Latest city introduces anti-cycling rules as controversial e-bike ban brought in

Sredlums wrote:

Traditional cycling has its limitations. It demands a certain amount of physical activity, no matter how leisurly you ride.

Tell me you don't understand what "pedal assist" means without telling me. I ride around 50 commuting kilometres most days (two roundtrips from Peckham to Fulham): when I take my pedal assist ebike the assistance is on about 20% of the time, mainly on hills and getting away from the traffic lights. 80% of the ride is under my own power. Using the ebike I burn about 900 calories in total; when I take one of my unpowered bikes, I burn about 1300. So I feel like I'm putting in "a certain amount of physical activity".

Sredlums wrote:

it's a slippery slope, because without the natural limits, they will be pushed further and further and further. And that will have many undesirable consequences.

Such as more and more people using their cars less and less for commuting, the massive explosion in people using cargo bikes for the school run instead of their cars, more and more companies swapping their polluting delivery vans for cargo bikes. Yes, most undesirable.

Yes, riding an e-bike in its legal form requires some physical activity, but you have to be really in denial to not see what is already happening.

E-bikes are getting bigger and heavier, more expensive, more complex, and only have a short lifespan.
The restrictions on the maximum assited speed are easily (and massively) circumvented, and shitloads of very questionable electric bikes from Asia are flooding the market. I'm no slow cyclist, but young kids zip past me as if I am standing still on their 'fat bikes', withoiut a care in the world (or the riding skills and/or experience required to ride with those speeds).
Many, if not most, of them don't even pretend to pedal. Many of them just have a throttle.
That's not allowed, but it is everyday reality.

Yes, e-bikes have their benefits, I'm just wondering at what price.

Firstly, what's an Ebike? Nothing exists by that name.

We already have a clear, Europe-wide line drawn in a sensible place - 250W assistance cutting out at 25kph..

Before ebikes there was a clear, unambiguous and most importantly self-evident demarcation line - the machine was muscle powered. That made it trivially easy to police, and consequently few bothered even to test the boundary.

With ebikes legislation has tried to keep the line just as clear - it still has to be everything a cycle is, with just a little wiggle room introduced on the motive power. Still muscle powered, but with up to 250W assistance to the pedals (so no throttles), up to 25kph. Simple?

No. See off.road.cc for the latest ebike, headline advertised power is over 250W. And this is not some shonky Alibaba special.

See all the mods and chips, the homebrews and lash ups.

See the imported e-motorbikes.

Hear the clamour for a more reasonable power limit on cargo bikes.

And so on.

The point is, what was once simple to police is now a grey area (the 250W limit), difficult to discern (the power is not visible), attractive to those who would bend the rules (they know they can get away with it), and subject to well meaning pressure for more (why shouldn't I have enough power to carry my kids and shopping?).

I'm not agreeing this is an argument against EAPCs, but neither is it true to say nothing has changed and there are no consequences.

https://off.road.cc/content/news/specialized-updates-kenevo-sl-with-12-s...

Are you saying this is like the old joke (from e.g. early days of us making everything include digital electronics) "what do you get if you cross an x (e.g. camera, phone etc.) with a computer?  A computer!"

Or "cars spoil everything, including cycling, because as soon as private powered travel becomes the norm everything else will tend towards it"?

Truth there - but isn't that the inevitable human "what our ancestors termed luxuries, we call necessities"?

Personally I favour the "just use less stuff" approach to solving problems of overconsumption.  But this has never been the most popular approach.

Do you have a suggestion for how we might get the undoubted benefits of luring people into walking / cycling* some journeys rather than driving?  How to facilitate "micromobility" / "last mile cargo movements" without inevitable vehicle bloat or power/speed escalation?  Would that be by legal repression?  Taboo?  Some kind of cultural focus on demonstrating your "fitness"?

* e.g. with moderate power support - say another person's worth (part of the reasons for the 250W / 15.5mph choice).

I do wonder about "foreign influence" - especially if / once the US seriously gets in on the game, because their standard is 20mph.  Currently UK, EU and Australia all favour 15.5mph but will the US - or some other place e.g. the manufactures of China / Taiwan / Malaysia drag everyone upwards?

Regarding the kenevo, it's possible the motor is restricted to 250W when sold in the UK, but the advertising copy is global. Certainly this would appear to apply to the maximum assisted speed - the advertising says 20mph but the User Guide states this varies based on country of purchase.

Even well respected German manufacturer Fazua allows the user to tweak power output above 250W:

Quote:

In the Performance preset, the maximum power is higher, at 120 watts (Breeze), 260 watts (River) and 300 watts (Rocket).

https://fazua.com/en/support/help-center/toolbox-software/use-customizer/
The 250W limit seems quite flexible. I haven't studied the legislation, but I understand 250W is not a hard limit, but something woolly about maximum continuous rated power. The door is definitely open to manufacturers openly flaunting more than 250W.

Sriracha wrote:

I haven't studied the legislation, but I understand 250W is not a hard limit, but something woolly about maximum continuous rated power. The door is definitely open to manufacturers openly flaunting more than 250W.

Yes, maximum continuous rated power is the maximum average output over (I think) 30 minutes so nothing illegal about a motor that can peak higher than 250W, as long as it can't run at that peak for 30 minutes without burning out. This makes sense really, as long as the bike is limited to 25 km/h there's no harm in it being able to provide extra power going up steep hills, for example. The problem is how hard/easy manufacturers make it to bypass the speed limit control, on some bikes (like my Orbea Gain, for example) it's virtually impossible, on others it's as simple as putting a smaller wheel size than the actual size into the controller.

My point is, the 250W, it's another blurry boundary, because it's not as clear cut as 250W. There is no realistic way for the limit to be policed, since in fact the bike could put out any power you like over, what, 5 or 10 minutes, so long as it returns to average over 30 minutes.

Yes, I can think of any number of reasons why more power might be useful, convenient etc. But two things - extending the performance of EAPCs well beyond what is possible on a cycle strains the logic behind EAPCs being legislated as ordinary cycles, and it makes them impossible to police, a fact not lost on some elements

There's something to this, but when you say "extending the performance of EAPCs well beyond what is possible on a cycle" I think there quite a few (albeit pro) cyclists who can exceed this!

Is this risking "we can't tell if x is say 10% over the limit, ergo we can't tell the difference between a moderate electrical assist and a 200mph electric motorbike" though?

I know clarity is what we seem to want here - especially in a situation which is so obviously prone to "but this one goes up to 11, though..." - but I quite like the more "qualitative" definitions - "no more power than jumping on a tandem with a good racing cyclist".

Unfortunately we probably can't have both "common sense" definitions and a big market expansion of e-bikes. Especially when customers are attuned to the kind of sales pitch that eg. car makers put out. "100% more power than you actually understand!"

Sriracha wrote:

My point is, the 250W, it's another blurry boundary, because it's not as clear cut as 250W. There is no realistic way for the limit to be policed, since in fact the bike could put out any power you like over, what, 5 or 10 minutes, so long as it returns to average over 30 minutes.

That's why I said, "as long as the bike is limited to 25 km/h". That's really what the police should be checking, because you can easily get more than 25 km/h out of a 250W motor with the right setup. The police should be pulling over the people clearly going at 40 km/h, to start with; in the Netherlands the police have treadmill-type checkers that they put the bike on to check its top speed, that would help too.

Sriracha wrote:

My point is, the 250W, it's another blurry boundary, because it's not as clear cut as 250W. There is no realistic way for the limit to be policed, since in fact the bike could put out any power you like over, what, 5 or 10 minutes, so long as it returns to average over 30 minutes. Yes, I can think of any number of reasons why more power might be useful, convenient etc. But two things - extending the performance of EAPCs well beyond what is possible on a cycle strains the logic behind EAPCs being legislated as ordinary cycles, and it makes them impossible to police, a fact not lost on some elements

The power limit is almost impossible to police without some kind of registration and annual check-up (c.f. MOT). The problem is that even if it's made difficult for manufacturers to sell more powerful machines, it's still possible for owners to modify them or de-restrict them and that wouldn't be easy to detect.

I think the answer is to step up traffic policing and to prosecute those riders that are causing actual problems such as crashes. After an incident, the police can validate the performance of the bike if it's thought to be illegal, but I'm not even sure that's worthwhile except in the most extreme collisions.

The power limit is almost impossible to police without some kind of registration and annual check-up (c.f. MOT)

Ho! Ho! Even with an 'annual check-up', when the police can't be bothered to do any policing (they don't have to do much! Just stop ignoring indisputable reports, but they obviously don't want to 'get involved') nothing changes- the bad things keep happening. This is much-reported WU59 UMH on the diversionary route around Garstang Remembrance Day parade this morning. No MOT for 6 1/2 years, no VED for almost 6, recent failed MOT for dangerous defects, owner J Whitaker (Agricultural Services and Groundworks- with Facebook page and a couple of phone numbers)  keeps on being supported by Lancashire Constabulary

First of all, I used the term 'e-bike', not 'ebike', so if you ant to play lame word games, at least do it correct.
It's a moot point anyway of course, because you know damn well that both of those words are used, and what they mean. (If not: maybe you have heard of a thing called 'Google'. They have 86 million links for you to educte yourself on your 'ebikes', and 1490 million on my 'e-bikes').

Secondly, how's that line drawn in a sensible place working out in the real world? Everybody adhering to it? Easily enforcable by the police? Only quality, safe bikes being brought to the market, without questionable brakes, and batteries bursting in to flames?

mattw wrote:

Firstly, what's an Ebike? Nothing exists by that name.

We already have a clear, Europe-wide line drawn in a sensible place - 250W assistance cutting out at 25kph..

I fully agree, and believe that more resource should be put into proper enforcement of the existing rules, not bureaucracy and generating new bylaws, BUT the average Civil Enforcement Officer who failed the tests to become a real policeman wouldn't be able to tell at a glance if the pedelec bicycle infront of them has been delimited or not. So for simplicity's sake Cov council have decided if you can see a motor, then nope!

Sure, there aren't any Chilean extinct/dormant volcanoes between Tile Hill and Walsgrave but you can go quite fast without a motor or even pedalling

https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/bluetooth-could-help-police-spot-...

An idea that ebikes should be machine-readable to make it easy for police to spot the wrong 'uns.

Given how many variations of machine there difficult to "catch them all". Plus no doubt lots of ways of "doing a Volkswagen" e.g. a stealth "hide your capabilities" switch you could activate if rumbled.

However given many criminals can't be bothered to be smart - one way is shown in this article (BicycleDutch again - larger image here).

Milkfloat wrote:

I bet the thinking went along the lines of "we cannot tell the difference between a legal ebike and an illegal one, let's ban them all". I have a tiny bit of sympathy for this view because nobody who would be enforcing illegal e-bikes can possibly tell at a glance if an ebike is or is not legal.  Some are pretty damn obvious, but there a plenty of stealthy illegal bikes too. 

Equally, there are a lot of ebikes that are difficult to distinguish, on a quick glance, from acoustic bikes. So does that lead to banning all bikes?

What's "acoustic"got to do with it? It's not a guitar for goodness sake! It's a bicycle, and if it hasn't got an E-motor it's simply a "muscle" bike. Okay?

That was the logic identified in the submission from the Council Enforcement Officers!

Shermo wrote:

Why penalise law abiding citizens for this?

obviously there's no use in writing regulations against the ones who don't abide by the law. I guess by clearing out all the law abiding cyclists it frees up space to avoid the others? I mean, something had to be done!

Sriracha wrote:

Shermo wrote:

Why penalise law abiding citizens for this?

obviously there's no use in writing regulations against the ones who don't abide by the law. I guess by clearing out all the law abiding cyclists it frees up space to avoid the others? I mean, something had to be done!

Burglars, motorists who speed, rapists and murderers all walk around in town centres, why don't we ban pedestrians and remove these law breakers from our town centres!

the little onion wrote:

One issue is that they are not banning mobility scooters, even though collisions involving mobility scooters are responsible for approximately 10 pedestrian deaths per year, which is more than all types of bicycles.

Well - depends what kind - IIRC there are several classes of these in the UK *.  But in general - on the cycle path with them!  Having first ensured it's of a quality that's fit for purpose.  If you can comfortably get a couple of these comfortably past each other (ideally with a bike overtaking) that's a good starting point.

* FWIW apparently "you cannot drive any type of mobility scooter or powered wheelchair on cycle paths marked 'cycle only' ".  I can't recall the last time I saw one of those...