“Like Dilan/Gantt, O’Mara/Perry would limit electric motors to 750 watts and govern top speeds at 20 mph.”

Sounds reasonable, and it seems we are seeing the development of a new form of transportation. Like bicycles, and unlike scooters and motorcycles, e-bikes are light enough to hang on the wall.

When you add this to Citibike and the like, barriers to getting around by bicycle are falling. You get an assist if you travel long distances or can’t make a hill, and if you have no place to put your own bike you can borrow one.

Thank you France and China. We need technology to create new things as fast as prior generations use up the old ones!

There are NO age restrictions in NY State for carrying passengers on motorcycles. That’s right… you can carry your six-year-old child on your Harley on the Cross Bronx Expressway or NY State Thruway. And this has not been a problem. Prohibiting child passengers from e-bikes would seem inconsistent and non-sensical.

http://nysdmv.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/830/~/child-passengers-on-motorcycles

Abraham Lincoln once said:

A dog has four legs. If you call its tail a leg, how many legs does it have then? Answer: four. Calling its tail a leg does not make it a leg.

Likewise, calling an e-bike a bicycle does not make it a bicycle. An e-bike is a motorcycle, by virtue its motor. E-bikes do not, under any circumstances, belong in bicycle lanes or on any bicycle infrastructure.

E-bikes should be legal, of course. But they should be treated as motorcycles, the same as 50cc scooters which go at the same speed. Therefore e-bikes should require a licence and registration.

Any bill that allows the use of these motorcycles in bicycle lanes is unacceptable. We must keep these and all other motorcycles out of bicycle lanes.

I know I will never convince you. But I will explain… again… for the benefit of other readers. Here is why e-bikes need to use bicycle infrastructure:

1. Regulations on the use of bicycle infrastructure should be based on the size, weight and speed of the vehicle, not the source of its power. E-bike + rider falls within the size, weight and speed range of manual bicycles. Some manual bikers can routinely pass and keep ahead of e-bikes.

2. Like pedestrians and manual bike riders, e-bike riders are “vulnerable street users” — meaning, they will be just as dead as anyone else when run over by a box truck. They need the same protection as any other bicycle rider.

3. E-bikes are not allowed to use “motor vehicle only” lanes. Without being able to use either bike paths or highways, they would be confined to local roads and unable to efficiently go the long distances within and around NYC typically required day to day. This would increase conflict with automobiles and risk to the e-bike rider.

4. Without the use of bike lanes or “motor vehicle only” lanes, e-bikes would not be able to legally cross most of the bridges in NYC — and the ones they can cross legally would be quite dangerous.

5. Pedal assist e-bikes use bicycle infrastructure in Europe with few problems.

6. The more people use bicycle infrastructure, the more we value it as a society, the more funding it is likely to get in the future, and the more infrastructure we will get in the future. This benefits everyone.

Nobody is calling an e-bike or pedalec a bicycle. Rather, the laws are allowing e-bikes to be legally treated the same as manual bicycles for the reasons Elizabeth gave. You or I may not use e-bikes now, or perhaps ever, but it’s in our long-term best interests for e-bikes to be treated like pedal bikes as it greatly increases the advocacy base for bicycle infrastructure.

> weight about 50lb.

..which is double the weight of a typical manual bike. Sounds like a BIG difference… until you consider the rider and cargo. The average American man weighs 195lb, and average American woman weighs 165lb. Add another 10lb for U-lock, backpack and miscellaneous. So now we have the following weights:

Man on e-bike: 255lb
Man on manual bike: 230lb
Woman on e-bike: 225lb
Woman on manual bike: 200lb

So… the man on e-bike weighs about 26% more than the woman on a manual bike. Does that mean they cannot share a bike path? A man on an e-bike is a LOT closer in weight to a woman on a manual bike than even the smallest car on the road.

Should we ban men from the bike paths or make separate bikes paths for men and women due to the weight difference? If so, should we allow women on e-bikes to ride on the “men’s” bike path because they weight the same? Should we ban fat people?

> faster than I ride.

But not faster than some people ride.

No absurd comparison is to a Harley has bern made. The type of motorcycle to which an e-bike may be compared is, as I mentioned, a 50cc scooter. The rules and restrictions that apply to that machine are the ones appropriate for an e-bike.

> A nonsense statement, because e-bikes are currently not allowed to use any lanes.

Pedal assist e-bikes are legal in NYC today. They treated like any other bicycle by law. The proposed law in Albany will not change that in NYC.

Besides that the weight differential between a child cyclist and an adult is way greater than that between an e-bike and a pedal bike. The idea is bike paths are for vehicles which weigh within the same order of magnitude, say 50 pounds total for a very small child on a very small bike, to perhaps 300 or 400 pounds for a very fat cyclist on a heavy bike.

A lot of NYC’s bike lanes are really too narrow for safe passing but a lot of people try it anyway. My thinking is eventually many of the cyclists who are most likely to get passed, namely those who poke along at 8 or 10 mph, will eventually get e-bikes and start going between 15 and 20 mph. That should decrease the urge of others to pass them. For example, when I’m stuck behind someone going 10 mph I can’t wait to pass them, but if I’m behind someone going 18 mph, I’ll probably won’t bother, even on a day when I feel like riding at 22 mph.

It’s isn’t that bike lanes now are particularly dangerous, but as bikes get more popular most of NYC’s bike lanes can’t cope with both heavy bike traffic and lots of passing. If we can normalize speeds of 15 to 20 mph with widespread adoption of e-bikes in the lousier bike lanes it would help prevent even a lot of minor incidents. It would also make riding more pleasant for everyone.

A vehicle that goes 30 miles per hour has no legitimate place in bicycle infrastucture. This is true regardless of whether the motor powering that vehicle runs on gas or on a battery.

A normal bike ridden by an ordinary rider can go at 30 miles per hour only on an extreme downhill. I have hit that speed on only a handful of occasions; I recall once on Broadway in Washington Heights, and once on Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx. And I can state categorically that that is entirely too fast for a bicycle to go on a New York City street.

The distance that I live from any East River crossing is irrelevant. But I will mention that, living in Woodhaven, I am about 7 or 8 miles from all the crossings. Woodhaven, sitting on the Brooklyn/Queens border and being an hour’s ride from the Financial District, Midtown, and Harlem, thus qualifies as the Centre of the Universe.

eBikes have many wonderful benefits and very few disadvantages. They allow people to go much further than standard bikes, without increasing danger by increasing top speed. (Class 1 eBikes are capped at 20mph). An eBike is a genuine means of transportation that gives a little exercise, rather than a means of exercise that gives a little transportation. Looking at the city’s snarled up streets and pollution we could use something that people can get around on in the heat without getting too sweaty. Also they have zero pollution at point of use and do 2000 MPGe. What’s not to like?! Any rider who drives badly should be prosecuted – just as with ordinary bikes, just as with any other road vehicles. Bring NY law in line with Federal Law – which explicitly allows them!

a 50 cc scooter weighs over 100 pounds, has 2-4 hp, and does 30 to 40 mph. an eBike weighs 50 pounds, has less than 1hp, and does 19.5 mph. Completely different.

Well said

No, a 50cc scooter cannot go 40 miles per hour. It can perhaps approach 30 miles per hour on a downhill; but it cannot generally exceed 20 for long. It is precisely comparable to an e-bike; and the exact same regulations should apply to both.

Seems you’ve ridden neither a scooter or an eBike.

Perhaps get a bit more educated before you comment?

See this from Google: 50cc scooters typically have a maximum speed of 35 to 40 miles per hour (heavier riders will likely experience a lower top speed). If you will only be using the scooter to drive on roads that are 40 MPH or less, a 50cc scooter will give you the best gas mileage, sometimes more than 100 MPH.

This is the strangest conversation. You seem completely unaware of, or have decided to ignore, what are well known, simple facts. Your entire argument seems to be “speeds are directly comparable”. This is simply not true. Here are some examples:

Class 1 eBike = 20mph.

Vespa 50 cc scooter = 39 mph (Look it up!!)
Honda 50 cc scooter (Metroplitan) = 42 mph (Look it up!!)
Tao Tao 50 cc scooter = 35mph (Look it up!!)

Do you have Google? Or access to a computer? A 50cc gas motor produces 2 – 4 hp. This is common knowledge, easily verified. The eBike is limited to 1 hp. You can build faster electric bikes and put pedals on them, but then they become mopeds, and we can agree they need to be treated as such.

Weight matters too. The eBike is 1/4 the weight of the scooters. These are completely different classes of vehicle.
Now if you still don’t like eBikes fair enough – free country – but using false facts for an argument is no argument at all.

As a matter of interest eBikes (so long as they have less than 750 Watts, have usable pedals, and a top speed of less than 20mph are specifically excluded from the requirement to be registered as motor vehicles as per Federal Law of Dec 4 2002. This law supersedes local and state law. This is why the Police don’t arrest eBike riders – though commercial use without registration is banned).

Please…look things up before you post nonsense.

Ok, so just keep ignoring facts. You can insult me if you wish but that doesn’t change the facts. You can Google reviews of Scooters too if you don’t believe the manufacturers.

I’ve ridden scooters. They go 30 to 40.
I’ve ridden eBikes. Class 1s are limited to 20.

This also makes sense given their respective differences in horsepower. Wind resistance increases with speed. 3 to 4hp moves you at 35 to 40. 1 hp moves you at 20 or so.

So…is 20 similar to 30 to 40? That appears to be the basis of your argument. You may just as well say cars and people have similar speeds; that’s also nonsense.

So here is a video of a Vespa 50cc, where you can see the Speedometer. Perhaps that might help you understand where you are mistaken?

Actually, he is a time-traveling Soviet troll from 1940.

An e-bike always exceeds the prevailing speed of the mass of regular bikes. E-bikes can do 25 when the rest of the bike traffic is doing 15; and they can do 20 when the rest of the bikes are barely hitting 10, such as on an uphill climb (for example, on one of the bridges). This is not an exaggeration; it is what I see every day as a daily rider.