No pedals? Get out of my bike lane
I’m pedalling to work in the bike lane eastbound on College Street (look it up: It’s a lane for bicycles) when, with no notice or warning, a woman on a red electric bike that looks more like a Vespa sneaks up silently and sweeps past on my right, pushing me out from the curb.
Normal etiquette for cyclists: To pass a bicycle, you ring your bell politely to let them know you are approaching on their left.
To be blindsided by so-called e-bikes is becoming more common on Toronto streets and bikeways. A quick survey of friends and colleagues elicits a list of recently observed infractions: riders blowing through stop signs; riding on sidewalks and across crosswalks; weaving into traffic like a motorcycle only to swerve back into the bike lane when the mood strikes.
Nobody seems to know where they might go next.
Yet you can see why owners of these electric scooters take liberties: Ontario, when it approved e-bikes two years ago, ruled that, “electric bikes are permanently allowed on roads and highways where conventional bicycles are currently permitted.”
The caveat is that they must have pedals — and they do, behind the footrests, like the fins that remained on early tetrapods after they crawled out of the sea and became land animals: useless appendages.
Nevertheless, sales soon exploded. A billboard in the window of EMMO, an electric bike retailer on Spadina Avenue in Chinatown, boasts: “No license. No insurance. Free parking. No gas. No pollution. Go green.”
Around the corner on College Street, Green Choice Moto offers a dozen different electric scooter models, all made in China. Green Choice Moto sounds like a motorcycle store, and the scooters inside — red ones, black ones — look like motor scooters. They have seats for two, and rear footrests for passengers. The owner can remove the battery pack, a long, heavy black box in a compartment under the seat, to charge it indoors overnight, plugging it into a regular electric socket.
Bakr Abudan, an owner of Green Choice Motos, begs me to respect his merchandise.
“It depends on who rides the scooter,” he argues. “I ride a scooter and I never had a problem with a bike or with a car. It’s a kind of transportation. It’s an alternative to me paying $300 a month for insurance and $400 a month for gasoline. Why should I hate electric scooters because I see people riding and not respecting the road? I should hate the person who rides it wrong.” The future is electric, he adds, with an estimated 100 million electric scooters in China.
He let me test a wine-red TDR 815 scooter, with a 500-watt motor and 48-volt/12-amp battery, which runs about 55 kilometres between charges. He sells this scooter for $899, with a one-year warranty. Charging it overnight costs 8¢, he says. It has surprising pep.
Andrea Garcia at the Toronto Cyclists Union makes a distinction between “electric-power-assisted bikes,” which she supports, and “larger electric scooters.”
“We don’t believe larger electric scooters should be able to use infrastructure intended for active transportation because their speed and size and weight make them a hazard for others,” she says.
The City of Toronto agrees: Recently a new sign appeared at Queens Quay West and Stadium Road, where the Martin Goodman Trail swoops west around the second Tip Top condo tower: “Toronto Bylaws #886 and #608: No Motor Power Assisted Bikes Allowed,” with a stencil of a bike with a red circle and a line through it.
James Dan, manager of waterfront parks, put up that sign. His staff has also banned e-bikes from Toronto Islands, noting, “We won’t even let them on the ferry.” He explains, “People riding electric scooters tend to not have the same culture of respect as people on pedal bikes.”
His staff has installed 12 “No Motor Power Assisted Bikes Allowed” signs on the Martin Goodman trail, with more to come, after a number of complaints about the e-bikes.
“There is no motor-assisted vehicle allowed on any park pathway,” he says. “It’s a bit of a grey area on the bike paths that are on roads.”
Too true. Daniel Egan, manager of cycling infrastructure for the City of Toronto, says city bylaws restrict on-street bike lanes to bicycles only, with a bike defined as “a muscle-powered vehicle.”
Still, he is unaware of any enforcement to keep e-bikes out of bike lanes, and adds, “We have had a lot of discussion, but no clear consensus on what the city’s position should be on that.”
In the absence of an official position, I offer this one for consideration: Pedal a bicycle or go slug it out in traffic with cars.
It may all be a passing fad. Cyclists are cool because they get fit through exercise, and motorcycles and even Vespas convey sex appeal.
But you’ll never get a girl with an e-bike.
