Bike Sense
Bike Sense: the podcast of The BC Cycling Coalition.
Join Host Peter Ladner as he interviews guests to talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and road safety in BC. Listen to stories that can influence changes that make active transportation and mobility safer, more equitable, and more accessible, so we can meet our climate, health, social justice, tourism and economic development goals.
Please visit our website at bccycling.ca to find out more about what the BC Cycling Coalition is doing and how you can join and support us.
Bike Sense
When E-Bikes Become Motorcycles: The Gray Areas of Electric Transportation
Trail Rep for the Fraser Valley Mountain Bike Association, Founding Member of the Mission Community Cycling Coalition, former bike-shop owner, and also motorcycle enthusiast Rocky Blondin reveals how the once-clear distinction between motorized and non-motorized vehicles has become dangerously blurred.
In BC pedal-assist e-bikes are classified as bicycles, but this has opened the door to much more powerful devices exploiting regulatory gaps. From teenagers racing modified e-scooters at 80km/h on sidewalks to disguised electric motorcycles damaging mountain bike trails, these situations create real safety hazards.
Despite these concerns, Rocky remains enthusiastic about electric mobility's transformative benefits. Listen in to hear his innovative solutions such as a "green sticker" system to identify compliant devices, and how 'right to repair' can support the cycling industry as well as making e-bikes more sustainable.
Reach out to Rocky at bruce.rockford@gmail.com
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The Bike Sense podcast with Peter Ladner is produced by the BC Cycling Coalition – your voice for safer and more accessible cycling and active transportation in British Columbia.
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Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, peter Ladner, chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. It's not all roses in electric mobility land was a sentence that came to me from today's guest, rocky Blunden, telling stories about issues of e-bikes and e-scooters and irresponsible cycling behavior. You may have heard about the 12-year-old cyclist who killed a pedestrian in Calgary. You may have seen gangs of 14-year-olds on e-bikes and e-scooters behaving somewhat recklessly in a town near you. You may have heard about the UK police impounding e-bikes that are actually not e-bikes they're just motorcycles in disguise. In disguise, and Rocky Blundin is the trail rep for the Fraser Valley Mountain Bike Association and a founding member for the Mission Community Cycling Coalition, so he straddles both the mountain bike issues related to this topic and the ones in the cities. Welcome, rocky. Hi Peter, thanks for having me the cities.
Speaker 2:Welcome Rocky. Hi Peter, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So, before we start, I just want to ask you what was your latest bike ride that you've done?
Speaker 2:Last night Fraser Valley Mountain Bike Association had a social ride here in Mission up on Bear Mountain, so I rode to the hills and did some trails in light rain with about 30 or 40 others.
Speaker 1:Very nice, yeah, right around the same time I was at the opening ride for the Granville connector in Vancouver.
Speaker 2:Oh fun.
Speaker 1:How many bikes do you own? Honestly straight to the point here 11.
Speaker 2:Whoa.
Speaker 1:That's just you, I have six.
Speaker 2:There's 11 in my garage. Your wife has the other five, my wife has two, my son has two and my other son has one. I don't know if that adds up to 11, but I'm pretty sure there's 11 down there.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you qualify for the podcast I I it full disclosure.
Speaker 2:I used to own a bike shop. I got caveat that that I owned a bike shop up until 2023 and therefore comes with the territory you kind of have to as a business practice.
Speaker 1:So oh, okay. So I was going to ask you how you got involved with cycling advocacy.
Speaker 2:Uh, that is a good question. So I started mountain biking in 2003,. Give or take, my college roommate dragged me up to SFU and then I found out there was a group working on those trails, got interested in what that meant, I went to their AGM and sat down. It was my first AGM I'd ever been to for any organization. I was in my early 20s and they said at the end of the meeting they were looking for extra board members. They said, well, we need a couple more board members so we're giving away a hat.
Speaker 2:Anybody want a free hat? I said, well, that sounds great, I'll take a free hat. So I signed up for the board, not having no idea what that meant, and I quickly became a board member of the Burnaby Mountain Bike Association. And from that point forward I've been on the board of the Burnaby Mountain Bike Association, involved with the Tri-Cities Off-Road Cycling Association and now here in Mission with the Fraser Valley Mountain Biking Association. And through that affiliation I got pulled into call it urban cycling advocacy. The city of Mission formed a cycling task force and my name was on the list of people to pester to join that to figure out where to put bike lanes and such in our community.
Speaker 1:Now you have a special status in my heart and mind because you're a podcast fan. You approached us about this podcast and you mentioned that, as a result of listening to this podcast, your wife, I believe, was going to, or would like to, start a chapter of Cycling Without Age, taking elderly people around in trash hos. Is that happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel a bit of first-time caller, long-time listener here, and so we've listened to the podcast on and off and one of the episodes did inspire us to investigate what that looked like. That community has been welcoming to learn about and my wife's taking the lead there. Cheryl she's looking into opening a chapter here next year. They did caution, all the challenges associated costs and logistics, so she's working through those, but it's looking promising and it just sounds wonderful because it resonated with me. My mom died a couple of years ago and had some cognitive decline and all she really wanted in her elder years was to to ride a bike again, and I would have loved for that program to exist. If I could have taken my mom for a bike ride, it would have basically, yeah, made her year.
Speaker 1:So to do that for others would be wonderful. Why did you contact me?
Speaker 2:So I reached out because I'm working on an awareness advocacy campaign contained within electric mobility awareness advocacy campaign contained within electric mobility. I'm seeing a common element between what challenges related to e-scooters and e-bikes and they overlap so you can almost capture the whole problem within without identifying each element. And it amounts to. Historically, we had a very clear delineation between a motorized thing and a non-motorized thing. So you had, if it had an engine like a dirt bike, it was a motorized thing. If non-motorized thing, so you had, if it had an engine like a dirt bike, it was a motorized thing. If it was a pedal bike, it was different.
Speaker 2:And it's only with electric mobility that those lines have crossed over, and it's especially with e-bikes because a pedal assist class one, e-bikes is treated in our, in bc, uh, as a cycle, as a bicycle, it's not any different. So you can ride on trails, you can ride in bike paths, and so that's the legal framework around. It Sounds great, I support that and think it's wonderful. However, that opened kind of the fox into the henhouse and now electric motors of bigger and more powerful means are going on the trails, are going into bike lanes and, like you talked in the intro about motorcycles couching themselves as e-bikes. When I encounter one of these devices that shouldn't be where it is, the first thing out of their mouth is I say well, that's a motorcycle, you shouldn't be here. And they go no, it's an e-bike and it's an electric motorcycle, but it's the first thing.
Speaker 1:So where would you draw the line between motorized and non-motorized?
Speaker 2:So for me and that's where e-scooters and e-bikes do have a bit of a delineation E-bikes it's pedal assist, only 32 kilometers an hour, max 500 watts, and those are the regulations that the provincial government has put onto trails and for most bike paths. I think this is where the regulatory environment is really confusing, because the off-road use and the on-road use rules don't overlap. They don't overlap perfectly, and so it creates gray areas.
Speaker 1:Why, then, is it possible to sell an illegal e-bike? I've seen these ones with the little faux pedals sticking out that I don't even know if they even move, but they're supposed to make it look like an e-bike, I think. And yet it's all souped up and way over the limits you just described.
Speaker 2:Yeah, funny enough, that problem is, I think, as old as time, because I remember as a kid gas-powered mopeds having little pedals hanging off the sides, so they were low power motorized vehicles, couching themselves as something else, and the pedals were purely decorative. So that's not actually new, that the means of powering it it can be, you know, gasoline, it can be electric, it could be a nuclear reactor, it's all the same. Outcome here it's that that's a motorized machine and it shouldn't be where it's going. And but the e-bikes being allowed, there is the thing that's now blurted because you, you're letting that person with pedals and a motor in. Why can't I go?
Speaker 1:why does it matter?
Speaker 2:um, so I can. I could speak to the trail side and then my urban environment side. So I live in a suburban environment. Um, we've got e-scooters, the gangs we talked about, rolling around teenagers everywhere. I think it's one part. Wonderful, and then also terrifying when they're doing 80 kilometers an hour on a sidewalk and cutting into traffic. That's terrifying 80.
Speaker 1:Wait, hang on 80 kilometers an hour on a sidewalk that actually happens are moving yes, okay not all that, they all come.
Speaker 2:They all come in various power levels, um and so, but there's some. There's a one specific in our neighborhood, absolutely it's doing 80, 90 like yeah okay, so speeding, dangerous behavior, dangerous riding yeah, and the speeding comes with the inertia behind it.
Speaker 2:You've got a machine and a person doing a lot of you know, uh, got a lot of power there, and so they can hurt themselves and others. Um, so that's on the urban side. And then we've got, um, these things are normally called surrounds or, you know, commonly called surrounds, but it's an electric motorcycle or electric dirt bike and we see those running around the city parks. We built a pump track here for cyclists and they're riding the pump track and endangering the kids that are using that, because now it's a motorcycle that can land on a kid who's on a scooter. It's it's a mismatched use. You typically don't want, you know, you don't want your kid playing in traffic. You don't want a motorcycle on a pump track. That's a bad idea and it is illegal. That's explicitly forbidden on the science, but people are doing it so if it's illegal, what sort of is there?
Speaker 1:Does anybody ever go to a bike shop and say, what are you doing with that bike? Or, like they did in the UK, do the police go around and grab these bikes and take them away and pound them or confiscate them in some way?
Speaker 2:Here in Mission I'll speak to that. So our community has gone on the record. The CAO has stated that the RCMP won't enforce e-scooter and e-bike regulations because they're too busy dealing with other things. So it's a case where the you know from call it management directive is that's not a crime we're worth pursuing. But then it's also, I don't think historically we've had a lot of enforcement in these areas because you know, when I was young, friends of mine would ride their dirt bikes around town.
Speaker 2:We lived in a rural part of Langley. You typically didn't worry about police. You were far more concerned about social enforcement. I think that's actually a huge component that's kind of missing today where, if you understand what the social norms are we were more concerned about getting caught by somebody's mom on the dirt bike than we were by the police. Norms are we were more concerned about getting caught by somebody's mom on the dirt bike than we were by the police. And if those social norms are kind of clear, if that scooter is okay on the sidewalk because it's low power, low speed, or if that bike is an e-bike with pedal assist and all the power limits and accepted where it's supposed to go, then it'll be okay. Then people can identify that and be okay with it and, conversely, criticize somebody who's not a pedestrian on the sidewalk and say, hey, you're not supposed to be here, but right now the pedestrian on the sidewalk doesn't know the rules. The RCMP honestly have had a hard time understanding the rules. I've met several officers that aren't clear on the legislation.
Speaker 1:So, rocky, you talk about social norms, but where do these norms come from? Do people, are they expected to be educated in? I don't know school about rules of the road, is it something? There's no driver education or testing because these vehicles are all unlicensed and uninsured. How does somebody learn what they should and shouldn't do?
Speaker 2:Great question. I'm not a sociologist so I will do a poor job of answering, but in my opinion I see this through parenting and the like and it amounts to a lot of the challenges with youth on these devices, amounts to parents that have purchased them for them and kind of just unlocked them with them and said all right off, you go without any boundaries. And that's not critical of the parents, it's just an observation that social norms you know culturally I mentioned before about. You know I was worried about getting caught by my friend's mom on the dirt bike. You know the parents created that social norm for our teenage community and then we as adults do for each other too.
Speaker 2:I talk to my friends about oh, you're doing what with your e-bike? Oh, that doesn't sound right. There too I talked to my friends about oh, you're doing what with your e-bike? Oh, that doesn't sound right. And I, you know a sour look on my face will indicate just the emotions contained within and my friend might adjust his behavior. And then if I encounter somebody on the sidewalk and I'm personally doing this trying to have that conversation I did it with a person on a gravel path in a park on an electric motorcycle. This thing looked like a Honda street bike and I had the conversation. It's a tough conversation. It requires me to say hey man, can you stop for a second? I want to talk to you about what you're doing, and what you're doing isn't legal and it's not right. And he refuted it. He didn't agree with my perspective, told me it was an e-bike, told me he was allowed to do it. Told me the RCMP had told him it was okay.
Speaker 1:Do you think that he was just being devious, or did he actually believe all that?
Speaker 2:I genuinely think he was telling the truth when he said the RCMP accepted what he was doing, because I've heard it myself from RCMP officers.
Speaker 1:Wait, they're okay with people going 80k down the sidewalks on an illegal e-bike.
Speaker 2:I'd suspect that any RCMP officers that saw that happening would intervene. But this person was just on an electric motorcycle in a city park, traveling at low speeds, so therefore doing something that doesn't appear objectively problematic but is inherently illegal. Because you're riding a motorcycle in a city park If I took my Yamaha in there, it would stop me right away but because this thing has a plate on the back that says e-bike and is powered by a battery, they're acting and reacting differently.
Speaker 1:And was that person riding under 32 k's per hour?
Speaker 2:Not with any technological enforcement. And that's the thing about an e-bike that is regulated to that speed. It's done through software and through a speed sensor and that device the device that I saw this gentleman on, could do 80, no problem, or more, I bet you. It could go 120.
Speaker 1:So you used to be in the business. I understand. It's not that hard to take the governors off these e-bikes and turn them into real motorcycles.
Speaker 2:Now that I'm a former retailer, I can say Did you ever do that, Rocky? I've never done that. No, I don't own an e-bike or operate any of these things.
Speaker 1:but Do you know people who've done that?
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's not hard. Oh, okay, yes, and it's not hard, okay, no, you just have the light of the speed sensor. Not that I'm teaching kids how to do this, but you just have to tell it the information it needs to know, and then you can unlock. Yes.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like the bike retailers are in on this game, like they're making money from selling these illegal e-bikes.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you asked because I put a lot of thought into this aspect, being a former retailer, so I've heard people say, well, they shouldn't be selling these. They the colloquial they. The retailer is responsible to sell products that comply with the laws, and they're doing that. These aren't illegal devices. There's no law that says you can't sell an e-bike that has a power level. You just can't operate it in certain places. It can go out the door and be ridden on private property and it's legal. So that's, it's not an illegality question at the retail level.
Speaker 2:And uh, also speaking from a retailer's perspective, it's difficult to make a go of a bike shop these days. Specialty retail is a hard thing to do and so you're going to have a hard time turning down a high margin sale that can help you keep the lights on for the betterment. If you, even if you feel that way and I talked to our bike shop last night at our social ride he agreed. He's like these things are a problem. They're breaking our bike hoists. We can't, they can't facilitate a big e-bike in the shop because they're going to injure their staff. So it it's. It's having these external issues and that's not reconciled in in what's happening.
Speaker 1:So I want to go back to the parents, because you said I asked you a question where would the social norms be imbued in riders? You said well, the parents get in these bikes, they should? I guess it's implicit. They should tell them out of be careful. Here's what you're supposed to do. But a lot of parents probably don't care, or might well they should care, because their kid could die. But let's say they don't even know what the rules are. Who would pass on that knowledge or who would share that knowledge? You said the police don't want to deal with it. I know there's some education at schools, but I don't know how thorough that is.
Speaker 2:Speaking, I got two school-aged children. I don't think there's a lot of this being talked about. When I went through school, we had a bike rodeo. I learned my hand signals in grade four and they still hold true today, and they don't have that education in schools anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not quite true. I know hub cycling has been paid by the province to go and do that in grades three and four in certain schools in certain cities or towns around the province.
Speaker 2:I was just about to say we as an external group have gone in to do this, but it's not curriculum, it's not like an element of a given piece of a program. It's if a teacher is interested, they can contact the local advocacy group, like hub, like the Community Cycling Coalition, and we will then go and do some of this stuff. Yeah, now.
Speaker 1:I know you've been talking to other organizations about this elsewhere in the province. What's the discussion and what solutions have you come up with?
Speaker 2:and so that that came from. On the mountain bike side, we saw impacts on trails. We're seeing these electric dirt bikes. They're tearing up the trails and we were really upset about that locally. Uh, we kind of reached out to other stakeholders in the province and found out the it's happening everywhere in varying amounts. The worst was in Kamloops. We came to learn they had a real bad case of the electric mobility blues, um, damaging public facilities, a really bad accident with two kids on these things that got maimed. So it was really rampant there and so we talked about okay, well, we all identify what the problem is. And to your point now, what? What's the solution For us? On the trail side, we're talking to provincial land managers talking about they've established the legal regulations for what an e-bike is an e-bike and what isn't, but it's not clear and it's not clearly marked.
Speaker 1:So we want to improve, improve signage, things like that so at the entrance to a trail, I would say non-legal e-bikes only, or limited to something or other exactly, and I've seen elements of this down in places like in arizona on trails.
Speaker 2:So here we're looking to do more of that where we make it clear what is and isn't acceptable. You know, 32 kilometers an hour, 500 watts, that's it, no throttles. And then hikers reading that sign can see something that's breaking those rules and say something. If you see something, say something. And now if they know the rules, that'll help.
Speaker 1:So we're looking to improve kind of that social and real enforcement, although in the forest real enforcement's few and far between you're suggesting that the enforcement in off road it pretty much has to be by peers and other people out in the trail. There's not going to be some park warden or police officer wandering around giving out tickets no, those people do exist.
Speaker 2:There's jobs within BC Parks and Rec Sites and Trails that do enforcement, but there's so few in number covering so much area, they'll never solve this problem. We're asking for that. We're also asking and this is the piece I think super important is, we can get a government, either the federal or provincial government, to make changes to what's legal for sale. Because you asked about is it the retailer's fault? No, is it the manufacturer's fault? No, still complying with the laws, although many bike companies aren't. By the way, they're putting stickers on that are lying because they say it's 250 watts power and it's not, because they advertise a torque number that's way in excess of that. And torque and power are correlated through RPM, like it's just formulas. And so if somebody was enforcing the manufacturers to put real numbers on these things, then it would have a decal that states what it is. That would be a step.
Speaker 2:But what I'm proposing and advocating for provincially is that they make it very clear what's safe and legal. So on the e-scooter side, they've made a designation for a 25-kilometer-an-hour limit and a power limit I think it's 250 watts, but I'm not 100% certain and that's in the province's proposed legislation that the city of Mission, as one example, is chewing on ratifying here locally. If they did that, that's great. But how do you know something's compliant? It needs a big green sticker on it. Shiny can't peel it off. This thing is cool and it can ride on a sidewalk and it can be operated by a teenager. That's okay. Everything else you see doesn't have a sticker. Good, it's not okay. And, like you were talking about in the UK, that'll make it really clear to start dealing with these things, confiscating them. If it's on a sidewalk, take it away.
Speaker 1:That's one thing that could happen, but the other part of it would be if it's not a legal e-bike, it should be licensed and insured, correct, both on and off-road. Yeah, is that going to happen? Does that ever happen?
Speaker 2:That would require enforcement. On-road. You've got licensing, but you do have then federal Transport Canada regulations you have to comply with for a road vehicle. You have to have headlights, turn signals, all the stuff that say a motorcycle would have, and then it would have to be safety rated. So I don't know if there's a legal path to getting an e-bike to become a motor vehicle. I'd suspect not, but that's plausible. On the off-road side I can say that an e-bike that exceeds the power levels of a Class 1 e-bike can absolutely ride on dirt bike trails. That's fully okay, and they would just have to get an ORB plate just like a dirt bike.
Speaker 1:Okay, I wanted to talk for a moment about rentals, because there's a lot of e-bike, shared e-bikes, now shared scooters. People rent them and I have heard stories about kids getting on these bikes. I know from when I used to ride a motorcycle that the first 10 rides or something are that, whereas 80% of the serious accidents occur. People start to get a little false confidence and then they get stupid and they don't know what they're doing and off down they go. Um, is there anything that the renters people who are like the charity bikes or e-scooters is there any qualifiers for? If you want to pick one up, do you have to know anything about how to ride one of these things? Does anybody caution you not to go too fast or watch out for those big potholes with those tiny wheels, or whatever?
Speaker 2:yeah, having rented. I've rented public e-bikes in Vancouver. It was a wonderful experience. My son and I bombed around downtown and had a great day. I think if you enforce and have that power limit and that speed limit, then you're also restricting the risk here that I think inherently comes with it when you learn to ride a motorcycle. I was given the advice that I stuck to to get a small one and I did, and now I've got a very big one and that's all fine and well. Um, but I didn't learn on that. And if you keep the power levels low, it keeps the weight low. That's the thing about a small motorcycle and a small e-bike is it's gonna have limited mass and therefore limited risk to others. If you crash into somebody with a 48 pound bike, it's probably not gonna do too much damage. If you crash into somebody with a 48-pound bike, it's probably not going to do too much damage. If you crash into somebody with a 120-pound thing, with a 200-pound rider there's a lot there and it's going to be a lot worse.
Speaker 1:And there's not just the physical damage. I know UBC researchers presented at our last AT conference the results of a study where they asked people for their perception of danger and discomfort in a bike. Separate a bike lane from different types of vehicles that are going by. And the one that was off the charts for discomfort and perceived danger and perhaps real danger was these false e-bikes that are actually motorcycles that are going so fast. So even if they're not actually hitting people, they're rattling people and maybe keeping them from wanting to go out in those bike lanes themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see a version of that on the trails. When you're riding a mountain bike and ascending, so going uphill, you're moving pretty slow. You've got high gearing, except if you're on an e-bike, and so, as somebody on a regular bike is going uphill and then gets passed by an e-bike that can be doing 30 kilometers an hour uphill while I'm, you know, going eight, it's, it's upsetting, it's to the whoa, what's that? You get startled, yeah, and it does. It does take away from the experience, but that's a bit subjective. Um, the bike lane side, I could absolutely see that. It's that speed, delta, right, that's. What's upsetting is if you're moving at 10 kilometers an hour and something else is moving at 50, it's a lot to process. And if it's in close quarters I've seen those videos of semi-trucks passing people on bikes that are kind of being exposed to that risk and getting startled by it. As an avid cyclist, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1:Well, in some ways, this is a great problem to have. We've got more people out on active transportation, We've got kids actually moving around and getting exercise and not depending on their parents to drive them. We've got less congestion. We've got cleaner air all those good things. So I don't want to make it sound like this is all horrible, but it's pretty clear from talking to you that there are some issues that have to be dealt with.
Speaker 2:I agree with exactly what you said. The three things that I kind of uh capture this with is electric mobility has been a blessing. Um, the two blessings I mainly see are democratized cycling. It really kind of makes it accessible. You could flatten hills. When I used to sell e-bikes I'd say, hey, push this button, the hill's gone and so now you can ride a hill so much easier. I love when I see a 70 year old grandfather riding out with his 20 year old grandson, like, and they, they can do the same trails together. What a, what an amazing thing and the husbands and wives too.
Speaker 1:Whichever one is the weaker rider gets to come along and stay and keep up I've experienced that exactly with my wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did e-bikes and it was the great equalizer, even though she's a very good cyclist. What it did is it just created a leveled up playing field. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it also provides motorized mobility at a fraction of the energy. So like, if you go to run errands in your car, you're talking about 75 kilowatts. You can do the same thing on something like this for 0.75 kilowatts. So you can do the same thing on something like this for 0.75 kilowatts. So we're 100x less energy and for a sustainable future, we have to reduce our energy load like this. It's just the way we have to go. So we've got the blessing.
Speaker 2:Prior to this, you and I have talked about the curses, which are the other side of the coin. We're learning about the unintended consequences. They're dodging and weaving and they wear things out. Mostly, tires and trails like the tires wear out faster on these machines at a bike shop. They're going through. They're consuming more resources. It takes energy to do something as well as put the tires on everything.
Speaker 2:And then the first thing out of an e-motor. It's created. This gray area this is the huge problem is now the first thing out of an e-motorcycle when they get caught doing something they shouldn't be is it's an e-bike, so that's, you know, part of the curse. And so the third thing is I look at the future, and the future is we can change the regulations. We've got some Like there's transportation regulations that exist. They just need to be modernized.
Speaker 2:The policy being proposed here in Mission, that's a provincial policy. I think it's okay. It restricts to 16 years old for e-scooters and I don't think that's fair. I see 12-year-olds out on these things. That's awesome. This is better than them getting driven around in a car. They can and should be on a power and speed limited one. There's nothing wrong with that. But if it does 80 kilometers an hour, I don't put my 12-year-old on a motorcycle for a reason that's not going to end well.
Speaker 2:So we can update the rules. We can make enforcement both legal and social enforcement easier to do with better indications. This thing's legal, this one's not, because as soon as there's a motor involved, it's a gray area. But let's clear up that gray area. Big green sticker, just like the eok for the hov lane for your electric car right. Big green sticker, eok in this bike lane, and then this can make it all sustainable. Then we can have, uh, the right things in the right places and be responsible with the use and the one thing you didn't mention was affordability too like, and freedom too.
Speaker 1:Those kids can now get around on their own, they've got agency in their own lives, and parents don't have to have numbers of cars and pay for all those trips. So it's a future we'd all love to see, but we've just got to figure out this thorn in the it's all roses future of e-bikes yeah, the last thing that, as a former retailer, I'll throw out is, um, that I.
Speaker 2:I think the right to repair would be an important element here too. Um, a lot of these e-devices are being sold by websites, so e-commerce only, or, say, a big box retailer. You can go down to your local Walmart, for example, and get an electric mobility device, an e-scooter or an e-bike. You can get them at Best Buy even, and so that's all fine and well. You can't get it fixed there, and so what then ends up happening is that thing, a part, fails, they bring it to their local bike shop. They would bring it to me, and I can't get the part because there's no supply chain for it to me, and I can't get the part because there's no supply chain for it. I can't go to Best Buy to get a motor. So now they spent $2,000 on this thing, that the motor failed and it turned into a pumpkin. So I am of the opinion that if you can't fix these things, you can't sell them.
Speaker 1:Now does that mean that they shouldn't be allowed to sell something with a sealed box or with no parts? Or does it mean you're just advising people only go and get one at a bike store where they'll be able to fix it because they'll have parts, because it's a brand name?
Speaker 2:My advice to anybody thinking of getting something like this is exactly that that go somewhere that can't be fixed, because then the part supply is available. I mean, if you do buy them online, typically there is a part supply there, but then you're fully in DIY country. You line, typically there is a parts supply there, but then you're fully in diy country. You don't have a local resource that can help you for a flat tire, dewire the motor, because sometimes you have to take all the wires out just to change a flat tire. Yeah, and it's um like. I talked to the bike shop last night. They did one tire on one e-scooter and they'll never do another one, because it was 14 bolts and wiring to get the wheel off, and now they inherit that liability, so they're not interested. So now you've got how do you fix it? You get a flat tire. That's, that's simple. That can happen now what wow?
Speaker 2:so I think if you're going to sell them as a retailer, you should have the capacity to repair them. You don't have to take it there for repair. But if you aren't fixing them, then there you're creating a waste stream that then can't be fixed, and then this is just more batteries and more motors and more wheels into the world that just get thrown away because of flat tire or less.
Speaker 1:And if you're a prospective buyer, beware of the lure of the cheap online price or the ones in the lineup at, let's say, london Drugs, where they used to put them as an impulse buy in the lineup and support your local bike dealer, who's probably, as you said, struggling a little bit. Drugs, where they used to put them in the as an impulse buy in the lineup and but and support your local bike dealer, who's probably, as you said, struggling a little bit and needs the business and will be able to serve you better than the online cheap one I agree with that.
Speaker 2:I will say and I used to tell my customers this not all big box bikes are created equal. They do sell some good ones too. That's not all bad, but they have the capacity to sell some really bad ones, versus that local bike shop typically will sell something that they can stand behind because they've got to fix it. It's going to show up eventually, come back with a brake adjustment. So they want something they can get parts for and it's not a nightmare.
Speaker 1:Rocky, how close are we to the green sticker?
Speaker 2:Zero On a scale of one to ten. I'll go one because the idea is conceived, but I'm just getting out to a point. We had a provincial meeting on the trail side, um when you say provincial meeting, who comes to these meetings?
Speaker 2:so the outdoor recreation council of british columbia, um, the who else was there? The mountain bike tourism association and then a couple of us as local trail advocates and we're having a zoom call on all right, this is a problem provincially. What are we going to do about it? We're talking about going to the ubcm and making some awareness there. Um, and so the green sticker idea is something I conceived as a response to that social enforcement thing.
Speaker 2:And I think local places, a municipality or a trail association like the one I could volunteer for or that I do volunteer for, they could do that. Our city could be inspecting these devices and say, yeah, look, that's one that's compliant, it's speed limited, it's power limited, here's your decal. And then they're good to go. And our trail association could do the same thing. Hey, that's a pedal-assist e-bike, it's not going to hurt the trails thing. Hey, that's a pedal assist e-bike, it's not going to hurt the trails. Here's your sticker, your e-bike approved. So these are something we can do as a grassroots initiative to create that social enforcement. These laws don't hold water legally, but they're.
Speaker 1:They're that social piece, and then, ideally, the province or the federal government can do this at a manufacturer's level I love that you uh have so much confidence in social norms and peer enforcement and people looking out for the situation and just being good citizens, because it would be lovely if that would be a widespread practice and perhaps even solve this problem.
Speaker 2:I'll say that comes from being in the forest. That's much more commonplace on the trails. That's where this whole notion came, because from 20 years of being a trail advocate I've noticed that the norms are socially created. There's no legal enforcement around, there's zero. So here in the urban setting you do have police to enforce things but, as I've been told by their management, they've got bigger fish to fry, so it's kind of being left to us anyways fish to fry, so it's kind of being left to us.
Speaker 1:Anyways, rocky, thanks so much for telling us all these stories and educating us to these problems and so on. Is there anything else you want to add?
Speaker 2:I think we've covered the gamut. I'm really grateful A for your podcast, sharing this wisdom of all your guests, and I'm grateful to have this opportunity to talk about something I see as important. The thing I want to get in front of the tragedy I'm trying to stop is if an e-scooter with a youth on it gets hit by a car and killed, we'll see a reaction that kid's parents will react. There'll be a new law I call it Jimmy's Law but it's going to be a knee-jerk reaction to a real big tragedy and we can avoid that if we get in front of this, if we create the regulations. We have these discussions.
Speaker 1:Well, let's stay in touch and anything the BC Cycling Coalition could do to help you along, we'd be happy to do that. We're trying to get the RCMP to come out, the Highway Patrol to come out to our conference in Kimberley on September 10th to 12th to talk about their view of enforcement. The issue that we would, of course, want to raise with them was that safe passing distance enforcement and other things, but generally safety for vulnerable road users from whatever dangers are out there cars and trucks more particularly, obviously, but also, uh, bad cyclists and bad machinery, that excess power that's being used irresponsibly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ultimately, anything that exceeds the power levels. I call them for what they are they're motorcycles and these are motorcyclists. I'm a motorcyclist and therefore I'm advocating for people to be safe motorcyclists and respect everybody else.
Speaker 1:Thanks, rocky, great talking with you. Thank you, great talking with you. Thank you. You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating. On whatever platform you use, you can also subscribe, so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peterladner at bccyclingca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at bccyclingca.