations such as the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber are taking steps to repopulate Youngstown. He sees the potential for that happening through a recent influx of international students at Youngstown State University, he said. And he thinks YoGo Bikeshare can play a role in that.

“They’re coming from countries that have bikeshares,” Elkins said. “We’re late to the party in America” in terms of using bikeshares. YoGo Bikeshare is talking to YSU now to see if the company can establish a YoGo Bikeshare station closer to campus. He said he thinks bike sharing can encourage students to stick around in Youngstown after they graduate

“If I am only confined to what’s going on up the hill at YSU, then I’m going to just get my degree and go back where I came from or find somewhere else. But the true way to feel a sense of involvement in the city is partaking in those things in that community,” he said.

Elkins said he thinks that one reason the new YoGo Bikeshare location on Fifth Avenue has been successful is because it is just down the hill from where many students live and learn.

YoGo Bikeshare believes more people could be riding bicycles downtown for transportation and pleasure. But there are still some obstacles, despite the significant investment in downtown streets in recent years, including ways to make them more pedestrian and bike-friendly.

The city used a $10.85 million SMART2 Network federal grant to help pay for years-long projects to beautify and improve major downtown city roadways such as Fifth and Rayen avenues, and Federal, Front, South Phelps and Commerce streets.

Despite the upgrades, some locations need adjustments to make them more bike friendly, Elkins said.

TEST RIDE

For instance, when a Vindicator reporter rode an e-bike from the new YoGo station on Fifth Avenue several blocks to Wean Park along Front Street, the South Hazel Street entrance to the park was barricaded. Trying to get around the barricade was possible but not easy. Elkins said there are other, better places to access Wean Park, such as South Phelps Street and through the Covelli Centre parking lot.

“We preemptively built bike infrastructure (in Youngstown), but had no biking foundation here,” Elkins said. “There was no rideshare here. There were no bikes or anything like that, so you didn’t really have anybody speaking up on how these designs should work,” he said.

Having a bikeshare is a start. “But now we need to advocate for safer roads, advocate for more efficient roadways and trailways for the bikes to have people feel safe on them,” Elkins said.

MIDLOTHIAN BOULEVARD

He noted that there was “pushback” when bike lanes were added to Midlothian Boulevard on the South Side a couple of years ago. That pushback is one reason Sunday’s event will involve a group ride on Midlothian Boulevard. “It’s being done on Midlothian to show that people use this bike lane,” he said. The idea of “If you build it and they will come” may not be entirely accurate when it comes to creating bike lanes,” he said.

“You have to put the work in. You have to go out and meet people where they are and invite them in,” he said. That is one of the goals of Sunday’s event — to involve the community, including people who don’t ride bicycles, in what is going on with the biking community.

MOTORISTS

He agreed that there could be a learning curve for motorists sharing the road with bike riders also. He said motorists have been respectful when he’s been riding in the city. Motorists generally give bike riders plenty of space. “It’s new to people in Youngstown actually seeing people on bikes,” he said.

“The more people see people out riding bikes, they will know what to do. It’s no different from seeing a person walking in a crosswalk,” he said. “It’s more about being accustomed to seeing riders,” he said. “They will adjust.”

FIRST RIDE

A Vindicator reporter took a ride on one of the YoGo Bikeshare e-bikes at the Fifth Avenue location Tuesday afternoon, after downloading the YoGo app, registering and scanning the QR code on a couple of bikes to find one that had not been reserved earlier. When an available e-bike was secured on the app, the bike rack released the bike for use. A timer on the app kept track of how long the ride lasted.

The first ride was free for the first 15 minutes. That was enough time to ride up Fifth Avenue toward YSU to try out the Fifth Avenue bike lane created several years ago, travel across West Federal Street and down Vindicator Square to Front Street to try out the new bike and pedestrian lane along Front Street, then into Wean Park.

It was a nice ride through the paved trails in the 20-acre park, which included a ride across the back of the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater, under the Market Street Bridge and as far east as the Covelli Centre, then back again to Fifth Avenue to return the e-bike.

Seeing downtown Youngstown on an e-bike was fun, especially the under-appreciated Wean Park and its attractions and views of the downtown skyline.

A YoGo e-bike does not have complicated controls or a throttle. It has one handbrake for the front wheel and one for the back. A rider using an e-bike for the first time should become acquainted with how an e-bike works before trying to drive on or cross streets containing motor vehicles.

The bike is legal on streets and should be ridden under the Ohio laws that govern use of a bicycle on roads, Elkins said.

YoGo e-bikes are not intended for off-road use, Elkins said. They should not be ridden on sidewalks, but Youngstown does have a bikeway along Front Street near the amphitheater that looks a lot like a sidewalk.

FOUR LOCATIONS

The four YoGo Bikeshare locations are at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West Federal Street, at Phelps and Commerce streets near the Erie Terminal building, and at the Youngstown Flea, 365 E. Boardman Street. A location on Elm Street across from Wick Park is temporarily not being used to rent bikes.

A way to learn how to rent a YoGo e-bike and get helpful tips is to visit the YoGo Bikeshare website and download the cell phone app used to pay for rides. The app can be found at www.yogobikeshare.com.

While using the app, press “Scan” to scan the QR code on a YoGo e-bike and it will indicate whether that bike is available or not. Elkins provides a phone number (330-548-8486) where a person can call if he or she encounters any challenges. No bike helmet is provided by YoGo Bikeshare.