The Electric-Bike Conundrum
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Electric bikes exist.
Bike advocates for years have railed against cars and said the world would be so much better if people biked. Now the electric bike is expanding the world of biking and all of the social benefits of biking still exist with electric bikes and these people don't like it.
It's just classic policing of a sub-culture. According to him, you aren't a real cyclist if you aren't pedaling as hard as he is. What he needs to do is get over himself and realize that progress doesn't look like what you want it to look like; that you should learn to accept the world rather than just like a child expect the world to conform to your purist expectations.
It's quite a bit more reasoned than you suggest. The author acknowledges his bias, its source, and even that it's not entirely rational. But he's also exploring how e-bikes change the dynamic of pedestrian vs. bike vs. car traffic in a city, what kinds of pros and cons exist, and whether there are any rational sources of objection to the way e-bikes are currently being used.
He acknowledges that e-bikes are fun and useful: "I found the effect narcotic and delightful: on a flat road, I moved faster than I did on a normal bike, with less exertion. [...] Assisted living was so pleasant!"
Commiserating with a friend, they conclude that despite their objections, "for all our shared sense that something was wrong with electric bikes, we agreed that, by any rational measure, they are a force for good. [...] The engines are efficient, they reduce congestion [...] Fewer cars, more bikes."
However, they did identify at least one issue worth considering:
> "if you are not human-powered, you should not be using human-powered infrastructure. You should be in the street. E-bikes being licensed as motorized vehicles is good. E-bikes being in human-powered infrastructure is no good..."
Of course it's not quite that simple - e-bikes mingling with cars seems more dangerous than them mingling with human-powered traffic - but it's a point worth considering, for sure. For example, it's much easier to get up to 20 mph on an e-bike than an ordinary bike, and they tend to be quieter, too, so for pedestrians they can be quite terrifying. As the number of e-bikes increases, it's likely to become necessary to address this kind of thing.
He also notes the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between human-powered and assisted activity in an increasingly machine-assisted world, acknowledging that the distinction in the quote above is becoming less easy to make.
Even if you disagree with his perspective, it ought to be possible to read an article like this and recognize its value, unless you're even more ideologically fixed on a particular perspective than the author is.
http://www.evelo.com/blog/why-is-there-a-20mph-speed-limit-o...
However, it's easy enough to convert an ordinary bike to an e-bike - the necessary motors and other parts are readily available, in fact that's pretty much how the industry started. Many of the bike messengers in NYC etc. have much higher top speeds than 20.
Assist is "optimized" for 20mph and is capped at like 28 - I believe this is due to European laws. I have yet to breach 24 mph even with a full assist on a straight road.
No but they do react very differently, mainly at startup.
> Assist is "optimized" for 20mph and is capped at like 28 - I believe this is due to European laws.
EU classifies ebikes as bicyles if the assistance has cut out by 25km/h (16mph), the ebike must also have an engine under 250W, and must not allow power on demand (only pedaling assistance).
Individual countries may have a broader category for bicycle, or may have additional categories between bicycles and mopeds or motorbikes (e.g. s-pedelec in Germany), but the pedelec classification guarantees your ebike is treated as a bicycle (rather than a moped) across the EU.
But for the most part, the people on the electric assist bikes were older, a distinct population from the ones out for a spin. They were also pretty mellow in terms of speed -- faster than the kiddos but I'd pass them pretty handily on my road bike. It's my impression that the electric bikes there definitely expand the cycling population, and don't detract from it at all.
(ymmv, n=small and all that)
This is a piece about one guy's emotions and feelings about the rise of e-bikes. He's not policing anything. He's not setting government policies. He's lamenting that bicycling, especially in NYC, was once an activity for people who had to physically struggle with it and who got some viceral return from that and now it's just another form of commuting alongside cars, taxis and the subway.
He's not telling anyone not to buy an e-bike. He's not saying they don't belong on the road. People have written the same pieces about automatic transmission in cars and all other sorts of automation. Of course e-bikes will continue to grow. But riding one will never be the same as doing it all yourself.
"Everyone who has travelled by primitive methods in an undeveloped country knows that the difference between that kind of travel and modern travel in trains, cars, etc., is the difference between life and death. The nomad who walks or rides, with his baggage stowed on a camel or an ox-cart, may suffer every kind of discomfort, but at least he is living while he is travelling; whereas for the passenger in an express train or a luxury liner his journey is an interregnum, a kind of temporary death. And yet so long as the railways exist, one has got to travel by train—or by car or aeroplane. Here am I, forty miles from London. When I want to go up to London why do I not pack my luggage on to a mule and set out on foot, making a two days of it? Because, with the Green Line buses whizzing past me every ten minutes, such a journey would be intolerably irksome. In order that one may enjoy primitive methods of travel, it is necessary that no other method should be available. No human being ever wants to do anything in a more cumbrous way than is necessary."
For someone to whom the effort required to be a bicyclist was a badge of honor, an electric bike is the equivalent of that annoying Green Line bus, I would think..
The main issue with e-bikes in the bike lane is obviously the speed and pacing are not going to match your average bicycle commuter. The same effect would result from a professional cyclist carving through the streets at speeds no one could match.
I think the issue would solve itself as they become more popular. If they can hit speeds of 20-40MPH, then they should be using a full car lane, and can benefit from each other's presence. Professional and highly trained amateur cyclists do this already.
And of course, when riding in traffic, keeping pace with the cars is better and not everyone has the fitness to pull it off.
The result is that they rudely pass all the bikes at each stop light, repeatedly forcing the bikes to pass them in car lanes once everyone gets back up to speed.
20mph in the US. Slightly lower in most of the EU.
I have a pedal assist wheel, and it will bring me to 20 fairly quickly on flat ground, but all assist cuts out there and the rest is up to me. Usually I hover around 25, but it depends on how I'm feeling that day. You're not really going to pass me at 25 though... Even if you do think it's a problem, it just means we need better bike lanes and bike planning. Speeds vary all the time.
That said... I bike to work pretty much all the time now because of the electric bike.
The end result is dramatically and unquestionably good.
The article can be summed up by their own quote:
>And yet, for all our shared sense that something was wrong
>with electric bikes, we agreed that, by any rational
>measure, they are a force for good.
This nostalgia fluff piece is fluff. It's basically attempting to explain a soft form of gatekeeping around people who do or don't qualify as cyclists.
I guess the problem I see is inexperienced cyclists stuck at 20mph. Presumably that problem will fix itself after they log a few hundred miles and get a bit faster.
They cannot. At least, not with electric assist. The motors are programmed to power you up to 20MPH only, by federal law, but many limit it to 18MPH, to be on the safe side. If anyone is going faster than that, they are doing it by their own power, not with the motor.
Plenty of traditional bikers are folks who are using bike shares and do things like not wear helmets, ignore road signs, ride two abreast, and swerve without warning. Also a problem are the "pro" bikers (you know, the ones on a racing bike, fully decked out in gear) that tend to ride ~10 mph faster than everyone else and pass aggressively.
E-bikers on the other hand, go in a straight line, usually single file, without swerving and seem to follow traffic signs because they have an easier time accelerating and decelerating.
Again, just my anecdotal experience -- I ride ~5 miles to/from work in New York.
I wouldn't be surprised if that overshadows any danger from introducing different travel patterns compared to regular bikes.
Ever since I've been much more charitable towards these "cheaters".
Just this morning, as I was biking to work, a car came within an inch or so of hitting me, but I was moving slowly enough to avoid a collision. On an e-bike the story might have been very different.
Just like learning to drive, learning to bike takes some time and effort.
In the US it's considerably worse because our bike infrastructure is downright terrible in most cities.
I was biking in Amsterdam a year ago, and holy shit the difference is night and day (even with the shitty delivery guys doing 40mph on their gas scooters in the bike lanes).
Just putting up temporary bike lanes in some cities increased bike rides by 800% (http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/28/macon-georgia-striped-...).
There's a huge and mostly hidden demand for this. People don't think about it, but when it's offered they take advantage.
When I first saw this I thought "hell yeah I am buying on of those right this second". I bike every day in SF and there are tons of hills, I'd love one of these for when I am feeling lazy and want to have some fun.
But then I thought about what I'd be like in the bike lane. If someone went by me on one of those I'd be pretty grumpy. They take up more space, they don't have the right acceleration patterns, and the rider is not nearly as engaged with the ride.
I think the e-bike is the perfect city vehicle, but not sure where they will fit in between bikes and motorcycles as they evolve.
> I think the e-bike is the perfect city vehicle, but not sure where they will fit in between bikes and motorcycles as they evolve.
It seems to me that Pedelec (assist-only, low-power, low maximum assist speed) are bicycles, other e-bikes are electric mopeds and motorcycles.
The Super73 is a moped: it has functioning pedals but can move solely off of the engine (and the official website calls it a motorbike).
* is a clear respect for the fact you're in a 4,000 lbs vehicle and I'm on a bike. If you hit me, I die. Drivers in CH stop and wait meters away for bikers to pass the intersection. People in America ain't got time for that I guess. * Great intra-suburban bike lines that can support multiple commute speed bikers on electric assist or not. (Try riding from any south bay city to any other non-adjacent south bay city) * General conditioning to driving culture. You gotta get somewhere, you hop in your whip. Walking or other forms of transportation are looked down upon.
Also I guess DACH is Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Never seen that abbreviation before, but then I live in North America.
About DACH, I think your interpretation is correct, but I had never seen it either.
All the cars slow down and move over a lane to pass them, which slows down traffic enough that you get stopped at every traffic light. The bikes lane-split at full speed through the stopped cars and the red signal, which means you're playing hopscotch with them for miles and traveling at half the speed of a normal day.
If they bothered to obey the traffic laws, on the other hand, it wouldn't be a big deal -- you slow down, pass the slower vehicle, and move on.
Completely unrelated, but it's interesting to me how deeply the "4000lb. vehicle" meme seems to have embedded itself. I can find plenty of articles backing it up and talking about how cars are so much heavier now, cars are getting heavier, etc.
But I notice a problem: they include SUVs, trucks and "luxury" land-yacht vehicles in that classification as representative of the "average car". Cars intended for broad segments of the market are usually much lighter than this. A Toyota Corolla, for example, weighs 2800lb., the (popular) Ford Fiesta is 2500lb., the Nissan Versa is 2300lb., and even hybrids like the Prius (2500lb.) come in way under the "4000lb." meme.
These are still much heavier than bicycles, of course, but it fascinates me how much people have decided that SUVs, trucks and gigantic luxury cars are "average" and built their memes of car weight around that.
Step 1: Peaceful citizen buys an ebike to make commute easier. (person is elderly, permanent injury, has steep climb daily, other reasons that are their own)
Step 2: Rider Wears helmet, slows on oncoming traffic, stops at lights, and is generally a perfectly fine rider like many bike riders
Step 3: Concerned mom-type notices faster bikes with engines in lane and complains
Step 4: Law passed, Rider is now doing something illegal
Step 5: Ticket/Jail/Confiscated bike despite no evidence or numbers that rider was a danger to himself or others any more than cyclists
This is literally every law that affects peaceful citizens.
Also no offense, but going 20 mph in a bike lane or worse a sidewalk would be very bad. An ebike is not a bike, but a moped under the classic definition, a bicycle with pedals and a engine to provide supplemental power. It's just not a gas moped.
Also... you sound like you've never ridden a road bike seriously. 20mph in a bike lane, especially while going downhill, is pretty meagre for a standard road bike. No assist needed.
Hell, I'm fat (ish) and I can hit 25 on flat ground on my road bike with some effort (although staying there is draining). I can easily do 30 going downhill.
I'm regularly passed by folks doing more than 30 on hills where I live.
How? 20mph for a road bike is slower than what trained cyclists do
Bike lanes are hit or miss. I'd ride over 20 in a protected lane, but not next to a line of parked cars (door zone).
One of the most significant deterrents to cycling has been the danger involved with being mixed in with automobiles that are easily able to injure and kill a cyclist. The biggest gains in increasing bicycle use has been by creating bike lanes for all ages and abilities that are completely separated from traffic with physical barriers. These are safe spaces for bicycle users and all people can feel comfortable riding on them, whether they're young and fit, elderly or if they're riding with their young child that is just learning.
With the advent of fast moving electric bicycles, suddenly these all ages and abilities bike lanes may not be such safe spaces any more and this could discourage people from cycling. People may not want to take their young child out cycling if there are food couriers zooming by at speeds that a normal bicycle wouldn't be capable of.
Any reasonably seasoned bicyclists easily bikes at 20-30 kph in the flats, so by far exceed the safe bike path speeds. Electric bikes give this speed to anyone, who might be older, or is commuting and does not seek the sporty challenge. This requires proper bike traffic handling by the authorities.
The primary issue with road safety is not the speed of cycling but the presence of motor vehicles. The only adequate mitigation is to make them go very slowly to reduce the energy of collision (on side streets) or eliminate them (on well-designed, segregated bike paths). The fact that Germany is not very good at segregation does not invalidate the concept - just look at the Netherlands for an example of what can be achieved.
This is my point though that building cycling infrastructure for "all ages and abilities" means including people (eg. children) that aren't comfortable going these at the speeds that weekend warriors on road bikes are comfortable with.
I like the idea of pedal assist in helping people tackle potentially more strenuous parts of a commute, but bike lanes need to be kept as low speed, bicycle speed, zones somehow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#Federal_...
They are fun, you feel very strong riding them. Most have various levels of assist. They are heavy and making them a good workout with the assist off.
I do feel you would get scowls from other riders, though they are a little discreet (pedal assist means you look like pedaling), you do notice when people ride by such little effort.
And that's a great way to make sure e-bikes stay unpopular. Most "developed" countries make owning a motorcycles only slightly less expensive than a car (because safety). If it's less convenient and not cheap enough to offset that people won't do it.
The more popular they become the safer they will become to ride in traffic. They just need to get cheaper and rangier.
I wonder which side of the line electric shifting (which is legal in cycling race) falls.
Fast shifting that doesn't interrupt the flow of power is a big deal. That's why Formula 1 cars do not use "H pattern" stick shifts.
You can say it aids propulsion, but that's only because it aids managing the gear ratios. It doesn't contribute energy to the the propulsive force of the engine of the bike (the cyclist). Yes, it is involved in the drivetrain, but the engine in the derailleur does not contribute wattage to the turning of the cranks. It's power is applied to a horizontal repositing of the conduit through which the propulsive power is transferred.
Isn't that qualitatively the enjoyment drivers can get from accelerating in a car?
Yes, why?
Wanna tax something? How about fossil fuels and combustion engines.
Revolutionary!
Not a given. At speed, cars handle more securely than bicycles; cars have power brakes, ABS, traction control; modern cars often have automatic collision avoidance systems.
30KPH car-pedestrian collisions are >> 95% survivable. The fatality rate drops dramatically above that speed. Dropping speed limits to 30Kph in areas with shared infrastructure and strictly enforcing them can drop pedestrian fatality rates all the way to zero:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyway EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15
Alternatively, you one or both can go underground. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city#United_States) Crystal City VA for example has a huge underground mall that almost completely removes pedestrian tragic outside and connects to the subway system. Sadly, it's not a strait path, but there are ~50 buildings connected and it becomes really useful if you live and or work in the area. (http://www.thecrystalcityshops.com/_files/docs/cc-shops-2014...)
I probably couldn't keep up with you + ebike if you average 15 on a regular bike.
I wonder how the governor works. Does it just stop assisting at 20, or does regenerative braking automatically kick in?
When I started on the road bike doing 15-17mph during rolling-hill after-work rides with minimal intersections and traffic, and I'd say that's comfortably my casual pace that I can keep up for at least 25 miles at a time now, except when I first started I was sweaty and out of breath and now it's an easy commute speed.
[edit: why the downvotes? It is a serious safety concern for me during my daily commute. Setting the max speed a few mph slower than everyone else's cruising speed is clearly hazardous. If they set the governors to 15mph it would also solve the safety issue (since you'd only need to pass each ebike once), but then the technology would fail. Is making them 1-2 mph faster than a bike really that big of an incremental safety issue?]
Let's also consider how many lives that fuel-based transportion saves. How many people would die of starvation if you outlawed internal combustion engines? How much would clothes cost? Food? I'll remind you electric engines cannot easily transport 1000-tons of goods across a transcontinental railroad.
I can't explain what I think about that without getting banned on this forum, but that feeling seems to be the center of the article; basically hipsters crying about smart use of technology.
And yet, try as I might to be philosophical about it, my gut tells me that people passing me on e-bikes are vile cheaters.
I'm kind of curious, since my understanding is that America as a whole is not hunting "enough" (to keep deer populations at a sustainable level), if it isn't an explicit attempt to thin deer populations more.
Fucking hipsters.
Along with that time spent in the saddle the non e biker also develops the bike handling and traffic skills, the innate almost unconscious understanding of how the bicycles and cars will move at different speeds, how to calculate multiple vectors, how to process the traffic patterns for safe and fast transit.
My biggest gripe with most e bikers is that they don't have the skills to handle the speed.
Source: Currently rate-limited on my main account for pointing out HN's abusive, opaque moderation tactics.
How ironic...
NYC has a lot of bicycle infrastructure that is designed and managed for use at bicycle speeds, and under the physicals constraints bicycles face. The style of electric bicycle favored by delivery people (and many others) is significantly heavier, faster, and quieter than an unpowered bicycle, so it's easy to see it as an abuse of the infrastructure.
There's also an element of classism and in-group/out-group bitterness involved. The people most commonly using these bikes for deliveries are predominantly lower-class immigrants, under heavy pressure to go quickly, and are generally not involved with the (wealthier) "bike culture".
There's also a comradery of effort that goes along with riding a bike, the sense that the other people on bikes are putting in the same effort as you. It's granfalloonery at its finest, but I don't think it's fair to attribute this to luddism.
Since they're almost always powering, the freewheel never comes in. The motor is also quieter than most chain sets end up being under the abuses of the city.
+ the regularity of the 'effort' around the crankset, not "pressure on the left, then pressure on the right and so on".