The Amazing Pubcycle ran its first test run on downtown Asheville streets in mid-August and is now in regular operation.

The rolling downtown bar departs at various times for 90-minute tours from in front of the Aloft Hotel at 51 Biltmore Avenue.

The pubcycle business is owned by the high-energy Shawn Vergrugghe, who moved to Asheville from Detroit about a year ago.

The pubcycle offers seating for five people on each side, all with pedals to work, and three seats in the rear, with no pedals. It also has a driver — and a battery-powered auxiliary electric engine to assist riders, if needed, on steep hills.

It averages about 3 miles per hour uphill and a bit faster downhill. Besides the charm of pedaling a bar down a street, pubcyclists soon discover that they are cheered on by onlookers as something akin to superheroes.

Verbrugghe said he has been working on launching the rolling bar business in Asheville since a seatmate on a flight from Detroit to Minneapolis showed him pictures of a pubcycle. He and his wife had been planning to move to Asheville and, since there was not already a pubcycle here, decided it would be “fun to do it here.”

The standard pubcycle, made of tubular steel, costs about $45,500 and weighs about 2,000 pounds.