People do get very excited over these issues, look at the US today with health care! And there are those odd folks who get so excited that they actually appear to hate - which is a very strong word - those whose opinion differs from their own, but so it seems to be. From my perspective it seems that the issue revolves around the park trail thing and whether electric scooters should be able to use them. Here's my take - again, for I have waxed eloquent elsewhere:

Most of the discussions I read do not include the appropriate information about the trail in question. There are trails and there are trails! Some are narrow and crowded, some are wide and empty, many are somewhere in between. It seems to me that only local jurisdictions can decide what type of vehicle is appropriate for any given trail. (as indeed they do for the roads)

In the last fifteen or so years the technological advances in electric power are amazing. I fly electric R/C planes and helicopters, I gave up on IC engines because of noise and restrictions on where they may be flown. Modern brushless electric motors with associated high-output lithium polymer or ion batteries with controllers to match are phenomenal devices. And - here's the point - they are going to get better in the years ahead. The electric scooters of today are going to become seriously powerful machines in the years to come. Already surge power, or instant power, of an electric motor can be equal to or surpasses an IC engines. So a modern, well-equipped scooter, can accelerate up an incline with great alacrity, whilst their human powered compatriots are gasping and wheezing beside them.

Which means that legislation allowing scooters on some trails today may well find itself being reversed later, for the obvious reasons.

I ride the Crescent Tril here in Maryland into DC, across the Key Bridge, and down the Mount Vernon Trail into Alexandria. A 14 mile trip one-way. There are places on the Mount Vernon Trail which are extremely narrow. Their are very tight corners in places where even light machines need to take care. 3-wheel recumbents encountering children's carriages of the side-by-side twin kiddy variety require care and anything but speed. But most folks are walking, biking, jogging and there are few problems when one passes the other. Bikes can stop quickly, whip off onto the grass and are narrow enough to negotiate the tunnel under the Memorial Bridge or the very narrow path over the hump-back bridge without too many problems. Electric scooters with their ease of speed up hills, their lack of maneuverability and general size and weight simply do not belong on this trail. Period.

And in fact there are signs stating such. But what is proper for this trail is not necessarily so for the next.

In my opinion that does NOT apply to power-assisted bikes. Those machine which are bikes first, and have had a small electric motor added. Even here there may be cause for question with some contraptions I have seen, but many of the power-assisted bikes should be fine on trails such as these I mention. In fact, I have seen them on the trails and I think most folks do not realize they have a motor. Certainly they blend in with existing traffic.

Bottom line is that the more bikes, electric bikes, electric scooters, electric cars even; the better. Sure we have the issue of the plants generating the power these things use and all the pollution and whatnot they create, but this can be controlled and is contained. On the roads, in the cities, in towns, the cleanliness and silence of the electric vehicle is a major plus.

As far as trails go I think this is not something that can be generally legislated, it depends on the trail and the people who use it. Let the local folks decide what is best, try it out, monitor it and then see how successful the results are. As in most cases, trying to provide some sort of blanket rule is rarely successful.