Lancaster Bans eBikes From Sidewalks

Some of you may believe that I have a bias against e-bikes.  I won't try to disabuse you of that.  My prejudice stems, in part, from pride (apologies to Jane Austen):  I can pedal; I don't need no stinkin' motor," I tell myself.

OK, now I have revealed two more things about myself:  I talk to myself and, worse, I use double negatives. About the latter, I tell myself, if they're good enough for other languages, why not English?

Anyway, now you can, if you wish question my grammatical competence and my mental health along with my impartiality when it comes to two-wheeled vehicles.

Oh, but there's another component to my bias against eBikes, which I haven't revealed to very many people--until now. (And it still may not be very many people, depending on how many readers this post garners!)  You see, one of my very first encounters with an e-bike, a couple of years or so before the pandemic, was much too close.  I crossed Broadway at Crescent Street and was walking toward one of those stores you go to for a light bulb or a battery when something glanced off my left elbow.

I recognized the guy--a delivery worker I'd seen before on a mountain bike that had as much rust and gunk as paint or rubber (and possibly metal).  That night, he was astride one of the first eBikes I'd seen in this city.  I cursed at him, not only for nearly knocking me down, but for his seeming indifference, which was reflected by the manager of the restaurant when I complained to him.

I haven't patronized that restaurant since--which, to be fair, I hadn't patronized much up to that point.  But I guess that, like most New Yorkers, I have become accustomed or resigned to the eBikes.  As I've mentioned in other posts, I can understand why some delivery workers would use them:  They might be delivering orders from one of those apps that promises you'll get your pizza, tacos or whatever within a certain time frame.  Or they might be a family's main breadwinner--whether that family is here or in El Salvador or China or some other far-away place-- speak little or no English and be aging--and have few or no other employment prospects.  

But one opinion I've developed, and won't change, is this:  They don't belong on any path lane, sidewalk or other pathway used by bicyclists, pedestrians or anyone else moving about without a motor--with the exception of motorized wheelchair users.

The Bureau of Police in Lancaster, Pennsylvania seems to share my opinion.  This week, they released a statement banning electric bikes--along with skateboards and unicycles-- from sidewalks. 

Now, since I don't cross paths (pun intended) with  skateboarders and unicycles as often, I haven't developed as strong feelings about them.  My main complaint about skateboarders is that they stop frequently, sometimes in the path of cyclists, often without intending to do so.  The few times I've had to do a quick dodge around a skateboarder, he (nearly all I've encountered have been teenage boys and young men) was apologetic and polite.  And I've had so few encounters with unicyclists that I really don't think about them.   But, I can understand why some pedestrians--especially if they are elderly and have mobility issues--would feel endangered by skateboarders and unicyclists.  

Hey, Have You Got A Spare?

In my generation, some kids grew up wanting to be astronauts.  Others wanted to be actors, politicians or rock musicians.  I didn't share any of those dreams, except for the last one, and I achieved it, if peripherally:  I was part of a punk rock band that played in bars where patrons were too angry or drunk or stupid to know or care how awful we were.  As a "percussionist" (that's what I told people I was; in reality, it was a fancy way of saying "drummer") and backup singer (another euphemism), all I really had to do was bang and scream to songs--a few of which I wrote--with lyrics that are unprintable even in non-family publications and websites.

I say I achieved my dream "peripherally" not only because I was even worse than any of those booze-addled patrons may have thought I was. You see, I didn't want so much to be a musician as to bang and wail my way into a finale in which I smashed a guitar onstage and screamed, "Pete Townshend is bullshit!." It wasn't because  I hated The Who's string-plucker (although we all know he couldn't hold a Fender to Jimi Hendrix or even Eric Clapton); I just thought it would be a way of showing how much more angrily hip or fashionably angry I was than everybody else--which, in the internal and external worlds I inhabited, would have been saying something, if I didn't quite know to whom.

Anyway, I mention all of this to mention my real dreams:  to work on the Calypso with Jacques Cousteau (which I wanted to do even more than to be a marine biologist, which is what I told my parents, teachers and guidance counselors I wanted to do) and to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Tour de France.

About wearing the maillot jaune while flying down the Boulevard de Champs-Elysees:  Yes, I wanted that, but at that time it was about as realistic a dream for me, or any other American, as it was for a newly-freed female slave to become President.  I did, however, have a brief and inglorious racing career (no prize money, but a few prizes and a third-place trophy I still have somewhere) and, partly as a result of that part of my life, realized a related dream:  a Campagnolo-equipped bicycle.

As I rode, I realized that some parts--especially the hubs, bottom brackets and brakes--lived up to their reputations.  While none were substandard, a couple of pieces weren't quite what I expected. One was the Nuovo Record rear derailleur. Yes, it was well-made and nicely-finished.  It also shifted predictably, at least once you knew its, shall we say, quirks.  But when it was introduced, in 1967, it offered a better shift than almost anything else available.

Within a few years, other derailleurs that were developed at the same time offered easier, more accurate and more predictable shifts and cost less and others that were lighter, simpler or prettier, became widely available.  And all of them were less expensive than the Nuovo Record, let alone the Super Record. But Campagnolo equipment remained de rigueur in the peloton because of its head-start in establishing itself.  Teams gave their riders Campagnolo-equipped bikes--and folks like me saved our pennies or lived, ironically, on foods that wouldn't be allowed on any training table--because the spare wheels and parts in neutral-support vehicles were from Campagnolo, and the spare bikes had Campy equipment.  In other words, what we and they rode was dictated, in part, by interchangability.

I thought about that when reading about what Victor Campanaerts planned to ride in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the race that traditionally opens the season in his home country of Belgium.  His Ridley Noah fast was equipped with a Dura-Ace 12-speed system--with two twists: a single chainring in the front and a Classified Powershift two-speed rear hub.

The rear hub allows Campanaerts to ride a single chainring (62 teeth!), thus eliminating the need for a front derailleur.  That makes the bike somewhat more aerodynamic but, more important for the purposes of Omloops, reduces the chances of "dropping" a chain. Apparently, that has been a frequent occurrence during the race which includes cobblestones and is often seen as a kind of earlier, smaller version of Paris-Roubaix.

That setup means, of course, that if he were to have  a problem with the hub—or get a flat—he wouldn’t be able to ride one of the spare bikes and the neutral-support mechanics won't have a replacement wheel or parts for it.  (When racers get flats, the wheel is changed:  Fixing the flat would take too much time.) So...would he revert to a conventional system?

Turns out, he had another bike just like it.  Apparently, he didn’t need it.

Bicycle Licensing: An Instrument of Racial And Economic (In)Justice

Last week, I wrote about the arguments over a planned bike lane in Berkeley, California. One resident referred to it as a "culture war."

If it is, I am surprised that controversy about another bit of bicycle-related policy or planning hasn't been seen in the same way.  I am referring bicycle-licensing regulations.

While bike lane battles have garnered a lot of attention during the past decade or so, bike licensing has been mostly an under-the-radar issue for nearly as long as bicycles have existed.  

The battle-lines in bike-lane conflicts are drawn largely along generational lines and between business owners who fear losing parking spaces and people who want more walkable and cycle-able downtowns. On the other hand, the quieter battles over licensing laws divide people, ironically, pit people against each other in a very visible way--one that has defined some loud and violent protests in recent years. 

While there was little or no bike lane construction, at least in the US, between the end of World War I and the beginning of this century, many jurisdictions, from small seaside villages to major metropoli, have had bicycle licensing regulations on their books for decades whether or not most citizens are or were aware of them. As an example, in 1957 Toronto repealed such a law that had been on the books since 1935.  Several times since, the idea of resurrecting the law, or some version of it has been re-visited and, ultimately, rejected, albeit for different reasons.

When the Canadian city got rid of the requirement that stood for more than two decades, few adults rode bicycle.  Thus, according to city fathers (yes, they were all men) "licensing of bicycles be discontinued because it often results in an unconscious contravention of the law at a very tender age; they also emphasize the resulting poor public relations between police officers and children."  Translation: Kids break a law they don't realize exists until they're busted for it, so no wonder they grow up hating cops.

The cost-ineffectiveness of the scheme was also cited in scrapping it and against reviving it.  Also mentioned in the discussions of bringing it back to life is that licensing does little, if anything, to promote bicycle safety or return stolen bikes to their owners--two rationales that have been given for mandating bike registration in what one of the city's most famous natives, Drake, calls "The Six." The cost of administering the program has also been invoked as a reason to end, or not to begin, bicycle licensing and registration programs in other locales.

During the last few years, however, an objection to bike licensing has echoed something that has motivated so many protests of the past few years:  racial injustice.  As an incident in Perth Amboy, New Jersey showed all too clearly, in those few instances when the police stop or even arrest cyclists for riding without a license--or not wearing a helmet, or for violating some other rarely-if-ever-enforced law--the ones penalized are not White and/or do not conform to gender "norms."

David Martinez

That is one reason David Martinez worked to abolish a bicycle registration mandate in his hometown and state of Costa Mesa and California, respectively. Three years ago, he went to the police to register his bike.  When he asked about the program and who gets ticketed, "they said, 'we might ticket the homeless."  That motivated him to make a public records request.  He found that, according to the department's own data, most of the citations were issued on the city's west side, an old industrial area where, not surprisingly, much of the city's nonwhite and homeless populations are concentrated.  He presented his findings to safe streets advocates who, in turn, contacted politicians.

Now Costa Mesa is about to comply with an omnibus bill California Governor Gavin Newsom signed in October.  It calls for, among other things, the abolition of bicycle-licensing and -registration laws and regulations, which have been locally administered, throughout the state. Costa Mesa is the latest municipality to align itself with the new law.

I don't know whether Martinez or anyone else in the Golden State has framed the effort to end bicycle registration as a "culture war."  However, whether or not he has used such terminology, he (like, I imagine, Newsom) no doubt understands bicycle licensing--or, more precisely, how it's enforced--as a racial and economic justice issue precisely because it has never served the purposes (safety, recovery of stolen bikes) given as its rationale.