The five biggest Dutch cities are urging the government to let them ban fatbikes, e-scooters and other motor-powered vehicles from cycle lanes to prevent “total chaos,” the Telegraaf reported on Wednesday. “Cycle lanes should be a safe place for all cyclists, not just the biggest, strongest and fastest,” the cities’ transport chiefs said in a joint statement to parliament’s infrastructure committee, which is debating road safety on Thursday. Local authorities have long warned that cycle lanes are overloaded and were...
  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    27 days ago

    Sadly, the original source article is: 1) paywalled, and 2) in Dutch, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me if the linked article is using “fatbike” in reference only to electric fatbikes. That would certainly make more sense, since the quotations primarily seem concerned with speed. And as you said, acoustic fatbikes are not fast. It could be a translation issue.

    The only mention of size/mass being an issue seems to be for large cargo ebikes, which I imagine is referring to boxy delivery vehicles that crowd out the bike paths. Eg UPS, DHL, Amazon parcel ebikes.

    At least that’s what I would think is what’s happening. Considering how many people in Dutch cities rely on the bike infrastructure, it would make sense to designate more space for bike-adjacent transport by taking space from the road (as in, automobile lanes).

    I would hope that if municipalities are empowered to prohibit motor-assisted ebikes from the existing bike network, then they should also have to carry the obligation to build a secondary network of hard infrastructure using space from roads that have traffic speeds above 30 kph.

    The demand for electric bikes is clearly there; it is infeasible and illogical to make them disappear by a mere prohibition. The demand for parcel delivery bikes is there, and prohibiting them would only exacerbate automobile traffic. Hence, the Dutch should do what they’ve always done: build their way out.