To E-Bike or Not to E-Bike

An e-bike
used by a business to haul sandwiches in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo: Ben Cooper
via Flickr)

You’re seeing electric-powered bicycles more and more on the
streets of New York these days, so far mostly ridden by restaurant
deliverymen. But are they just early adopters of what will become a more
widespread trend?

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Commute
by Bike has a post asking just that question. Big caveat up
front: It’s written by a woman who owns a shop that sells
electric-assist kits for bikes in Carrboro, North Carolina.

That said, it raises some good points about how electric bikes
could be a part of the future of transportation, especially for people
with children and other cargo to transport, or for longer commutes. The
author says she was inspired to start her business by her own
experience:

You see, I had three small people under the age of five to take
care of, and not only did they need to be transported, but I needed to
have the energy to deal with them. After a lengthy internet search, a
cargo bike was selected to transport them. But I didn’t live super close
to town, and there were some big hills in the way. I didn’t think I
could do it. I could barely pedal the bike up the first hill out of the
driveway.This is where the electric assist kit transformed this into a
realistic solution.

With my kit, I can pedal the bike even with three kids or a
week’s worth of groceries, over 12 miles of hilly terrain. I can do it
every day and it doesn’t take forever or leave me sweaty and exhausted.
It’s become a realistic and competitive alternative to the car. And in
fact, it’s become the preferred option most of the time as everyone
enjoys riding the bike more than riding the car, especially Mom!

Setting up this bike actually was a life-changing experience for
me, so I started a bike shop to help other people realize their own
dreams of using their car less and their bikes more. Electric assist has
been a big part of this.We help a lot of people like myself who want to
electrify cargo bikes.

But we also help a lot of commuters with distances of over three
miles to go. Some people are even riding 20 miles each way, and the
electric assist just makes this commute much faster and more do- able.
Instead of bike commuting one day a week, they’re doing it three or five
days. We’ve also helped people with disabilities, people who are out of
shape, and people who just want to have more fun riding their bikes.
It’s been a pleasure watching all of these people dust off bikes and
leave their cars in the garage. In my book, anything that enables people
to do that is worth doing.

Probably there are purists who don’t like e-bikes precisely because
they allow people “who are out of shape” to ride (heck, we all know
there are folks who apparently look down on gears). That’s not my
concern at all. I do, however, worry about electric assist bikes in
urban settings — that they can be too fast to mix well with regular
bikes in heavily trafficked bike lanes. I’ve already seen some scary
situations caused by e-bikes, and I’m sure I’ll see more as they
proliferate.

(On a side note, the International Cycling Union is looking into
what is known as “motorized
doping” in pro bike racing — the possible use of hidden batteries
to increase a rider’s speed. Hat tip to @spokesnyt for that link.)

What’s your e-bike opinion? Let us know in the comments.

There’s also a semantic bike controversy is brewing on the network
today: Is the term “cyclist” one that people who ride bikes should
embrace, or reject as marginalizing? Is calling people who ride bikes
“people who ride bikes” going to make those people more acceptable to
the mainstream?

A post on Seattle’s Publicola
kicked it off. Bicycling
Toronto is in the anti “cyclist” camp, saying, “The last thing
Toronto needs is more cyclists.” But Biking
in LA takes the other side, writing, “You’re a cyclist. Get over
it.… No one benefits from getting caught up in a question of semantics.”

Of course, this all leads us to the question: Is a person who rides
an electrically assisted bike a person who rides a bike? From behind a
windshield, at least, we’re betting the answer is yes.