e-bikes legal in DC?

[Tania]

Are they legal in DC? A coworker is thinking about getting an e-assist bike for her commute but she’s heard that they’re not legal in DC and the dmv.dc.gov site is blocked at work by our firewall (don’t ask, I don’t know why) so I can’t read the pdf that someone posted in the recent vespa in bike lane thread.

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[hozn]

@mstone 142135 wrote:

Well, this is timely: http://trstriathlon.com/talking-tires-with-joshua-poertner/

That is a good read. I was actually a little surprised by this chart:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12022[/ATTACH]
Surprised that for a 25mm tire there was actually a benefit on “normal roads” (yellow / green lines) to running 100+psi (for the 170lb person). I am running my 23mm tires at 85/90 psi (front/rear), but from that chart it probably would be optimal to run them at higher. (But I won’t; I like them a little softer. And on my ride today the rear was actually around 60psi for most of the ride since it got a puncture and the standard Stans sealant doesn’t like holding pressures higher than ~60psi).

[mstone]

@hozn 142144 wrote:

Surprised that for a 25mm tire there was actually a benefit on “normal roads” (yellow / green lines) to running 100+psi (for the 170lb person). I am running my 23mm tires at 85/90 psi (front/rear), but from that chart it probably would be optimal to run them at higher. (But I won’t; I like them a little softer. And on my ride today the rear was actually around 60psi for most of the ride since it got a puncture and the standard Stans sealant doesn’t like holding pressures higher than ~60psi).

Yeah, I think the reality is that the specific tire & pressure combination are far more important than just pressure, and there’s no good way to know what’s best for a particular combination without more experimentation than normal people would be willing to do. Like you, I’d rather run low and accept a bit of theoretical rolling resistance for a better ride. At least there’s the joy in knowing that’s almost certainly no further from the theoretical optimum pressure than just topping to the sidewall marking, and a heck of a lot more comfortable.

[Author]

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