Roll, the e-scooter and e-bike program in Cochrane had a second successful season in 2022.  

Arda Erturk CCO of Roll Technologies says, “Overall, things are going really well. Early this year we made some minor changes we introduced preferred parking areas to reduce clustering in certain areas, including the historic downtown and a few more areas.” The other change that was exciting was the addition of e-bikes to the fleet, so Cochranites had more transportation options.  

Just how much did residents use the eco-friendly modes of transportation? Erturk says, “This year our riders took more than 20,000 trips in Cochrane and traveled over 55,000 kilometers, which is the equivalent of driving around the moon five times, which is amazing!” 

While Cochrane did not break the record using Roll Technology, Erturk says considering our population, our usership is “incredible.”  

We can expect to see Roll vehicles in our community again next season. Erturk says, “We are excited to bring our vehicles next year again and that will be the last year of the pilot.” After that, Town Council will need to decide if they want to continue with the e-scooter program, consider changes, or even introduce more companies. 

For now, there are no immediate changes coming to the program next year however Erturk says, “We are always in constant communication with the town to make sure everything runs smoothly, and we are going to have another end-of-year talk and discussion to see if we want to make any changes next year.” 

The feedback on the addition of e-bikes has been a positive one too. Erturk says, “We are seeing longer trips with bikes compared to e-scooter trips.” Roll enabled Sunset Ridge this year and they are seeing a lot of commuter trips from different areas.  

Will Roll consider allowing commuting from Cochrane to Calgary in the future? Erturk says, “That would require some extra approvals from the province, but we are always exploring different options to make it even more accessible. For example, in Red Deer, Blackfalds, and Lacombe we enabled the TransCanada trail to allow people to commute between different communities and we are hoping to do the same for Cochrane as well.”