The North Bay Police Service has added two unique forms of transportation today.
The police unveiled a pair of brand new EBikes that will be utilized by the services bike patrol which was relaunched this spring.
Ryan Farquhar, the owner of Farquhar Chrysler on Trout Lake Road in North Bay, donated a pair of brand new Ebikes to the service.
Farquhar wanted to do something like this for both officer and community safety reasons.
"These bikes came up into conversation and it made a lot of sense so it was really clear and really quick that this was an opportunity for us to step up and give back to our services and I think that is the most important thing," said Farquhar during a media event at the dealership Wednesday afternoon.
Constable Braedan Ransom is one of the officers who has been learning to patrol on an EBike which comes with a loud siren and flashing lights on the handlebars.
Ransom believes the acceleration can be noticed the most when climbing hills on the new EBike. He says on the new EBike he was able to climb the hilly road on Algonquin in a mere 15 seconds.
"With the EBikes, the fact that you are not limited, you are fine getting on the bike when on a normal bike you feel you need to figure out where I am and how am I going to get there fast if any other officers need help whereas now we are able to get there effectively anywhere in the downtown core in our other zones pretty easily," Ransom explained.
See related: Police prepping for summer bike patrols
See related: North Bay Police looking to re-introduce Bike Patrols
Police Chief Scott Tod, who re-introduced bike patrols to the area for the first time since 2016, believes the new EBikes are a fantastic donation to the board.
"So now we have two bikes that we can drive at an efficient speed and arrive at a call or response to service, whether it's urgent or otherwise, in a reasonable time frame and they are not fatigued in going a long distance and second it allows us to have interactions with our pedestrians and those walking about our community," said Tod.
Tod admits it was a challenge to get any background on EBikes and policing but he did get some guidance from both the Ottawa and Toronto police services.
"It was difficult to find a police service with a lot of information on it but there are not many police services that have adopted the EBike technology yet."
