There has been an enormous take up of E-bikes over the last few years, with E-bikes replacing car journies at a rapid pace in inner cities.
This is no surprise given the ease of travel on them, almost no effort, and at first glance this seems like a massive WIN for the UK - with no obvious CO2 emissions into our air.
But the increase of E-bikes has not been met with an increase in regulation, and thus there has also been an increase in MENACE from a few of these riders.
Many riders, typically on high-powered e-bikes, flout traffic, ride on red lights, and are common to cut diagonally at perilous speeds to get between pedestrians. Some leave their bicycles littered on pavements that imperil mobility people.
It's a problem we could have forseen, but city centre infrastructure is hard to change so it's unsruprising it has lagged behind the rapid take upn of this new green tech.
There is enforcement in some places...
In London's Square Mile, police stop and search, penalize, and confiscate illegally adapted bicycles. In European cities, overt branding on hire cycles enables tracking of offending cyclists and encourages responsibility.
The other issue is the economic model of e-bike sharing. Companies are mostly implementing a minute-wise rate so that users travel extremely fast and take shortcuts for most of the routes to avoid costs. Bolt's distance-charging model rather than time-charging is an intriguing aspect that does not cost much to make trips unacceptably costly. It would also eliminate the urge for the use of unsafe shortcuts.
Gently gently...?
Maybe what we need is something like the good old seat belt campaign from a few decades back, mass and sustained advertising to guilt trip E-bike users into being more courteous, basically!
It's also worth exploring technological solutions. Geo-fencing could slow down e-bikes automatically in pedestrian-heavy zones. Apps could require customers to snap a photo of bikes in bike corrals prior to a ride completing. Operators could even be fined for repeated abuse by their customers, encouraging them to police their fleets.
Ultimately, e-bikes are not the problem!
This is a classic case of good tech, bad actors!
It's a matter of having streets where all road users — on two wheels, four, or two — can safely and harmoniously coexist.