Just one day in the Netherlands and I can already see I was right about some things.
E-Transport isn’t coming. It’s here. It started with e-bikes, but it will not end there.
I’ve seen it in Maarssen, a suburb 6 miles from Utrecht. There are tons of fat-tired “e-bikes” that go 25 miles an hour, just on the throttle. I’ve also had a wheelchair blast past me at 15, and I’ve seen motorcycles using the bike lanes.
My first idea was speed limits, but that’s not easy to implement. The Dutch solution of segregation also has its limits.
People ignore the rules, sometimes in the cutest ways. Walking home from lunch yesterday I happened on a child of 4, alongside its mother, insisting he should use his miniature push-able toy “bike” on the bike path. Had to smile at that one.
The WiFi Solution
But teenagers don’t like arbitrary limits imposed by e-transport. At lunch today I hit upon one way to move ahead, which I call the WiFi solution.
WiFi uses “unlicensed” spectrum, in that no user owns any it. The traffic is controlled through the hardware, at the chip level. An 802.11 chip is a WiFi device that runs on specific frequencies at a specific power level. It’s a digital radio without a dial. This lets billions of us run exabits of data in a single city each month, free.
We need a standards group to define what an e-bike is. The Dutch say it runs at up to 25 km/hour (15 mph), with no throttle. You must pedal to activate the motor. Back in Atlanta, my Edison’s e-bike motor cuts out at 20 mph, and it has a simple throttle that exists to get you started or go the last few feet to a stoop.
A “Class 3” e-bike shouldn’t be called an e-bike at all. If you can go 28 mph or even faster, without pedaling, you shouldn’t be on a bike path. You need a license. A road test. A helmet. You’re a moped.
Anything faster than that is a motorcycle. Yeah, it’s an electric motorcycle, but no matter how thin or light it is (motors and batteries keep getting better) it’s dangerous. Again, a license, just like a car owner has. Insurance as well. And keep that thing on the road where it belongs.
These standards need to be negotiated globally, and they need to be implemented by manufacturers just as WiFi chips are regulated.
What Comes Next
Next, we need to work on parking. E-mopeds and e-motorbikes won’t fit in the Utrecht bike parking garages. Define things in hardware so that builders of all kinds, including the cities building bike parking, know what to expect.
It’s in the interest of the industry that this gets done. That’s why manufacturers should lead the way, working alongside government standards bodies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. WiFi is a great technology. E-bikes can be the same, but only if they’re regulated in the same way.
Oh, and those wheelchairs? They’re e-bikes with a throttle. They can use the path, but only at the same speed as I do. The last thing we need is some granny wheeling away from a bank job at 70 with a bag of bills in her lap.
