The question is stupid. The questioners often aren’t.
A doctor asked me whether I was “cheating” as I prepared to head off on my e-bike after our visit. I had a long think about the question as I rode home.
Had I ridden my old road bike to that doctor, I would have gotten quite a workout, climbing Atlanta’s hills in the backwash of car exhaust. As it was, I got a light workout, thanks to the motor and my willingness to take a longer route. I turned the 3 miles into 5, because I was having fun. I mainly used two-lane shared streets and a few short bike paths.
Before I got my e-bike, I would have driven to that appointment. The question of e-bike “cheating” is less about me and more about us. Are we “cheating” when we forego our cars?
Millions of times, every day, all over America, people are now using e-bikes, and other forms of light E-Transport. We’re going to pharmacies, doctors, and on short shopping trips using e-bikes. We’re taking the kids to school on cargo bikes. Some of us are using e-trikes. Delivery services of all kinds are using fast “Class 3” e-bikes and even e-trucks.
As e-bike use increases, I’m also seeing a lot more regular bikes on the road, because those riders now feel safer. Are they cheating?
Maybe they should be made to walk instead.
The Revolution Is Here
Support for the E-Transport Revolution means giving everyone a safe way to get where we are going. Electric motors are quieter than gas motors and they don’t stink. We’re accustomed to thinking of densely populated cities as loud, smelly, and dangerous. With E-Transport they don’t have to be.
Professional people are moving into town. We walk and use e-bikes for shopping, for chores, for entertainment and for pleasure. We use delivery services for the heavy stuff we formerly got driving our SUVs and pick-ups. When we do need a car, when our destination is 10 miles away, or more, we can call Uber. For the longest trips we can rent a car, sized to the need.
The government’s job is to accommodate the change, not argue about it. We need safe routes for 15-25 mph traffic, everywhere in our cities. Just as pedestrians need sidewalks, e-bikes and other forms of slow, unlicensed E-Transport need access to every road, and safe paths along the faster ones, at the speed they’re likely to travel.
A bike, electric or not, needs and deserves this third path. It’s up to government, through its elected representatives, and with the help of advocates, to make this happen. As the percentage of trips taken by E-Transport grows, and as innocent people are hurt or killed by speeding cars, we’re getting the support. But there’s always resistance.
Fighting the Bikelash
Governments are accustomed to one way of getting around, the stroad. In many cities, like Atlanta, even sidewalks aren’t universal, and they’re badly maintained. The way our Transportation Departments think is that transportation means roads, roads mean cars, and cars want to go fast so that’s what government designs for.
This was changing even before the E-Transport Revolution. People were seeing carnage, measured in dollars and lives, demanding cars slow down around people. Stop signs, speed bumps, bulb-outs, traffic circles, and streets narrowed from five lanes to three, all have the same aim. Slow down the cars, reduce the carnage. In the process, we created opportunities to support the slower traffic of e-bikes.
Where advocates will have the most trouble is parking. Cars want to park in front of wherever they go, directly in front of it, and they want to do it for free. That doesn’t work in a dense city.
The biggest fights I see around E-Transport aren’t about getting around, but about on-street parking. Do stores want to serve one customer at a time, or do they want to be available to everyone? Do you own the “parking place” in front of your house? These are questions that impact daily lives, and no one wants to pay the cost of sharing.
But here’s the plain fact. Access is not singular. It’s plural.
Let me end with a shoutout to People With Bikes. Anything that can commonly travel at the speed of a car should be treated like one. A “Class 3” bike traveling 30 mph or faster on its motor is a motorcycle. The whole purpose of regulating cars is to make everyone safer by slowing them down. The same danger applies to fast e-bikes. So, too, with the regulation.
