The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition weighed in with a pointed response, arguing that the state should be making it easier, not harder, to own and use e-bikes. Their senior organizer echoed the sentiment shared by many riders: the real confusion and danger comes from people not being able to tell the difference between a legal e-bike and an electric moped, not from the bikes themselves.
Brett Thurber, co-owner of a San Francisco e-bike shop, raised a practical industry concern about AB 1557. Restricting California’s speed limits below what manufacturers currently build for the U.S. market could push companies to skip California customers entirely, shrinking the supply available to local shops and consumers.
That’s 15.5mph, not far off. That makes the ebike barely worth it.
Eh, I wouldn’t go that far. As advocates very often say: ebikes aren’t for making you go faster, they’re for helping you go further. And the evidence bears that out: ebike riders do tend to ride further than regular bike riders do. They go about as fast as a casual cyclist usually will on the flat, and much faster up hills. It’s not about speed, it’s about convenience.
That said, I have advocated here in Queensland for increasing it from 25 to 32 km/h in the past, to bring it in line with America’s 20 mph. And more recently I used my submission to a parliamentary inquiry to suggest a 35 km/h limit for users with a licence (the context here being that the government is proposing a law which will restrict ebikes to 10 km/h on footpaths and shared paths—which make up over 90% of the things called “bike paths” in my city—as well as requiring a licence for all ebikes, even EN-15194 25 km/h ones). As a stronger cyclist, when on flat ground I tend to average about 30 km/h and can go above that for reasonable periods of time, and I don’t think it would be a safety risk for responsible adults to go just a hair faster than that.
But I really do want to emphasise that speed is not the primary advantage of an ebike, and it shouldn’t be seen as if it is.
You don’t live in the mountains, I presume?
The ebike benefit isn’t for going faster. It’s great for helping to climb mountains. 15.5 mph is FANTASTIC compared to walking up and pushing a bike