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The Danville Town Council will resume conversations Tuesday about how to best address local concerns about the growing proliferation of e-bikes among young riders, with a study session aimed at garnering feedback from the public and council direction on potential next steps to mitigate safety hazards.
The study session is set to provide a rundown of challenges and mitigation efforts to date at the town, state, and regional levels, new state legislation, and potential local ordinances that could reduce safety hazards.
“In Danville, many youth riders are operating devices – some higher-powered, some fully legal – at speeds beyond what they are ready or trained to safely manage,” Town Manager Tai Williams wrote in a staff report. “These behaviors occur across shared community spaces, including streets, parks, ball fields, trails, sidewalks, and neighborhood areas – creating friction with pedestrians and vehicles, increasing the likelihood of conflict and injury.”
Locally, Williams said, that conflict between the high speeds of the vehicles and the maturity of their riders appear to be the central concern rather than the use of e-bikes more generally at safe speeds by adult riders.
That trend is reflected in a safety alert issued by John Muir Health’s Trauma Center in December, raising the alarm about a dramatic increase in e-bike and e-scooter related injuries, specifically in teens and seniors.
“The data does not indicate a current pattern of widespread injury in Danville; however, the observed behavior – particularly among younger, less experienced riders operating higher-speed devices – reflects an emerging risk profile consistent with trends identified elsewhere,” Williams wrote.
Concerns about e-bikes, specifically high powered or modified vehicles in the hands of young riders, have abounded locally and nationally in recent years, with the town soliciting feedback from residents ahead of the study session. Williams sought to address three major themes that had emerged in written comments so far: calls for increased bicycle infrastructure and enforcement, and further restrictions on bike riding on sidewalks.
“Some bicycle advocacy groups have surmised that the lack of ‘high-quality bicycle infrastructure’ – particularly physically protected Class IV bikeways – is a core reason for Danville’s e-bike safety challenges,” Williams wrote. “The Town concurs that high-quality bicycle infrastructure is an important component of its long-term mobility strategy and has continued investing accordingly.”
But the issues specific to Danville aren’t due to a lack of bicycle infrastructure, according to Williams, who emphasized again that the town’s problems stem primarily from young riders with high powered devices.
“These behaviors occur across all types of streets, and many of those are neighborhood streets where Class IV bikeways are often infeasible due to driveway density and right-of-way constraints,” Williams wrote. “More importantly, these behaviors are not confined to roadways. Youth riders are frequently observed in parks, on athletic fields, and through neighborhood spaces – areas where protected bikeways cannot reasonably be constructed.”
Williams emphasized the importance of infrastructure and pointed to the town’s past and current investments toward that end, but added that “it does not fully address the core issue of rider readiness and reckless behavior in shared community spaces.”
Meanwhile, existing enforcement measures already pose their challenges for the town’s police department, making increased enforcement all the more difficult.
Increasing enforcement would also come with increased costs, with Williams pointing to the additional resources that would be needed to follow through on suggestions to station additional police officers near schools and other gathering areas for young people, as well as non-economic costs.
“A heavily enforcement-focused strategy can undermine community trust, run counter to the Town’s community policing approach, and escalate confrontations with parents – reducing the opportunity to build the understanding and buy-in that are critical to influencing youth behavior,” Williams wrote.
While other comments centered on calls to fully ban e-bikes from sidewalks, Williams pointed to recommendations from the town’s Bicycle Advisory Committee to maintain current regulations, and to factor in the risk of e-bikes in roadways in addition to their risks on sidewalks.
“Given this tradeoff, and the Town’s limited authority to regulate rider qualifications or device capabilities, the BAC supported maintaining the current behavior-based standard, which allows for enforcement of unsafe riding regardless of location,” Williams wrote. “This approach prioritizes overall risk reduction across the transportation system.”
With state legislation aimed at contending with the growing concerns and injury rates spurred by e-bikes more broadly, Williams is recommending that the council focus on addressing local concerns first and foremost while supporting state legislation that aims to address broader trends.
“The Town’s strongest authority lies in regulating behavior within its parks and on Town-controlled infrastructure (sidewalks),” Wiliams wrote. “As such, the most effective municipal actions are those that are clear, objective, and enforceable within existing legal authority.”
Recommendations from staff include amending the town’s parks ordinance to restrict the use of motorized bikes and scooters in parks to paved pathways with a 15 mile per hour speed limit within both parks and on trails, and continuing to monitor the situation while engaging in regional collaboration and advocacy.Â
The Danville Town Council is set to meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday (May 12). The agenda is available here.
In other business, the council is holding a budget workshop during its morning study session at 8:30 a.m. The agenda is available here.
