micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
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Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
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Yes, I totally agree with you.
The US is a bit complicated because there aren't really national laws governing trail usage. Most are managed by local municipalities and the rules vary. However, anecdotally I will say that most do not allow class 3 e-bikes. I know mine do not. However, based on comments I see it appears the rules are widely flouted.
Yeah, they're technically not allowed in a lot of places. But there's absolutely zero enforcement of this.
Part of the problem is that enforcement would be a huge pain. The difference between a legal and an illegal ebike is often impossible to discern at a distance, so actual effective enforcement would require stopping and closely inspecting all suspicious-looking ebikes, which would be a huge pain for people who are riding legal ones. (And would cost a lot of money to pay the enforcers.)
Yeah I agree with you. Not to mention the potential violence any amount of police involvement inevitably brings.
However it's starting to feel like there needs to be some kind of solution. If we don't come up with a good one, a bad one may be forced on us. Unfortunately, I don't really have any easy fixes.
Well, there's the possibility of enforcement at the manufacture/import/sale level. Make it illegal to manufacture/import/sell any 'ebike' that's too powerful or too fast. (Defined as any vehicle in the general shape of a bicycle or tricycle, having bicycle-like pedals, and exceeding speed/power limits.)
That moves enforcement away from the street level, making it less difficult and less dangerous.
You'll still have some issues with previously existing overpowered ebikes, and from the occasional person who builds/modifies a DIY one of their own, but that will be much rarer and much less of a problem than what we have now, where anybody can buy one off of Amazon at any time ... often maybe not even realizing what exactly it is that they're buying.