Adventure Cycling’s magazine had the April 2021 issue focused on E bikes. One article was titled “Electric Dirt” which speaks to off road use on public lands. Sounds like a confusing situation. Here’s a small quote from the article;
“At the end of August 2019, the Department of the Interior issued an order instructing its four agencies —
the National Park Service, the Fish
and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of
Land Management. and the Bureau of Reclamation — to update their guidelines saying Class 1 eBikes should be defined as bicycles and allowed anywhere conventional bikes are allowed.
“Those four agencies went into official rulemaking to change the
rules and regulations,” Lommele said. “Those four rules were finalized in October 2020. They do very similar things, removing eBikes from whatever definition there is of motor vehicles.”
A major win for eBikers everywhere. However, it’s not a blanket allowance, according to Lommele. All three classes of eBikes are defined
as bicycles, not motor vehicles, but individual land managers do have some leeway in how they deal with Class 2 and Class 3 eBikes.”
I think E bikes in general would be a good meeting topic. As Drew mentioned, there’s no enforcement, and some really dumb riding of E bikes by a few riders, but there’s also a lot of riders using them responsibly.
