I will admit that I have some misgivings and conflicted feelings about the increasing prevalence of e-bikes.
I am not going to go into any of those misgivings or concerns here because I don’t think anyone really needs another complainer piece on the topic and I have no desire to join the contrarian pile-on.
The only reason I mention the subject at all is to note that whenever I start thinking of any of my gripes about e-bikes, I remind myself that every e-bike I see most likely represents one less car on the road.
Do e-bikes have their problems and downsides? Sure. Would I rather have streets full of e-bikes rather than streets full of cars? Absolutely. When I take moment to remind myself of that, pretty much all my complaints and reservations melt away.
Because most people in the U.S. have grown up in a car-centric culture, cars and cars travel have become the default for us. And that includes all of the downsides of cars. We tend to accept them as just being built-in.
Do I get annoyed when I see a cyclist flying down the sidewalk? Sure. And when they’re riding against traffic on the street? Yep. It’s dangerous, and as a casual cyclist myself, I feel like they’re giving us all a name.
But you know what? People driving cars pose an exponentially create risk to pedestrians and cyclist than even the biggest bike scofflaw, and people driving cars break traffic all the time.
So I say bring in the e-bikes! Are they perfect? Nope, but I’ll take fifty e-bikes zooming down my street over fifty cars doing the same any day of the week.