Leisesturm

Cars do not need a buffer zone from each other. Nor would a car approaching (overtaking) a cyclist need to observe the buffer if the cyclist was 'protected' by a marked off bike lane. Only in the instance where the road is not equipped with a bike lane and a car was operating near a bicycle would they then have to observe the buffer law. If a buffer law were enacted. Even in NYC that need not unduly restrain the movement of motor traffic. Most major streets in Portland have bike lanes or are designated sharrows. I'm fine if cars pass me without moving out of their lane if I am in a bike lane. The problems are at the intersections. Right turn on red means 3 out of 5 are going to zip by you and turn right without looking for you! They fully expect you to stop and let them do that. So I do! If they stop and wait, great. But if they don't I am not going to wind up right hooked.

livedarklions

Sorry, I read your buffer zone proposal too fast and completely misremembered it. I made it a silly proposal and that isn't fair.
​​​​​​

I'm not going to hijack the thread by debating taking the lane in the situation you describe, but I'm definitely not staying in the bike lane if it's crossed by a turn lane--that's a really bad design I feel no obligation to use. Fortunately, I don't recall encountering that situation any time recently. If cars are going slow enough, I really don't see the buffer zone as offering much security.

I'm not against fast ebikes, I'm against very fast and powerful ebikes using bike infrastructure. The capacities of these electric motors continue to increase and they're going to keep getting cheaper. I agree with you that outright banning would be a huge mistake, but there are increasing numbers of bikes that are too heavy and fast for safe operation on bike lanes and paths. It's probably the topic for another forum, but I think the question really is how you make the streets safer for ebikes capable of carrying a bunch of cargo at 30 mph or more. And yes, those vehicles exist.

I suspect the economics of this is such that electric cargo bikes might end up being a really superior option than all those Amazon vans in places like Manhattan, now's the time to figure out how to implement that sensibly, not after it's all over the place without any semblance of order.

rydabent

E-bikes are the reason that some people that are old or handicapped can get out on the trails. IMO that is a good thing. It shows gov officials that they need to give attention to bikes as the infrastructure in laid down. The more bikes, e-bikes, recumbents, and trikes out there the more the powers that be need to accommodate them!!!!

Sadly some of the most vocal against e-bikes come from the cycling community, especially the racer boys. The hate to see an old guy on an e-bike keep up with them when riding up hill into a big wind.

shelbyfv

Wow, those racer boys are causing distress all over the forum. They need to come to their senses and rydatrike

BikeMaster119

It is not such a serious problem, it is normal for cyclists to always have their place, cycling out of necessity or for doing so earning a penny every day. It is an opportunity for human health and not necessarily fun, but we can also include this aspect of a man who would like to live healthy.

john m flores 

yes

john m flores 

I find it interesting that so many are eager to cast e-bikes out into the street to do battle with 4000 lb cars and inattentive drivers. Many e-bikers are us. older riders that are riding their two wheeled passion toward the figurative sunset longer than they would otherwise, riders who are out enjoying nature and the wonders of two-wheeled travel just like we do, and folks that are riding ebikes for errands and commutes that they would otherwise take in a car.

If speed is the issue, then call that out specifically. Someone doing 25mph on a bike path with an ebike is no more dangerous than a rider doing that on a regular bike; if the path is busy, both are being inconsiderate to other users.

Regarding NYC, I've lived across the river for most my life and don't see an appreciable increase in risk between ebike delivery riders today and the pedal bike delivery riders and bike messengers that preceded them.

UniChris

As the vehicular cycling community has long correctly observed, at the speeds the delivery motorcycles are going, on the street and integrated with the traffic flow is the only safe place to be. The bike-specific infrastructure on streets is designed for only moderate speed cycling, once someone is going the speed of traffic the risk imposed by designed in conflict at intersections vastly overshadows that in between. That goes for pedal cyclists at those speeds too, but pedal cyclists only go those speeds when they really want to - they aren't incentivized to push the limits by the same unsustainable productivity goal that put the delivery guys on motorcycles.

And in fact you do see the delivery motorcycles in traffic on streets without bike infrastructure. The only way in which they don't fit, is that they aren't willing to behave as part of traffic and take and hold a lane as they have ample wattage to do, but rather weave in and out of openings unpredictably.

It's also an unfortunate oversight in city planning that "shall use" laws on streets with bike infrastructure designed for only slow speeds mean that faster pedal cyclists are prohibited (generally against their own desire) from integrating into the ordinary traffic lanes where they'd be safer.

If you want to get a legal pedal assist and ride at reasonable speeds for the setting, that's an entirely different discussion - that's neither the type of machine, nor the type of usage, that prompted this thread.

john m flores 

You bring up good points about the time pressures placed upon delivery riders; I don't know what the answer to that is. But the fact is that bike messengers in NYC have always been incentivized to push the limits of safety in order to deliver packages on time - with or without motors. They've hung onto trucks, rolled past stop signs, weaved in and out of traffic, and run red lights. That's been a part of their renegade charm.

On what basis do you claim they'll be safe in car lanes?

"A whopping 62 percent of working cyclists interviewed in a 2017 survey by the Biking Public Project said that they had been involved in a motor-vehicle collision at least once, and an average of 30 percent said they had missed work because of work-related injuries in the last year. "

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/06/...otecting-them/

This thread was actually about the presences of large numbers of e-bikes in NYC. You quickly interjected the idea that all e-bike riders exceed safe riding speeds. I'd like to see evidence of that beyond the anecdotal.

UniChris

Safer than they would be in bike lanes with designed in conflict at intersections. That's the whole premise of vehicular cycling.

And again, if you actually watch them on streets without infrastructure, it becomes obvious that most of the risk is from their own behavior of being unwilling to actually integrate as part of traffic. Not all of it of course - you can do everything right and still get hit, but the weaving and unpredictable moves greatly magnify the risk.

Parking protected on-street urban bike infrastructure is in contrast designed for slow, timid cyclists afraid of being hit in between intersections, and in order to reduce that risk greatly increases the risk at intersections with a fundamentally improper design where straight and turning traffic are suddenly on the wrong sides of one another after the bikes being shielded from driver's view by a wall of parked cars. That's not safe to use at high speed on the bike side, regardless if the power source is legs or a motor.

To take an even bigger look at it, how could it possibly be good public policy for both bikes and delivery motorcycles to be crammed into narrow little lanes anyway? Putting the faster two wheeled vehicles into orderly traffic flows in the ordinary lanes is a key step in starting to transition that huge expanse of real estate to more appropriate usage. Let pedal assist and slower pedaling stay in the bike lane, put throttles motorcycles mandatorily in traffic and restore the traffic lanes as a legal option for those pedal cyclists fast and experienced enough to fit there.

Getting drivers used to seeing a fit bicyclist or lightweight (vs highway) motorcycle holding a lane as an ordinary part of urban traffic is the really key step to improving safety, and when those vehicles are already demonstrating an ability to go faster than the traffic, not a stretch at all.

Specifically if you look at the opening post it was about an observation of delivery vehicles, which (either in the knowledge of the first poster or not) are locally classed as illegal unregistered motorcycles.

The reason they use illegal models is that the legal ones aren't fast enough.

There actually aren't large numbers of legal pedal assist e-bikes and those that do exist aren't anywhere near as noticeable - this thread isn't about those, as they are not what was observed.

livedarklions

The OP specifically mentioned the controversy between throttle and pedal assist so the thread has been about the illegal bikes too from the get go.

Moving beyond the anecdotal would be great, but this is a rapidly shifting situation where coming up with reliable methods for acquiring data is probably going to lag behind the situation on the streets.

Isn't a lot of this fueled by the proliferation of app-based food delivery services? That's a really recent development, and we're now seeing the major fast food chains taking it up. Many of them are now opening delivery only stores, you won't be able to go to them for counter or drive up service. Where I live, the deliveries are being done by drivers, in Manhattan, lack of parking makes that problematic, hence the bikes. I'm not sure comparisons to the bike messengers of old are particularly useful, those were usually business to business journeys so they tended to congregate in business districts. Food delivery is both business to business (weekday lunch) and business to home (other times), so these guys are likely to be more widely dispersed.

I don't think an "us vs. them" approach is going to work here, but I do think blinding ourselves to some fundamental differences between types of ebikes and their uses is a real recipe for disaster in the long run. IDK if people are really riding bikes at 30+ mph on sidewalks in Manhattan, but if they are, "are they going to be safe riding in the streets?" isn't going to be my number one safety concern.

whewdoggie

I think they are great for a purpose. My purpose is exercise so never really interested. That said I road an electric MTB and it was a blast. I rode dirt bikes for years and where I live there are absolutely no legal dirt bike riding areas.

john m flores 

Here is some actual data (SOURCE:https://peopleforbikes.org/wp-conten...ety-VFinal.pdf)

With regards to speed, this meta-study concluded that Class 1 bikes are approximately 3.0 km/hr (1.8 mph) faster than standard bicycles.


SOURCE: https://peopleforbikes.org/wp-conten...ety-VFinal.pdf

UniChris

Irrelevant.

It doesn't take five minutes of street corner observation to realize that does not capture the local reality that lead to this thread.

But then you've persistently been trying to pull this to entirely different topics in every post you've made, and in misleadingly citing a class 1 pedal assist number into a discussion about machines that are nothing of the sort, you're continuing that exact same pattern.

Pratt

Statistics on ebike related injuries are likely to be messy because of changing demographics of the users. One might suppose that different classes of users might get into different types of accidents, and the consequences of those accidents might be different. Elderly users might have more low speed, single vehicle accidents, but a higher incidence of fractures per accident due to osteoporosis. Delivery riders might be expected to have higher rates of bike-car and bike-pedestrian encounters. The trick will be adequately analyzing the data to develop traffic regulations that help all bike riders

john m flores 

Let me repost the OP's original post here to see who's really pulling this discussion off topic:

The issue about throttle control vs. pedal assist is not the primary point of the post. It is literally and figurative an "Also". And it should be noted that speed is not explicitly mentioned anywhere.

Let me repeat the closing again:

You are the one that's been pulling this discussion off topic. This wasn't supposed to be about the speed food delivery ebikers in NYC but you've made that your whole point and are trying to shout down anyone that disagrees with you. Furthermore, you've provided no supporting data for your assertions while I have in good faith tried to add real data to the conversation.

It saddens me that folks like you are spending time and energy demonizing ebikes when the real enemy is over 3,000lbs with a distracted driver at the helm. I don't even own an ebike, but I agree with the OP that we should incorporate ebikers (and other non-automotive road users) in a bigger tent to advocate for all of us.

john m flores 

If you are interested, I suggest you read the link I provided above. It was commissioned by the advocacy group PeopleForBikes and summarizes studies from around the world. They point to some of the things that you mention in their closing:

There's another study from Boulder, Colorado that observed that the average speed of ebikes on MUPs was actually lower than pedal bikes. The sample size of ebikes was small (n=12) to draw any definitive conclusions, but it did make me laugh. Boulder, after all, is a haven for bike racers and wannabes dragging up the average lol.

I have no doubt that some ebike owners ride quickly or at least do a top speed test to see if they got their money's worth. And I bet that some of the delivery ebikers in NYC do the same. But the data suggests that they are the outliers of ebike ownership. I wonder if posted speed limits on MUPs and bike paths would help temper those urges?

UniChris

Exactly. Those vehicles used by delivery people are illegal motorocycles. They are not legal pedal assist bikes. There's not even much variety, most of the fleet comprises just a few model years and variation levels of the same basic machine.

Hence this is a thread about the hordes of illegal vehicles in NYC, and they way they are actually operated, not legal ones operated at prudent speeds by aging recreational riders or commuters as those who want to change the subject keep trying to pretend.

Not at all - they are the overwhelming majority, in the situation this thread is actually about. It's not about the small number of legal pedal assist bikes one rarely even sees, or notes when seeing.

It infuriates me when people with no idea what they are talking about deny the reality of others' daily experience.

Yes, cars are dangerous. But in many parts of the city where people end up walking cars are where pedestrians expect them to be, doing what pedestrians expect them to.

Your average Manhattan pedestrian has daily negative experiences with and fear of these electric motorcycles - but not with cars. High speed motor vehicles belong in the traffic lanes, obeying the traffic laws.

But as I've pointed out, there is a way that they could be an ally for traditional cycling - and that is by starting to humanize the large amount of space given over to cars, and changing the rules to make it usable by athletic pedal cyclists again. Drivers getting more used to seeing someone on two wheels holding a lane in situations where they easily can, is definitely a good thing.

Trying to jam pack everything that is not a car into the narrow lanes designed for only low speed cycling (and commonly if illicitly the sidewalk) is precisely perpetuating the pro-car idea that cars should own 80% of the urban streetscape. Get outside a dense urban grid to somewhere where cars are doing 45 or 50, intersections are infrequent, and cycle traffic is light, and the story starts to become different.

john m flores 

"According to the city’s NYPD Motor Vehicle Collisions database, just 31 of the reported 45,775 motor vehicle collisions that resulted in injuries last year were caused by e-bikes. That’s roughly .07 percent. And e-bikes injured 32 people in all — or just .05 percent of the 61,939 injuries.

In all, 11,115 pedestrians were injured in 2018. Just nine of them were struck and hurt by an e-bike rider, the statistics show. Again, that is a tiny fraction of one percent."

SOURCE: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/04/...ike-crackdown/

​​​​​​​I have no issue with you sharing your lived experience. I'm not denying it. But when someone tries to advocate policy without data, that's another story altogether.

UniChris

You are mistaking reported data for reality. First, in the realm of the shadow economy and language barriers much goes unreported. If someone gets back on and rides off, what are you going to do? What's sinking a few hours of your life into arguing with a notoriously hostile to all reports police department going to accomplish for you? There are plenty of actual crashes, ironically especially those reported in cycling circles by pedal cyclists taken out by wrong way delivery vehicles and the like.

But even beyond the crashes, the largest issue is the intimidation. With some exceptions (especially some areas in outlying boroughs that like the rest of America are very problematically unwalkable in design) cars rarely scare urban pedestrians, because cars are orderly and predictable.

These electric motorocycles in their speed and silence - and the reality of their generally illicit operation without lights, frequently going the wrong way or on sidewalks - those are what have people scared.

And that's a very bad result for all types of cycling, because most people who are not themselves cyclists don't bother to distinguish.

Electric motorcycles have huge potential to improve a city - but only if operated as motor vehicles. Pedal assist bikes similarly have great potential to make cycling a bit more available to those hesitant over the effort or not wanting to sweat up their work cloths - but only if we reasonably confront the reality that there're a practical line between an "assisted bicycle" and a "motorcycle".

And also confront the reality that the protected bike lane network is not suited for (or personally vs. politically desired by) even the faster pedal cyclists who would overwhelmingly prefer the freedom of the street now prohibited to them wherever there is a lane, but rather something designed to meet the needs of those who would not cycle without it. Lots of people forget that the great bicycle cities are also cities where bicycle traffic is slower than the pedal cycling average in a place like NYC - ironically, someone who cycles today and wants to join in the civic goal of getting more people to do so, is (no matter if realizing it or not) working to make their own commute slower. Though safer. That's the reality of cities - density means nothing moves fast.

indyfabz

I nearly got creamed in Brooklyn back in September by a guy flying on a throttle e-bike going the wrong way on a fairly dark street. I was trying to cross the street at an intersection with the light. Didn't see or hear him coming until the last second.

You are correct: It's not simply about actual accidents. It's about intimidation.

Some people commenting on this thread don't (and won't) understand the realities that exist in some parts of the country. I would not waste any more time on them,

Leisesturm

If you own a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, hell if you own a Corvette, then you have enough power to exceed urban speed limits in a way that your average Kia Rio can only dream about. And? What? Do the owners of mainstream economy cars feel like Lambo owners should ... what? A Hummer weighs 6,000lbs. It is in fact a de-classified military vehicle and is exempt from DOT oversight. They are a tax dodge because the normal run of excise duties and other fees do not apply. This makes them much cheaper to make than is the case for ordinary cars. But I digress. The owner of a Hummer, or Escalade or F350 has no business in downtown traffic but there they are and no one says "that's not right". An e-bike is a bicycle. I don't care if it's throttle equipped or not. It looks like a bike, is more or less, the same size as a bike and it really cannot hold its own in the vehicle lane. I also wonder how long a throttle equipped e-bike could run on throttle alone at full speed.

It doesn't happen every day (I'm 60 y.o.) but I do come up behind slower cyclists in the bike lane. Sometimes that means that I have to slow to the speed of the cyclist ahead because there is no opening in the vehicle lane to make a clean pass. This happens even more to much younger fitter riders in a city like Portland with a robust cycling community and actively used bike lanes. You wouldn't tell fast cyclists they don't belong in bike lanes. 30 mph on level ground is actually a speed that can be attained and held for at least a little while by Olympic caliber cyclists. The fact that e-bikes can hit a top speed of 30 mph should not exclude them from a bike lane. The fact that a throttle control e-assist allows a cyclist to reach 30mph without pedaling (horrors) should not exclude them from a bike lane.

It's kind of ironic that a lot of you ride your bikes on MUP's and you get very aggrieved when pedestrians do not move aside automatically upon your arrival behind them. I have never felt that a ped should yield to my bicycle. Many are surprised when they turn around and see me waiting patiently for a passing opportunity. An e-bike in a bike lane regardless of how much power it has should be respectful of other cyclists and pass them without requiring that they move over. Or not pass them at all if that cannot be possible. As I have said before, e-bike delivery riders have different motivations than the rest of us. They are literally riding for their lives. Those lives will be shorter if they are forced to use the motor vehicle lanes. Maybe they should be banned outright. I'm just saying. If the problem is that severe then some action is warranted but the action should address the problem of the behavior of the specific subset of e-bike riders that use them as delivery vehicles.

If I hadn't already seen so many threads about the morality of using e-assist, I might have more sympathy for the premise of this thread. As it is, I can't be sure that this isn't just more justification for e-bike hate. I just don't think the majority of e-bikes are hotrodded, nor are their riders all outlaws. Even if delivery e-bikes are banned there will still be an active hatred of their existence percolating throughout BikeForums. That's sad. E-bikes are a step in the right direction. But if you really think single passenger 4,000lb. ... 6,000lb commute vehicles is sustainable ... who am I?

livedarklions

Not sure how many times people need to say they're not talking about simple pedal assist bikes in this thread before you can be assured that it isn't basically ebike bashing.

I have actually yelled at people riding pedal bikes too fast for the conditions on bike paths, btw. Haven't really witnessed much of it if any in bike lanes, however.

Leisesturm

When they stop mentioning that it is an e-bike and/or that 'it' doesn't belong in the bike lane, then I will be assured that it isn't basically e-bike bashing.

Mosyosalyangoz

Electric bikes enable long distance travel in really short time :başparmak: