
Signs along the Capital Crescent Trail make clear both that "motorized vehicles" are not allowed, and that the trail is is backed by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.
By Paul Basken
In the days since writing an article for the Post on the subject of motorized vehicles on bike-and-pedestrian trails, I've gotten a pretty good taste of a couple things.
One, as we know, emotions are easily aroused in both motor users and bicyclists when discussing their points of intersection. Motor users tend to embrace concepts such as freedom, speed and convenience. Bicyclists also prize freedom, but tend to put safety ahead of the other two.
Second, as is also now well-recognized by Americans, our national tone of public discussion on many topics has grown chronically inattentive to both facts and irony, too often impatient and un-neighborly, and prone to settlement by sheer force rather than data.
And yet, given the stakes, it seemed worth attempting. The article grew from the almost daily experience of watching motorized bikes speed along the Capitol Crescent Trail, even though that rare respite from motoring is lined with signs saying they are simply not permitted.
When asked, some users plead ignorance. Many others are defiant, insisting that anyone questioning them is merely mistaken, and that the phrase "No Motorized Vehicles" just does not apply to the particular motorized vehicle they have chosen to use.
A search to better understand what's going on led to surprise after surprise. Yes, all types of motorized vehicles are clearly banned on the Capitol Crescent and other trails, but local authorities often weren't sure of that. In that environment, local bike sellers can be found promoting their multi-thousand-dollar motorized models for trail use, and similarly cite indifference to or unawareness of the law. Police enforcement is virtually non-existent.
Even stranger: The Washington Area Bicyclist Association, the region's main bicyclist advocacy group, has not only declined to protest motorized trail incursions, but has been lobbying local leaders to make them legal. And it's been doing that without even asking its members if they agree. Furthermore, the head of the Rails To Trails Conservancy, the nation's leading force for building such trails, sometimes has taken his own motorized vehicle on the Capitol Crescent.
How to make sense of all these things?
An obvious first suspect, certainly in Washington, is the ever-present mix of finances and politics. Naturally bike groups such as WABA get some money from bike sellers, which in turn see motorized versions as key market opportunity. WABA, however, flatly denies the possibility of any influence there.
WABA instead explains itself by saying that bicyclists actually want motor users alongside them on the trails. Asked how it knows that, WABA's leader cited a 2015 survey by yet another "bicyclist" group that claimed that clear majorities of bicyclists want motorized vehicles both in bike lanes and on bike trails. Asked how such a strange notion could be true, the survey's author admitted it was "entirely possible" that his chosen participants -- a full quarter of whom admit they already use motorized bikes -- "vastly over-represented people who own e-bikes."
It's not surprising, of course, that lots of people think they'd like to ride a motorized vehicle down a bike trail. Without legal access to bike trails, complained Richard Cowden of Takoma Park in a Letter to the Editor of the Post, users of low-powered motorized vehicles would be left to the "tender mercies" of regular motor users on regular roads.
The irony is astounding. The most cogent rebuttal of all the article's findings -- about WABA, Rails-to-Trails, illegal trail users, uninformed government officials and non-existent enforcement -- that the Post could find worthy of publishing came from a person pleading to take his motorized vehicle on our bike-pedestrian trails so he could be spared from having to ride that motorized vehicle among -- of all things -- motorists!
Mr. Cowden's argument, basically, is: Please stop giving tax-paying bicyclists and pedestrians their own small protected space, because my version of a motorized vehicle is less powerful than some other guy's motorized vehicle. OK, fair enough. Bicyclists certainly know that feeling. Intimately. After all, bicyclist tax dollars help finance some 4 million miles of car-first roads in this country, but only about 10,000 miles of paved trails for bikes and pedestrians.
But where does Cowden-type logic get us? When it comes to personal safety, who doesn't want to be the bigger dude? Drivers of compact cars worry about SUVs. Drivers of small SUVs eye bigger SUVs. Drivers of all types of cars fear trucks.
The headline of Mr. Cowden's letter says, "Don’t be exclusive. Share the trails with e-bikes." Online commenters on the Post article argued that all taxpayers should have the right to use publicly funded trails. Some resorted to the familiar blame-bicyclists-first populism, accusing leg-powered (or arm-powered) travelers of just being jealous of their faster motor-powered companions.
Those are all good solid emotional appeals. But obviously the answer isn't that simple. Taxpayers also funded the runways at Dulles, but nobody seriously suggests that we should all be free to race our cars down them. Taxpayers also funded the Beltway, but bikes and pedestrians, for good reason, aren't allowed there.
So the real question is: Why have motors traditionally been excluded from bike-pedestrian trails, and is there now any data to suggest that our longstanding community approach -- which allows everyone from small children to seniors with canes feel safe on trails -- has somehow been mistaken? And as Mr. Cowden himself recognizes, a key element of that question is: Given the clear dangers he properly associates with motors, should there be any place left for those taxpaying bicyclists wanting the freedom of some kind of pavement without motors right alongside them?
For many tax-paying freedom-cherishing bicyclists and pedestrians, the answer to that second question is a loud and clear "Yes." But even for those who insist otherwise, consider what the scientific experts and the motorized bike manufacturers themselves are telling us.
First, they agree there is no clear data -- either direction -- about the safety, environmental or health effects of putting motorized vehicles on trails. There is some data about motorized bikes on motor roads, and even that's not considered terribly conclusive about whether they represent a safety upgrade over regular bikes.
It does seem true that a person trading a regular car for a motorized bike traveling along car roads almost certainly gives society an environmental benefit and some health benefit, since -- unlike the case with trails -- they are not likely to scare away many existing road users.
Still, some motorized bike advocates argue that the absence of data about motors on trails is good enough reason to change decades of policy and start adding the motors. They either deny that adding motor to trails would represent a major policy shift, or feel that such a major shift just doesn't need much factual underpinning. After all, such advocates contend, if the decision proves bad, it can simply be reversed later.
But before even tentatively accepting the law now making its way across the country, look at what it actually says and means. It's the law that the motorized bike manufacturers have written, have already been getting states to adopt, and that WABA wants to see adopted by local governments around here.
Its Class 1 and Class 2 categories are designed to allow any vehicle on bike trails that can go up to 20 mph, with any motor up to 750 watts (the only difference between the two classes is a weakly defined notion that Class 1 envisions at least a token amount of pedal contribution, whereas Class 2 can have an overt hand throttle). The law would allow any size or shape with as many as three wheels, just as long as it meets that motor-size requirement.
In the eyes of WABA, the 20 mph limit means "the maximum assisted speed of these devices is closely aligned with speeds traveled by traditional bicycles." But what data suggests that an average bicyclist travels 20 mph on the Capital Crescent Trail? None. It's absurd. Even among the super-fast bicyclists who speed along the trail without using motors, someone going 20 mph up the Capital Crescent would be in the 97th percentile.
It's even more absurd considering the target audience that the industry contends that it has in mind for these motorized vehicles: Not just average trail riders, but the elderly and others who cannot or do not want to pedal for whatever reason. As explained by industry lobbyist Larry Pizzi, it "sort of levels the playing field" for older Americans wanting to share a bike ride with their families.
It's a warm and loving notion, to be genuinely applauded. But if that's really the target audience, then why wouldn't the law being proposed by the industry, promoted by WABA and being enacted by states limit such motorized vehicles to the real average speed of an average trail user -- perhaps 10 or 12 mph -- instead of something well in excess of even the posted limit on the Capital Crescent? Does Grandma, unable to pedal a bike, really want to rush ahead of her family at 20 mph?
And some motorized advocates, to their credit, do agree that 20 mph motors with no size limit is a bit much for our trails. But they have faith that our policymakers would give us something more realistic and reasonable here in the DC area.
That's where the factual misunderstanding in this entire debate is so huge. Not only is WABA endorsing 20 mph with no size limits, but Mr. Pizzi has made clear the entire reason the manufacturers want to get a lot of states to accept that definition is that their definition will then define the models that the industry offers nationwide. Trying to enact any local variations, once a critical number of states adopts the industry's definitions, will become politically and financially challenging, because the major product lines will already be set. After years of being told that Washington should not impose one-size-fits-all solutions on America, the reverse is in the process of happening to our local bike trails.
And that's still not enough to make some motor advocates question the path they're being led down. Another favored rhetorical defense of motors on trails is the fact that some experienced human-powered bicyclists already exceed the speed limit on trails. For motor advocates, those violations somehow mean that it would be safe to now give everyone else -- regardless of any acquired riding ability and vehicle control skills -- a motor to go out and do the same thing. Still others suggest that speed-limit enforcement, not a ban on motors, is the solution -- apparently unaware that the motorized vehicles themselves are currently fully illegal and yet completely ignored by overburdened police.
Despite all that and more, some motor advocates insist it's all just concocted fears in the minds of an entitled club of existing trail users. The idea that allowing even modest motors on trails would be the start of a slippery slope of ever-larger machines on trails is wholly unwarranted, several have said. As Marchant Wentworth wrote in a brief accompaniment to Mr. Cowden's letter, the Post article "failed to convey a parade of horribles that would result from" putting motors on trails and giving travelers an option from their "steel cocoons."
It was an interesting analogy. After all, it was only a few months earlier that a prominent technology expert predicted the "inevitable triumph" of bikes over cars. As that expert looked to the future, he saw biking's "triumph" as the time when "bikes" acquire both motors and protective "cocoons." On motorized roads, that seems fine. On trails, even Mr. Pizzi admitted such vehicles would be ridiculous. And yet his own looming law, endorsed locally by WABA, would allow that.
[Note from Washcycle: My response will run tomorrow]
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