Campaigners warn of plan to allow electric motorbikes on city’s cycle routes
Bogotá’s chaotic cycle paths could get even more congested if powerful electric motorbikes are legalized to cruise the exclusive lanes, currently restricted to pedal power and much lighter power-assisted bicycles.
Electric bikes and scooters already share the city’s bike lanes. The issue now is the weight and speed of these vehicles and how they are driven. Current users are capped at 25 kilometers per hour (15 miles an hour) and 35 kilos (75 pounds).
According to campaigners, a bill poised to be signed off by President Gustavo Petro will create danger if it crams heavier electric bikes – weighing up to 60 kilos (132 pounds) and capable of speeds well over 40 kilometers per hour (25 miles per hour) – onto Bogotá’s 600 kilometers (373 miles) of dedicated ciclorutas, a network currently used by 900,000 cyclists per day.
A leading voice in the pushback is from urban mobility expert Carlos Pardo, who told The Bogotá Post this week that the government’s plan to mix cycles with electric motorbikes in confined spaces was a “recipe for disaster”.
Speed enforcement will be complicated by the fact that under the proposed Bill 111 of 2023, electric motorbikes up to 1000 watts would be exempt from registration, meaning no identifying number plate, and no record of ownership in case of accidents or rule-breaking.
“Although the law clarifies that bike paths must travel at 25 kilometers per hour, we know that users will not comply,” said Pardo.
Furthermore, explained Pardo, riders of these units would be exempt from tax, insurance, driving licenses and any sensible safety standards such mechanical checks, headlamps at night or training courses.
Step backwards
Pardo’s concerns are being echoed by 18 city councilors who signed an open letter condemning the bill as a “serious step backwards” for mobility in Bogotá.
“This poses a road safety risk to cyclists and pedestrians who use or cross these roads, which are designed for slow and safe traffic”, said the letter.
And officials at the city’s own District Mobility Secretariat warned that the speedy motorbikes would endanger the estimated 13,000 children biking to school every day under the “Al Colegio en Bici” program running since 2021.
“Not requiring initial registration, insurance or a driver’s license for vehicles of this type that weigh 60 kilos and reach speeds of up to 40 kilometres an hour is another major concern. It will create greater risks of injury and death,” their analysis concluded.
Another petition sent to the transport ministry by 80 Colombian experts in mobility and road safety highlighted data showing significant increase in fatal accidents at the higher speeds.
Added to that, Bill 111’s scrapping of insurance requirements – the obligatory health coverage for registered vehicles called “SOAT” – would mean victims of crashes would “not get immediate and opportune support from the health system”.
No clear rules
How did we get here? Any cyclist in Colombia’s capital knows that the ciclorutas are already compromised by other vehicles, including at times powerful petrol motorbikes which — perhaps inspired by their electric cousins — now brazenly invade the bike lanes with seeming impunity.
This ongoing anarchy can be traced back to regulations from 2017 which, while initially delimiting different e-bikes, were never fully enforced.
That law defined:
- Electric bicycles (“bici electrica”) can be pedaled with motors under 350 watts, and limited to 25 kilometers per hour(15 miles per hour), and weigh under 35 kilos (77 pounds). These can use cycle paths.
- Electric mopeds (“moto ciclos”) which are up to 4000 watts which can go over 40 kilometers an hour (25 miles per hour). In theory they are banned from cycling paths, riders must follow vehicle road rules, be licensed, wear helmets and register the bike and purchase obligatory health insurance, albeit at a lower tariff than petrol motorbikes.
- Electric motorbikes (“Moto electrica”) over 4,000 watts, look like larger motorbikes, and need all the same paperwork.
Confusion crept in during 2018 when these rules were suspended, then reinstated again 20 months later, creating precedent whereby electric motorbikes requirement to comply with the registration rules, or not, depended entirely on the exact month and year of the vehicle’s importation or purchase.
This anomaly – that identical e-bikes were legal or illegal depending on an arbitrary date – made the law hard to enforce with only sporadic attempts to force electric mopeds into compliance.
Furthermore the lines between “e-bikes” and “e-mopeds” and “e-motorbikes” became increasingly blurred as an inventive range of designs hit the streets.
Nonsense law
The current bill, rather than closing this loophole and returning cycle paths to cyclists and low-power-assisted bikes, has instead chosen to hand them over to heavier and more powerful units.
This is a source of frustration for experts like Pardo who have tried to engage with the government to find a framework that fits the needs of cyclists and brings electric bikes in line with global standards.
“We have given the ministry of transport specific recommendations for the vehicles between 350 and 4000 watts. They have not responded since December, and this neglect has resulted in this nonsense law,” he said. “They have persisted in getting a regulation approved that goes against international recommendations”.
Another frustration is the bill being brought in under the guise of “promoting sustainable mobility alternatives”. For Pardo, the scrapping of regulations is not about going green, but rather the “huge market in selling these vehicles”.
“I think they did it like this because they only talked to industry, and not civil society, cyclists or academia,” he said. “What until now was a minor problem will become a road safety crisis.”
Lose-lose situation
In Bogotá, at least, there is hope that city authorities could pass local laws to block the electric motorcycles and protect the cycle lanes, said Pardo.
But this is far from a perfect solution. At present most units on sale in Colombia are 350 watts, more likely to go under the radar of any controls.
Bill 111 could open the floodgates of 1000-watt motorbikes which, according to the proposed law, would be officially free from overhead costs of registration, and with buyers then expecting to use them on the safer bike lanes.
As electric transport takes off, there is considerable demand to more quickly cover the city and heavier batteries to last the day. Already unscrupulous vendors are already falsely pushing larger units as “registration free and bike lane legal”.
In a shop in the north of the city this week, a salesman insisted to the Bogotá Post that a 500 watt motorbike was “ready to drive without paperwork on the cycle paths”. Its tiny pedals were “just for show”, he explained.
If Bill 111 is passed, the city authorities will face the uphill task of policing cycle paths with no backing from the national legislation, with the added dilemma of pushing electric motorbikes onto the fast lanes of Bogotá’s highways without insurance, registration or trained and licensed riders.
It’s a lose-lose situation. Or, in the words of Carlos Pardo, “a massacre foretold”.