Photo of e-bikes littered on Aussie street exposes 'frustrating' problem
Whether you love or hate them, e-bikes are more than likely here to stay, but those for and against the controversial transport agree several challenges need to be overcome.
Australians complaining about e-bikes being "littered" across our major city streets are being told that, love them or hate them, the controversial devices are here to stay — but more regulation is needed to ensure they're safe, efficient and cost-effective.
People taking aim at sharable electric bicycles in particular — including the Uber-owned Lime bike and China's HelloRide — say they go too fast and are "being dumped" on footpaths and roads in high volumes, as seen on a busy street in Surry Hills in Sydney. This often creates obstructions for those with accessibility issues.
It's a problem across the country, and opponents argue not only are the huge, multinational companies behind the devices not being held accountable for what happens to them once they make their way onto our streets, they're often mistreated by the minority, forcing locals to clean up the mess left behind.
This can includes fishing the bikes out of waterways, scraping them up off footpaths and roads and moving them out of the way for pedestrians, other cyclists and wheelchair users.
E-bikes have many benefits, but 'challenges' remain
While these scenarios are undoubtedly "frustrating" to some, as City of Sydney Councillor Adam Worling put it, e-bike advocates and environmentally-conscious Aussies say the benefits still far outweigh the "challenges".
The debate surrounding electric bikes, including those that are hireable and personally owned, has become a controversial topic nationwide, but in NSW, it appears the issue is particularly prevalent.
In the state, as many as 5,000 bikes have been rolled out from the major players across the last few years, with critics claiming that number is far too high. On the other end of the spectrum, advocates argue the more cyclists we have, the less congested our roads stand to be, with air quality improving as a result in addition to lower carbon emissions.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Peter McLean, chief executive officer of Bicycle NSW, said he supports the electric bike movement but agreed the industry needs much stricter regulation.
"They're getting more types of people with different chronic injuries, arthritis and joint problems or whatever else riding bikes, which is really fantastic for physical and mental health," he said of the e-bikes, which require very little pushing and mostly run on motors.
"From a mobility point of view, they're getting people from A to B, in a nice, sustainable manner. "It's also reducing the number of [car] trips that people are taking. Just in Greater Sydney alone, we do two million trips per day that are only less than a few kilometres in distance, a 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit found.
Safety a major concern, expert warns
"The gap that it's filling in that space is very, very important for last mile transport reduction. And if we slowly plug that gap, and this is Australia-wide not just in Sydney, we'd be able to actually address a couple of percentage points in our transport emissions."
McLean said the devices allow young people without licences to "be independent, autonomous and to go about socialising, to get to school, to the the gym or university" easily.
He said that the devices do however travel at speed, which can pose safety hazards. "When they're in the hands of people who don't have a huge amount of experience, they are unsafe," he said.
"The other issue is from a quality point of view, we're really concerned about the fire safety and lithium batteries. And the reason for that is that we have seen a number of fires caused from cheap, pretty poorly manufactured e-bikes. They're giving all the other ebikes a really bad name.
"Shared bikes are proven to work quite well in a lot of cities around the world. We just don't have the framework right now in Australia for them. They are littered here, there and everywhere, and they get in people's way and they they block fire stairs and disability access ramps, and all sorts.
Government inquiry into e-bikes nears completion
McLean says working with government and Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW), will help produce a "consistent framework for that".
"That will inevitably involve caps on the numbers of them and also, in my opinion, the implementation of geofencing," he said. Geofencing, McLean explains, is when bikes stop working outside of certain boundaries, meaning they're less likely to be dumped at inappropriate locations.
He added that a user rating system would also be of benefit, as seen on rideshare apps, so that if people are caught doing the wrong thing on an e-bike, there's a record.
The conversation around e-bikes and their place in society is currently the topic of a parliamentary inquiry in NSW, with final submissions due in mid-August.
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