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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Limiting e-bike speeds is a great idea in NYC given how frequently they are used on sidewalks and pedestrian walkways on bridges.
Okay so where are the hardware caps on car speed, given that they are used around pedestrian crossings, and several orders of magnitude more lethal?
commenting for visibility.
= 24 kilometers/hr for those also wondering
16mph is the limitation in germany. If your bike is faster, you have to register it an pay tax, and cant use dedicated bicycle infratructure anymore.
16mph is exactly the speed where I'm fast enough but dont feel like I would die in a crash.
Everything above would require protective clothing like on motorcycles Imo, and that kind of defeats the purpose for ebikes for me. I want to ride my bike but don't want to have to fight against wind and going up the hill.
If an ebike is as fast as a motorcycle, it should get treated as one.
Yeah this proposal is reasonable. I wouldnt want to share my bikepath with old people driving more than 25kmh. They just dont have the reaction time to safely drive at speeds like that and even that is actually waaay to fast for the oldest. If you wanna go faster, use your muscles and/or drive on the road.
if you want to go faster use your muscles
Okay but the fact that you can say this without it being a joke proves how stupid this limit is.
Not at all no. This is used to be a sort of self regulating system. Peoples ability to go fast with muscles alone usually goes away around the same point where their cognitive abilities become a hazard to the rest of traffic. The difference is that most young people could easily go 18mph or more while old people wouldnt even get past 10 without e-bikes. Basically e-bikes allow people to go beyond their limits. While that sounds cool, in this case it isnt.
Regulation is good.
Why not just add speed limits to areas where higher speeds are an issue? That's been the approach to cars -- no car is limited to 140 kmh despite speeds above that are illegal pretty much everywhere...
Regular bikes can easily go above 15 mph as well, so why should this only affect e-bikes?
ebikes are frequently heavier and are frequently ridden on sidewalks in NYC.
Maybe put in some proper bike lanes so riders don't feel they need to ride on the sidewalk? π€
This seems like a "why not both" situation. Limit e-bike speeds to those that are typical in most parts of the world and reduce city speed limits for cars to 20mph, and enforce it aggressively.
Because theyβre not doing both, which will encourage people to switch from e-bikes back to cars. This rule will make NYC streets more dangerous, no doubt.
No limit for bikes without limits for cars.
That sounds pretty fair to me. Very few regular bikers go faster than 20-25. Especially with more weight, like delivery or cargo bikes, and also especially with the e-motor support there is a lot of weight and power behind those bikes.
And bike lines are usually built for "regular" use, not high speed. All the curves, break distances etc. get planned with around that speed and not a whole lot more.
The original purpose of supporting disabled people who can't use a regular bike is still served and people don't have to be afraid of maniacs going 50mph in places where "common sense" would already advise them not to. If you're using a cargo bike, that also still works and you get not so gently instructed to watch the speed with your cargo.
Maybe they could do something where to use a bike lane, it has to be speed capped. Idk.
very few[not none] regular bikers go faster than 20-25
Therefore
limit electric to 15
Uh
This feels like it's purposefully designed to kneecap the adoption of e-bikes by rendering all class 1 and 2 e-bikes illegal and making it harder/more expensive to buy new ones because they have to have bespoke detuning for the NYC market.
Do you live or work there? I see ebikes being used on sidewalks by delivery guys all the time. Limiting speeds makes sense for NYC IMO
I don't know if there's a shadier reasoning behind it, and there very well might be, but IMO it's a pretty reasonable speed limit for using bike infrastructure. Most people on standard bikes could only ever get to those speeds with a decent amount of effort. Many wouldn't even be able to.
If you want to go that fast, you should get in the car lanes with the other dangerous people.
IMO, it should be 20mph, but it's a software limit. It's nothing to "tune" it.
If you want to go faster, get a motorcycle license. The higher end ebikes are getting ridiculous. Their frames, tires, and brakes are not designed for the power and speed they can put down.
IMO, it should be 20mph, but itβs a software limit. Itβs nothing to βtuneβ it.
You're talking about vehicles that typically aren't open source and don't have a firmware update mechanism. There is no reason to expect they're even possible to change without swapping out the entire controller.
People really need to stop buying those. The companies are parasites for reasons that go far beyond this.
This is a widely supported issue where I am, mostly because bike lanes are for self propelled vehicles and ebikes are sharing the roads with far heavier and faster vehicles that require licensing and insurance.
They fall between two stools though I am for licensing and insurance of them.
there's going to be no Premium Rush 2...