|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Danville Town Council continued its efforts this week to curtail e-bike safety concerns raised by a swath of local residents – many of whom were in attendance at the most recent council meeting – by moving forward with a prohibition on the use of motorized vehicles and a speed limit for all vehicles on trails outside of park grounds.
After more than two hours of discussion on the topic from town officials and dozens of community members Tuesday, the council voted to approve the first reading of new regulations that would require motorized bikes and scooters to be pushed instead of ridden on park grounds, ban the vehicles from non-paved trails, and institute a 15 mile-per-hour speed limit on trails outside of park grounds for all vehicles, including manual bicycles.
While the resolution was ultimately passed unanimously, debate over a number of issues were raised that evening, including calls from some to target the use of high-powered electric motorcycles rather than e-bikes as a whole, and others calling for more stringent regulations on e-bikes in general as well as the need to find measures to target and educate inexperienced youth riders and their parents.
“We’re holding a second public hearing on some meatier items that are waiting until school gets back in session,” Mayor Newell Arnerich said at the start of the June 16 discussion. “We want to make sure the parents are here – it’s the audience we need to hear from, and they need to hear from us as well, so this will be two public hearings.”
That “meatier” hearing following the start of the next school year is set to center on the overarching concerns about e-bike safety and youth riders not addressed by the new ordinances proposed this week.
But some of those topics, including the need to address behavioral issues and not just the safety risks posed by e-bikes, and multiple accounts from residents who had been hit by the vehicles, including the mayor, were already front and center at Tuesday’s discussion, in which members of the public and council alike expressed concerns about the need for regulations beyond the scope of that meeting’s agenda.
“Rather than looking at it from a speed perspective, it sounds to me like it’s more of a behavioral issue,” Council member Renee Morgan said. “And in order to say that we’re just going to look at speed and say, how fast are you going – how are we going to enforce that, number one, and number two if it is behavior, shouldn’t we be looking at that as well?”
While the behavioral component of the growing trend of e-bike safety issues and injuries to young riders is part of an ongoing community education effort by the town, that point ultimately led to the council favoring the prohibition on riding e-bikes on park grounds, with the requirement to instead walk the vehicles serving as an easily identifiable and enforceable behavioral measure.
However, it was one of many points that spurred debate and pushback from residents, who, despite overwhelmingly supporting new regulations aimed at e-bike safety, diverged in many ways in their feelings about the vehicles overall.
“An e-bike is defined as a vehicle that is propelled by human power with pedals connected to the weave, the rear wheel – in the vast majority of the problem that we’re seeing, I believe … they are not e-bikes,” Dave Dalton said during the public comment period on the topic. “They’re not, and I don’t care what the manufacturer says. I don’t care what the classes say. They’re not human powered. If it has a throttle, it’s not a bike.”
“My concern is that if we lump this stop together and don’t make those delineations, we don’t make that determination, then, we’re going to somehow punish my wife as an example, who rides a class one e-bike and obeys the speed limits, rings her bell, and says, ‘On your left’. That’s how she gets to work, you know.”
Other concerns centered on areas the town does not have jurisdiction over, such as the Iron Horse Trail which is overseen by the East Bay Regional Park District, with one woman saying she was frustrated by EBRPD police allegedly being unable to cite the teenage rider who hit her on that trail, tearing away part of her fingertip.
“East Bay Regional Park police showed up at the emergency room and took my statement,” Jenny Phillips said. “They also did their own investigation. I have the police report, but they could not cite the 18-year-old kid that hit me. He T-boned me coming from a side path because – and I confirmed with Sergeant Feliciano again this afternoon – because he was not on a state road. He was on a path so he could not even be cited even though the police report found him at fault.”
But as those larger issues continue to loom in the background, there is still room for continued debate over the new ordinances, which is set to be reintroduced for a second reading next month.
“This proposed park ordinance creates a troubling double standard,” said Al Kalin, prolific bicycle safety advocate and former bike commissioner. “Under the ordinance, e-bikes would still be allowed on paved park passes at speeds up to 15 miles an hour for a hundred pound electric motorcycle.”
“These are the same paths used by seniors, children, families, dog walkers, Runners, people with disabilities, and other pedestrians who go to our parks, expecting a safe and peaceful walking environment,” he continued. “The community has spoken overwhelmingly and clearly.”
The proposed ordinances are set to return to the council, potentially for a final vote, on July 7.
