There’s always a generation gap. Today it’s among e-bike riders, and it is getting attention from policymakers.
Just not in a good way.
For folks like me, who grew up on bikes and are aging out, an e-bike is both transportation and exercise. We compare the motors and gears of our e-bikes to the gears of our old bikes, note how the hills disappear when we ride them, and we feel young again.
For people like my son, an e-bike is like my car. It’s a tool he uses to get from place to place.
I’m happy to go no faster than 15 mph (25 kph) on a flat road. I can still speed down the hills, but the point is I know that the e-bike will get me up again, so it’s pure pleasure. My son would be happier with a 25 mph (40 kph) ride or faster.
My son is a millennial, and if that was all there was to the “e-bike generation gap” I wouldn’t think about it.
But he’s mostly on my side of it.
Kids Today
Young people always want to go fast. Long before e-bikes existed, my neighborhood featured gas-powered go-karts. The local Soap Box Derby is all about speed, just dressed up with costumes for riders and cars.
Young men are the prime market for “Class 3 E-Bikes,” sometimes called Pedelecs. They salivate over so-called bikes that go 60 mph and even faster with minimal effort. They can be found at conventional e-bike price points.. They’re sometimes called “moped style e-bikes.”
These are not e-bikes. They’re bigger, heavier, take up more space and won’t fit in bike garages. They’re hazardous on a bike path. Imagine walking along the Atlanta Beltline and seeing one of these monsters heading your way.
Policymakers focus on the riders, caught between fast cars on one side and pedestrians on the other. They should focus on the bikes and their relative speed.
First, license fast e-bikes for what they are, motorcycles or mopeds. Second, keep them off the bike paths. That means enforceable speed limits. A Dutch 15 mph (25 kph) looks reasonable to me. The two policies support one another. License plates and speed cameras can deliver effective speed limit enforcement. (You’ll probably note right away how difficult this makes my idea of cutting through cul de sacs.)
In China, electric “scooters” are a mature $6.4 billion market. They’re also a regulatory nightmare. They’re coming. So are fast electric tricycles. There are even wheelchairs that can roll at 15 mph now.
Electric motors let you create any design, carry any load, over any distance, using any riding style, for as long as you can stay on them. Limiting our thoughts on e-transport to things like my Edison e-bike is a big mistake, one we need to correct.
