Upcoming Micromobility Ordinance will also regulate e-bikes

[EasyRider]

@mstone 194087 wrote:

The problem is, that isn’t what the sign communicates. It says that you’re perfectly ok going 15MPH (+ the 10MPH courtesy window) which is flat out dangerous on a crowded trail. If the intent is to encourage safe trail use, then the implementation should align with that goal–not slap on a speed limit so that bikes have to “follow the same rules as cars” even though the concerns and vehicles are more different than the same. (A speed limit sign for a car is greatly restrictive–a 20MPH bike speed limit would be like a 120MPH car speed limit, and how many of those do you see in the area?) I would love to see ideas for legislating safe behavior (rather than arbitrary and capricous restrictions that don’t really enhance safety) but it seems that it’s really hard to do so (and the concern dasgeh raised about selective/harassing enforcement is huge when it comes to things that boil down to using good judgment).

Yes, I see your point. I can see that speed limits are most practical on routes that simply bar certain types of transportation (e.g., no pedestrians walking down Wilson Blvd, no bicycles on the highway, no cars on the Mt Vernon Trail). If the route is truly multi-use, speed limits would have to be set very low. Like 10mph on busy sections. Which I think most here would be unwilling to stomach. As you point out, if the limit is set at a higher speed that is more accommodating of bikes and e-vehicles, it could endanger slower users if read without context or judgment.

Whether there are signs or not, as ebikes become more common, the average speed on the trails is going to go up; I think we can all admit that its a lot more common to be passed by an ebike that to pass one. Perhaps pedestrians and slower cyclists will acclimate and feel comfortable sharing the path with faster vehicles than they do now. Maybe where it’s practical pedestrians will simply tread desire paths alongside the trail to stay out of harms way, or the path can be widened in some spots to separate modes. Essentially, bike paths for pedestrians. And some people will probably just stop using the MUPs because they don’t feel safe on it, the way some people won’t bike without separate infrastructure.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@dasgeh 194076 wrote:

Yep, there. Chief Farr claims the lane is 12 feet wide, and reasons that a bike is 3′, an average car 6′, so there’s room for a car to pass with a 3′ buffer if a bike is as far right as possible. He claims that it is better for the bike to be right so that a car will pass on the right side of the double yellow, because there is a blind hill. I disagree.

It has yet to be brought up… I’ve been mulling possibilities.

It seems to me that for his math to work the bike would have to be actually on the curb, so it also seems to me that “chief” Farr is a moron.

[Dewey]

@Steve O 194091 wrote:

For those who are unfamiliar, here is the road in question. There is no frickin’ way any experienced person riding a bicycle would hug the curb to allow cars to pass on this blind rise.

Oh is it a grate? I thought it was filled-in pothole, horrible and teeth-jarring.

[rcannon100]

My recent experience with Arlpopo:

ME: Rents zipcar from on-street parking spot labeled “Zipcar only”

ALSO ME: Returns zipcar to find parking spot blocked by other car share

ZIPCAR: It’s our spot. You can have the car towed.

ARLCO: It’s zipcar’s spot. You can have the car towed.

ARLPOPO: Oh no…. any carshare can park there

ME:

ARLPOPO: But on this other sign it says any authorized car share can park here

ME: Is the other car authorized?

ARLPOPO:

ARLPOPO: We’re not towing.

[rcannon100]

My recent experience with ARLPOPO:

ME: My residential street has no sidewalks and cars speed. Can you do some traffic calming.

ARLPOPO: We did a study of traffic on your speed. Based on the average speed of cars on your street, cars do not speed excessively and we are not doing anything

ME:

ALSO ME: Did you happen to take statistics during whatever schooling it was you went to?

(The average speed is irrelevant. What is relevant…. is the deviation…. or…. its not relevant how many cars go the correct speed. What is relevant is how many cars speed. If the deviation is significant – if there are lots of cars that speed – then you have a problem. If you look at the average, the average can mask speeders with those cars going less than the speed limit – and yes bc we are a residential street with some through traffic and some terminating traffic, the terminating traffic tends to be going quite slow).

I have pretty much given up on ARLPOPO.

[ChristoB50]

@EasyRider 194096 wrote:

I think we can all admit that its a lot more common to be passed by an ebike that to pass one.

Actually, that is totally the opposite of my personal experience over 21 months of cyclists passing me while on my ebike.

[dasgeh]

@ChristoB50 194128 wrote:

I think we can all admit that its a lot more common to be passed by an ebike that to pass one.

Actually, that is totally the opposite of my personal experience over 21 months of cyclists passing me while on my ebike.

It is also contrary to what NoVa Parks found when they did a study — they found ebikes were on average slower than pedal bikes.

[zsionakides]

@dasgeh 194130 wrote:

It is also contrary to what NoVa Parks found when they did a study — they found ebikes were on average slower than pedal bikes.

That study on ebike speeds almost certainly was cherry-picked and has no basis in reality on the trails in the area. I routinely get passed by multiple ebikes daily, regardless of what I’m riding, yet can count on one hand the number of ebikes I’ve ever passed. For comparison, I pass several pedal bikes daily, and don’t get passed much by pedal bikes unless I’m trailering my kids around.

With ebikes, regardless if they are riding safely, almost all of them are riding fast or really fast. The only exceptions I’ve seen are the occasional cargo bike and the Bromptoms, as they have a small motor.

[ChristoB50]

Ugh. If only that kind of one-color-fits-all paintbrush could be used for good, like repainting my condo.

[scoot]

Perhaps human-powered riders are less likely to notice juiced bikes when passing them than when being passed by them? Ditto for e-bikes where the battery is used for assistance, not as the whole power source?

[dasgeh]

Ah, the ol’ “your study must be wrong because my anecdotal observations lead me to a different conclusion”….

[sjclaeys]

@dasgeh 194152 wrote:

Ah, the ol’ “your study must be wrong because my anecdotal observations lead me to a different conclusion”….

That’s funny because you continue to mischaracterize the study to fit your own biases. As I posted on the e-bike thread awhile ago, although the study was done for NVRPA to inform policy for e-bikes on the W&OD, the findings of the study, including regarding speed, are not based on behavior on the W&OD. It just cites a study that found that e-bikes were observed to go faster on roads than analog bikes and slower on a MUP than analog bikes. I’d also note that the cited study also found nearly identical safety behavior between e-bikes and analog bikes. This would dispel the notion that e-bike riders can somehow be expected to be more careful than the rest of us “crazies”.

[zsionakides]

@dasgeh 194152 wrote:

Ah, the ol’ “your study must be wrong because my anecdotal observations lead me to a different conclusion”….

That study is absolutely worthless for considerations about the W&OD or any other policy around Arlington/DC. That study was done around the University of Tennessee with e-bikes that have a top speed of 15mph – the iZip Trekking Enlightened. Also the “roads” and “shared use paths” in the study are university roads and paths heavily traveled by students, leading to really low speeds in general.

The average speeds from the study were as follows:

Vehicle type Average speed (kph) 99th percentile speed (kph)
On road
Bicycle 10.5 29.0
E-bike 13.3 32.0

Shared use
Bicycle 12.6 26.0
E-bike 11.0 25.4

Keep in mind that these are in kilometers per hours, so in mph we are talking about average speeds less than 9mph, which is entirely irrelevant to anything in this discussion or any other ebike discussion in this area.

[dasgeh]

@zsionakides 194159 wrote:

Keep in mind that these are in kilometers per hours, so in mph we are talking about average speeds less than 9mph, which is entirely irrelevant to anything in this discussion or any other ebike discussion in this area.

These are at least valid criticisms of the study (and no, sjclaeys, I had not seen any post from you pointing this out before – I took the characterization from NovaParks). Though I don’t see how they are completely irrelevant, they seem to indicate behavior within constraints.

[zsionakides]

@dasgeh 194229 wrote:

These are at least valid criticisms of the study (and no, sjclaeys, I had not seen any post from you pointing this out before – I took the characterization from NovaParks). Though I don’t see how they are completely irrelevant, they seem to indicate behavior within constraints.

A study where students are riding around on campus at 8mph on ebikes capped at 15mph has no relevance on policy for MUPs where typical riders are going ~12-15mph on pedal bikes and ebikes can go 28mph.

Those on-campus shared use paths the study used are filled with students and are more akin to riding on the sidewalk than an MUP, which is why you see the riding speeds in the 7-8mph range. If you wanted to use that study to infer that ebike riders on sidewalks ride at the same speed as non-powered bikes, that would be reasonable, as the study demonstrates that ebikes slow down a lot in busy, congested corridors as do non-powered riders.

There’s a couple other references in the Nova Parks white paper that show ebikes ride 3-4 kph faster than non-powered bikes on paths in Germany and Sweden, and this is with a cap of 25kph (~15mph) and 250W on the ebikes. With 28mph ebikes being allowed on the MUPs locally, I’d imagine the real speed differential to be much higher than 3-4kph.

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