Posted by: Brocklanders
Posted by: Spandies
Posted by: craw
Posted by: LoamtoHome
e-bikers won't form any advocacy group unless they get banned. Even then, how you going to enforce?
Until batteries get way better, I can't see people chipping their ebikes. Even in Trail mode, battery power doesn't last too long. In Boost mode, it would be really hard to navigate up some trails.
It really boils down to the rider responsibility.
Totally. For me the big sell was to self-shuttle, not just up the hill but across town. I was intrigued by the prospect of not driving to ride.
Until a bit of research revealed that most ebikes would barely get my 220lbs from home in East Van over to one North Shore mountain up down and home again on a single charge. While here I was thinking I could skip the car and ride two mountains when I'd most likely end up hauling this 50lb bike with my truck as usual.
Agreed about the 'chipped' ebikes. For the pedelecs, even though you can chip it doesn't mean you'd want to. I've ridden one, it takes a good amount of wattage to spin it up to 50km/h even on pavement and the battery won't last very long. Good to brag about, not actually very functional in practice.
For the self-shuttling, also my 'ideal' as well. Could be a market for a certain shop to offer battery charging/battery storage services. I'd love to ride from Vancouver on one battery and a set of slicks, swap at the base of mountain highway, do a loop, swap back and roll home. Much better than dealing with traffic, probably faster depending on time of day. One can dream.
So spandy... If you didn't live so far away from the NS trails would you have bought an ebike? Or is that just a lame excuse? I mean you used to race pro right?
I've had this thing for a week - I absolutely would buy a pedelec even if I lived on the North Shore. Currently, I meet my buds who live a few km away from one of the mountains, ride to the trails, and ride back. We can do a loop in a shorter period of time with no need to load up the cars, and ride the trails with none or minimal stopping even given different fitness and skill levels. If these are lame excuses, then I guess I don't mind being lame. And no, I never raced 'pro'; my comments earlier were contextual around how I foresee myself using this bike, nothing more.
I'm not here to have a dick waving contest about fitness, the amount of volunteering one has done, or how technically proficient one may or may not be. These pedal assist bikes are a game-changer, and as much as many of you don't like it, this trend will grab hold. It has already been mentioned multiple times that enforcement is the crux of the issue, regardless of whether or not land managers/trail organizations/the wizard of oz plans to ban e-assist bikes. So the question is, if enforcement is nonexistent and we can't do jack-all about irresponsible people, wouldn't it be a better strategy to include those in the pedelec camp as part of the conversation to both help inform policy decisions and to deter abusive behaviours? Otherwise, we collectively have no platform to proactively address the preservation and growth of our sport and our trail assets.
Shame all you want, but I suspect those who are irresponsible will continue to not give a shit and ignore whatever pleas we may tender, regardless of bans or no bans. Do you now also want to lose the camp of responsible pedelec riders who are interested in engaging in the discussion?
