Are ebikes and escooter forbidden on public transport in your area?

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pagheca

Guest
Hello Everyone,

during one of my recent visits to Barcelona, I discovered that it is strictly forbidden to carry ebikes and electric scooters on all light trains in the city , while regular bicycles and scooters are allowed. To be clear, by scooters I mean these:

1707748680705.png


I guess the reason is related to fire risk but I find this very negative for the spread of sustainable mobility. Therefore I ask you:

Do similar bans apply on public transports in your area/city?
 
In the USA, it is simply the wild-wild-west. A limited number of cities have regulation, but even if they exist they can be rather lax about enforcing them.

Here, they focus on how you behave on a bike in most the country. If you have a 6kw bike but ride it reasonably you are unlikely to have problems. If you are habitually seen doing bad things, you will have a problem.

The city I live in cracked down on bikes with the small 2 stroke engines, due to the chronic bad behaviors of the riders. They hated giving up their inertia and would blow through stop signs and stop lights. They would burn through quiet residential areas at 35+ MPH. They made themselves a target of enforcement. It didn't help you could hear them three city blocks away. It was hard for them to hide.
 
pagheca said:
Hello Everyone,

during one of my recent visits to Barcelona, I discovered that it is strictly forbidden to carry ebikes and electric scooters on all light trains in the city , while regular bicycles and scooters are allowed. To be clear, by scooters I mean these:

View attachment 13245

I guess the reason is related to fire risk but I find this very negative for the spread of sustainable mobility. Therefore I ask you:

Do similar bans apply in your area/city?
Click to expand...
In Iraq, the e bike experience is still new. Government set max speed limit for imported e bikes to 70 km/h max. There is no public transport like underground metro.
 
My area is served by Metra, which connects Chicago to its suburbs. eBikes and eScooters aren't banned, and they just changed the policy to allow them on all trains. They go in special cars with racks and the bikes are bungeed in.
1708101489070.png


My city buses have bike racks on the front; will hold two bikes; I'm not sure they would accommodate fat tires though. I don't know what happens if more than two riders brought bikes...

No rules against scooters inside, but I think they have to fold and not be a trip hazard.

Folding bikes are considered luggage if they are in a bag and can fit between the rider's legs.
 
Wow, what a luxury those trains!!! Do you have direct access so you can stand close to your bikes before leaving the train (and protect it from being stolen)?

I have found those bus racks in many countries. Usually, if there is no rack you... wait for the next bus (or pedals). I found them a really good idea.
 
In 1968? ..while a student in college in Texas, ....a Europe based effort was made to get the 'moped' classified like a bicycle in Texas. No tags, no insurance liability mandates, no registration fees. Just like a bicycle. The insurance industry lobby killed the idea. (for obvious reasons). Probably if you can sit on your butt and go 40 MPH you have a motorcycle. For the rest of us the genie is out of the bottle :) Ride carefully and enjoy this moment it will pass.
 
Eljimb0 said:
In 1968? ..while a student in college in Texas, ....a Europe based effort was made to get the 'moped' classified like a bicycle in Texas. No tags, no insurance liability mandates, no registration fees. Just like a bicycle. The insurance industry lobby killed the idea. (for obvious reasons). Probably if you can sit on your butt and go 40 MPH you have a motorcycle. For the rest of us the genie is out of the bottle :) Ride carefully and enjoy this moment it will pass.
Click to expand...
sorry what does "a Europe effort ... like bicycle in Texas" means? I do not understand.
 
pagheca said:
sorry what does "a Europe effort ... like bicycle in Texas" means? I do not understand.
Click to expand...
A European based moped manufacturing consortium sent a group of marketing people to Texas with the intention of convincing people that the 'moped' was a safe and fun way for people to move around. They had a bunch of them (all European made) ..on my campus for my fellow students to try out. Bicycles in the US were totally unregulated. The were essentialy allowed to be ridden by anyone anywhere. If a bicycle had any kind of motor it was considered a "motor vehicle".
 
In San Diego, there is a ban on bicycles/scooters with liquid fuel tanks and liquid lead acid batteries for both city buses and the Trolley. Lithium battery eBikes are allowed; however, on city buses, all bikes must be placed on the bike rack in front of the bus but they do not accommodate fat tires (max size is 2 3/8 inches) and the max weight is 55 ponds per bike (you can take the battery into the bus to lower the bike weight). On Rapid routes, where the buses are Greyhound style passenger buses, all bikes are placed in the cargo area below the cabin. Escooters are treated like a baby stroller.
 
thanks. Do you know exactly why the ban for fat tires? Not easy to accommodate them on the rack or something else?

And btw, cheers to San Diego. What a beautiful place. I spent a lot of time at La Jolla, working at UCSD.
 
pagheca said:
Wow, what a luxury those trains!!! Do you have direct access so you can stand close to your bikes before leaving the train (and protect it from being stolen)?
Click to expand...
I think that's what the man in black is doing; standing guard over his bike.
 
pagheca said:
thanks. Do you know exactly why the ban for fat tires? Not easy to accommodate them on the rack or something else? <snip>
Click to expand...
The racks are the type where the tires go into a space between two steel bars, supporting the bike by its tires, rather than hanging from the bike frame. The space between the bars only accommodates "regular" tires on regular bikes. If they were wider, then regular bikes would be flopping all around.

The 55 lb. weight limit would also be an issue for a fat tire bike.

This is a good case for a lightweight eBike like Aventon Soltera. It's a "last mile" solution, not a long-range solution.
 
for me, it is quite extraordinary how the solutions adopted change from place to place, often with exactly the same boundary conditions. Here we have racks (first time I saw them I think in New Zealand many years ago), there it is forbidden to bring fat bikes, and on the other side, maybe a few miles away, it is just not possible to bring bikes on public transport. Why?

Italy for example is quite backward. Rome is swamped with traffic (Milan, I'm told, is even worse) but there is no way to take a bike on public transportation, and bike paths are few and usually poorly maintained. With a road network made more or less for chariots :) Impossible to widen a road, and when you do it anyway you destroy something of incomparable beauty. In a city where it is impossible to build subways because every time you dig 3 cm you find some archaeological finds and you have to block everything for five years waiting for the superintendence of archaeology to have its say (and often saying you can't touch anything).

That really gets to me. We are really idiots. I mean mankind, not only Italians like me :D
 

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