ImJackson

Here in NYC, mopeds and motorcycles are taking over.
How is the situation in your city?

veganbikes

I do see a lot of scooters in them and the occasional e-moped. Near where I live I do occasionally get people going the wrong way on bicycles in the bicycle lane with clear demarcations of direction. We also see plenty of cars basically parking in the lanes either for their deliveries or just because they felt like it. So far I haven't seen any direct motorcycles on them just the occasional e-moped but those get stupidly classified as electric bicycles even though bicycles don't have throttles.

Generally the bike lanes nearest to me were pretty poorly executed but are better than nothing at all I guess.

rsbob 

Oh goodie. Another thread that will inevitably turn into ‘why I hate e-bikes’. Probably haven’t had one in a whole month.

As most know, my wife has one - and she used to ride centuries on an acoustic bike but no longer can ride that due to health issues. Now she still can experience being out in the country, still turning the pedals and can utterly trash me on the climbs. Must be a ying- yang thing.

shelbyfv

BF has a dedicated subforum for "e" and other motorized cycles. If you ask nicely a mod may move your thread for you. ebikes Welcome to BF!

icemilkcoffee 

You should be thankful that NYC has so many bike lanes. Probably the best bike lanes and infrastructure of any American city I know of. Here in Milpitas in the Silicon Valley bike lanes are pretty sparse. Most of the time I don't run into any other bike commuters save for a few kids biking to school, and that's certainly not a good thing.

Maelochs

As for bike lanes, every several years traffic engineers seem to learn a little more about proper lane design and placement. No more lanes on the right of the right turn lane ending in a curb or a ditch ....

As for e-bikes, as long as they travel in the correct direction, why should I care? I get passed by faster cyclists no matter what they ride.

indyfabz

Were those the pandas that were recently sent back to China?

Or did you mean yin-yang?

TC1

Just answering the question, not expressing my opinion, but the reasons are:

* A fast cyclist on a human-powered bicycle almost always had to ride a lot to get that way, and at least hopefully, during those many long hours spent pedaling, learned some things about traveling safely. The ones who didn't learn, probably aren't with us anymore. On the other hand, a fast e-bike might well be mounted by a person with little or no idea on that topic.

* Some of those electric motorcycles tip the scales at 75+ pounds, which is a significant addition to the energy available in an impact. And worse, the motors allow those heavy bikes to travel at 25+ mph under even heavier riders -- a brutal combination if one hits you. On the other hand, the number of 250+ pound riders traveling 25+ mph on human-powered bicycles is very small, and exceedingly few of them are novice cyclists.

* Dedicated cycling infrastructure is rarely designed to accommodate both 10 mph traffic and 30 mph traffic, especially when the latter can be as big, and clumsy, and under-braked as modern electric motorcycles -- so the proliferation of such bikes increasingly obsoletes that infrastructure ( as the Netherlands and other places are learning ).

wolfchild

E-Bikes, E-Assisted Bikes and E-Scooters are becoming more popular then ever before. I don't have a problem with them as long as people use them responsibly. It's not about the vehicle it's about the person who operates the vehicle.

rsbob 

Must be an autocorrect thing

Kapusta

My folks live in NYC. One of my greatest joys on a bike used to be riding around NYC. Used to do it all the time. Had not done it much for about 6 years, then last year I did it since eBikes took over. Its a f#<king zoo, now.

Great cycling infrastructure, but when it is clogged with people riding too fast for their skill level (or just too fast period) and showing no common sense, it makes the bike lanes not much safer than the streets.

CAT7RDR

Most of the streets I ride do not have bike lanes.
Bike lanes in my area are linked with high speed traffic, truck traffic and often are debris fields.
I'll gladly let e-bikes take over bike lanes and stay off the nicer hillier roads I prefer.

Bald Paul

I like the sound of that.

Chuck M 

I finished a run one morning and hopped on my bike to take the MUP to my grandson’s soccer game. An even older couple than me got on the path before me and I thought I would be trapped behind them for at least a mile. They were on electric assisted bikes and left me in the dust. As far as bike lanes in my town, it is the drivers that don’t know what they are for.

I agree with rsbob, this is just going to turn into another e-bike complaint session.

john m flores 

When I was younger and fitter, I used to love battling the taxis and cars in NYC. These days, not so much. It's been great to see non-car use grow in the city, from the now ubiquitous Citibikes to all manner of electric kick-style scooter, ebikes, one wheels, fixies, and what not. These days, I'd take the chaos of a bike lane every day of the week over battling cars again, as the consequences of colliding with a car are much greater - 93 percent of the bicycle fatalities in 2022 and 2023 occurred on streets with either no bike infrastructure or unprotected bike lanes.

A couple of months ago, we did a ride hosted by Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that's been pushing for bike infrastructure in the city for 50 years (and provider of the statistic above). They had a 35 mile loop and a 50 mile loop, all mostly on bike infrastructure. We did the 35 miler:


NYC has made a ton of progress but more work still needs to be done. The MUP over the Ed Koch (59th Street) bridge, for example, is much too narrow for the volume of pedestrian and bicycle traffic that it supports. And they're delayed in separating pedestrians from bicycle traffic by opening up another lane. This gives you sense of it; it's much busier during the week.



I hope to be able to witness the next several decades of bicycle growth there.

EDIT: One place where NYC lags behind Washington DC is bike access to the subway system. DC, with escalators and such, is great. NYC, a much older system still working on accessibility, is a struggle.

Chuck M 

As exciting as watching something like a pro peloton is, I enjoy peaceful back country roads over riding with a small group of people.

2old

Let the haters put their opinions where the sun doesn't shine. Kudos to you and your wife. On another note, my local Orange County, CA area has some streets with lanes for bicycles. Nearby Irvine has wide sidewalks and bike paths that make travel around the city safe and fun, and newly developed communities in the southern part of the county are even more futuristic..

rsbob 

I agree and thank you.

One local city opted to not have bike lanes on a busy 4 lane street but opted for super wide sidewalks with zero markings to separate cyclists and peds. The issue with this is that there are plenty of steep hills where bikes can easily hit 35 MPH. Even if people are prudent and keep their speed down there are dozens and dozens of driveways which cross the sidewalk. Since drivers typically look left for oncoming traffic, compounded by potential speed, it’s a recipe for disaster. E-bikes not only can rip down hill but up as well, which a motorist could easily misjudge the closing speed. The irony; if they had installed proper bike lanes plus a regular sidewalk, cyclists and peds would have been much safer - and there was room for both. The street is a couple of miles long. Talk about poor planning.

I have only had one issue with an e-bike on a lane and that is no announcement when they closely passed, scaring the you know what out of me.

TC1

Which, just for the record, matches almost exactly with the percentage of protected bike lanes compared to state and local road miles in New York City -- and is even more when "non-roads" are added, like alleys and paths. In order words, that statistic does not at all support that protected bike lanes are safer -- just that they are rare.

Which is a good example of why construction of infrastructure dedicated to one vehicle type has never worked yet, anywhere, to save road users' lives. It is tremendously wasteful to attempt to continually rebuild infrastructure for each new vehicle that comes along -- as many municipalities are painfully learning with the proliferation of electric motorcycles right now -- instead of fixing the root cause of the problem, which is the behavior of the users of that infrastructure. Endlessly pouring more concrete and paint is not the answer, and we've known this for a while now -- or we should.

PeteHski

So this implies that there are less people driving cars or using public transport. Unless you think all these people were previously riding ordinary bikes.

In the cities I often visit (Manchester and London UK) I notice that the bike lanes are now full of e-bikes, which probably irritates the purist cycling crowd, but there are less cars on the road, especially with the London congestion charges.

I also visited Cambridge recently and I was amazed at how many cyclists there were (mostly students I think). Quite a few of them were using e-bikes, but mostly still ordinary bikes. When I was at Uni in the late 80s, there were hardly any student cyclists and there were no cycle lanes.

BobsPoprad

Fargo-Moorhead area checking in.
What are bike lanes? Our cities guides say we have miles and miles of bike lanes.
In reality, the much improved bike path along the river is nice. Bike lanes, not so much. Slap a painted bike (sign) down on the pavement and call it good.
My rides during the week are almost exclusively on the path. Weekends I'll venture out on to the streets, since I can get out early.

daniell

In NYC one big problem is that cars park in the bike lanes.

john m flores 

The more relevant statistic would be based on miles traveled, not percentage of total road miles.

Do you have any data or studies to support your assertions?

Here's a study by the NYC DOT regarding the effectiveness of different types of bike lanes. It takes into account the effect that the presence of bike lanes has on cycling volumes (miles traveled):

https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloa...or-cycling.pdf

They are citing a clear reduction of risk with bike lanes


And a clear increase in ridership

fishboat

Gosh..a topic that hasn't been flogged to death for the last few days, but certainly the few days before.

I'm think a new sock that signed up to..well..

skidder

Lots of bike lanes in my area, lots of e-bikes, too. As for bike lanes on streets I'd say they are underused relative to the number of bicycles/e-bikes, as a lot of folks ride on the sidewalks. As for e-bikes there's to be a movement among the government folks to impose some further regulations on riding them as it seems a lot are ridden recklessly and with little regard to the outcome of accidents involving e-bikes (the injuries resemble motorcycle accidents rather than traditional pedal bike accidents). Recklessness seems to be among all age groups, and some of the schools have implemented e-bike policies for on-campus controls.