Bike lanes are no place for high-powered electric two-wheelers

But traditional bike lanes have taken an unexpected turn. The promise of safe passage is fast being upturned.

It’s no longer just bikes versus vehicles. It’s two-wheelers against other two-wheelers, pitting cyclists versus e-bikers — more precisely the high-powered e-bikes that are faster and heavier than what came before, which is why Queen’s Park and Toronto city council are revisiting how they are regulated.

Toronto’s bike pathways were built and funded by taxpayers on the premise of safeguarding regular cyclists from high speed roadside perils. The idea was to segregate traffic by type — fast with fast, slower with slower, like with like, bike with bike.

Motorcycles and mopeds, Vespas and scooters were barred from bike paths and restricted to the roads alongside other fast-moving vehicles. No one ever thought to invite these high-powered, high-speed two-wheelers onto protected bike lanes, and we wouldn’t allow them now.

So what changed?

Along came a technological revolution that hitched portable battery power to e-bikes. Followed by a bureaucratic innovation that if you retained the old pedals on a new, high-powered e-bike, you could still claim it was a close cousin of the humble bicycle.

Thus was born the faux e-bike, which doesn’t remotely look or act like a bike except for those pretend pedals that are primarily decorative — akin to spoilers or fins on a sporty car. By law, these overpowered e-bikes are permitted to scoot by regular bicycles at a maximum speed of 32 kilometres per hour, which is easily double the average speed of recreational or commuter cyclists.

That 32 kph speed limit exceeds the 30 kph speed limit for motor vehicles on many residential streets across Toronto. It’s also close to the 40 kph speed limit for cars on main city streets.

Why then do we allow these battery-powered motorcycles of all shapes, sizes and speeds to merge with slow-moving bicycles on protected paths that were built with the safety of cyclists in mind? Surely these fast-moving, motorized e-bikes should be restricted to the main roads where they fit in with their close cousins — mopeds, motorcycles and cars.

There’s still room for more modest e-bikes on the bike paths of the city, provided they are truly pedal-powered and only motor-assisted, moving at more modest speeds rather than relying on a throttle to do all the work. A hulking e-bike that weighs up to 120 kg and cruises at 32 kph doesn’t belong on a bike path erected to keep bicyclists safe.

If you’re in a bike lane, you should be pedalling and cruising at a comparable speed. Not constantly passing everyone as far as the eye can see, like a wayward 18-wheeler on Highway 401 (note that the province long ago imposed speed delimiters so they would stick to the flow of traffic).

How do we keep bike paths safe from e-bikes? The politics of bike paths are nothing if not polarizing.

“A pedal welded to a mini motorcycle does not make it a bicycle,” mayoral candidate Brad Bradford argued last month as he called for a crackdown. “A senior on the sidewalk, a parent in the bike lane … deserve more.”

As a regular user of Toronto’s bike lanes of the city, I’ve watched the proliferation of these electric motorcycles since the pandemic. The ailing restaurant sector received a shot in the arm from the likes of Uber Eats and other delivery services that rely on gig workers to ferry food at high speed and low cost — and low wages.

No one is trying to deprive that fledgling takeout food sector of the electric motorcycles that have become a lifeline. The challenge is to put these two-wheelers where they belong — in car and truck lanes, and off the bike paths of the city (not creeping onto the crosswalks of major intersections to make left turns while darting around pedestrians).

Bike lanes were purpose-built for the safety of bicyclists, not the efficiency of the food delivery industry. Faux e-bikes with decorative pedals should be banned from bike paths, just as electric scooters without pedals are prohibited from the bike lanes and road lanes of the city by law.

E-bikes can be a blessing in the right shape, size and location — including the handy, battery-assisted Bike Share rentals across Toronto. They reduce congestion and pollution, and can be a boon to people who want or need an assist to get around.

But you can have too much of a good thing by going down the wrong path. Time for the politicians to pick a lane.