E-BIKES IN PARKS
A NEW DAY FOR TOURING ON TWO WHEELS.
GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Calif. — I recently violated federal law high in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
How? By riding an electric bike for a mile along the Julian Trail, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The trail is popular with hikers, mountain bikers and equestrians.
It was an accident. That old fire road is part of a vast regulatory muddle involving (a) a global boom in e-biking, especially among travelers; (b) a sudden move in August by the Trump administration to ease e-bike access to public lands; (c) an opposing lawsuit by environmental groups; (d) the labors of dozens of national park superintendents to tailor the new policy to their parks; and (e) National Park Service red tape.
As it turns out, e-bikes are multiplying faster than public agencies can make rules to regulate them, with estimated U.S. sales of $144 million in 2018. Consulting firm Deloitte predicts 130 million e-bikes will be sold worldwide between 2020 and 2023.
When it comes to national parks and California state parks, the rules are often site-specific. If you’re thinking of taking an e-bike somewhere cars can’t go, the prudent move is to check the National Park Service’s FAQs and the specific park’s website, then call for clarification. If you’re renting an ebike, don’t rely on the rental company to know the law.
Was I prudent? Well, I thought so. I read the Aug. 30 NPS policy memorandum directing park superintendents to ease e-bike access “as soon as possible” and a detail-laden Golden Gate National Recreation Area explanation of how park e-bike rules were evolving. I talked to cyclists. I left phone and email messages with the recreation area’s public information office. But the Golden Gate recreation area, the busiest unit in the national park system, is complicated.
“There are a lot of great conversations happening at the local and national level around this issue,” Golden Gate spokesman Charles Strickfaden said in an email that arrived after my ride, “so we cannot give a time frame for when we expect to finalize any e-bike approval. Until that time Golden Gate NRA cannot allow e-bikes [beyond the roads] in the parks it manages.” Oops. Come to think of it, I saw mountain bikes, gravel bikes and hikers on that trail. I saw e-bikes on the road but no other e-bikes on that trail. I’m pretty sure the rest of my ride was legal, though.
Back on the daunting slope of Conzelman Road (legal for cars and all kinds of bikes), I felt exhilarated but oddly coddled as the ebike motor boosted the effect of my pedaling. The views were breathtaking — the sea, the city, the bridge, the creeping fog — and my respiration was untroubled. In fact, with the little motor humming just above my rear wheel, the killer climb to Hawk Hill was no problem. No wonder e-bikes are multiplying.
“We’re seeing more and more of them almost every day,” Tom Boss, off-road and events director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, had told me a few days before.
Many traditional cyclists were “initially skeptical” about the bikes, Boss said, but “we’ve definitely evolved on it. And the reality is, they’re here. If they’re going to be out there, we want to lead on education and trail etiquette.”
I met Kimball and Wendy Thomas, 40 and 39, respectively, of San Francisco as they prepared to zoom down from Hawk Hill with two friends visiting from São Paulo, Brazil. The Thomases were on traditional bikes but their friends, Lucas and Renata Lima, had just crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and climbed the hill on ebikes rented in the Presidio.
“Great! Sent from God!” Lucas, 30, said of his ride. “We’re not here to do sport. We’re here to look around and enjoy ourselves.”
And, said Renata, 32, “There’s nothing difficult about it.”
Although his guests were happy, Kimball said he saw plenty of reason for caution about e-bikes.
If you’re limited to the speed your legs can deliver, he said, you have a lot of kinetic awareness of yourself and your bike, “and there’s a safety to that. On the e-bike, you lose some of that.”
The motor adds about 20 pounds, so my e-bike was more cumbersome than any road or mountain bike I’ve tried. But it was quiet, used no fossil fuel and emitted no pollution. These bikes, boosters say, will allow more of us to see more of the natural world.
“This enables our lifestyle,” said Matt Dove, a 41-year-old San Francisco dad who sat atop an e-bike with his 3-year-old son strapped (and helmeted) in a child seat.
Dove, who runs a youth bike education program, said he’d spent most of his life working and playing around bikes and had started ebiking about a year ago.
“Kids that grow up in an urban context need to be taught or welcomed to love nature, and sometimes that means removing barriers,” he said. Moreover, he said, nodding at his bike and then his son, “This thing will allow us to keep riding together as my knees give out.”
For others, the administration’s e-bike green light is a hastily imposed, potentially dangerous intrusion into territory that’s always been engine-free.
Former NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis called the move part of the “systematic dismantling of a beloved institution, like pulling blocks from a Jenga tower, until it collapses.” (His opinion piece, which appeared Jan. 10 in the Guardian, was co-written by his brother, public lands advocate Destry Jarvis.)
The change could bring increased noise, trail damage, disturbance of wildlife, “high speeds, increased likelihood of collisions … and the startling and disturbance of hikers, runners, and horse and traditional bicycle riders,” advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility contends in its lawsuit seeking to block the new e-bike policy.
In that action, filed Dec. 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the group is joined by three individuals and the organizations Wilderness Watch, Marin Conservation League, Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and Save Our Seashore.
The groups say the new policy conflicts with existing regulations, should have been preceded by environmental review, and is improper because the Interior Department and NPS officials who issued the policy lacked the authority to do so.
P. Daniel Smith, the NPS acting director who issued the policy, stepped down in September and was succeeded by Deputy Director David Vela.
“We strongly disagree with the premise of PEER’s lawsuit and will continue to work with park superintendents to implement our common-sense e-bikes policy,” said an NPS spokesperson.