Huntington Beach City Council members are again grappling with how to handle the growing number of kids riding e-bikes, this time weighing a program to restrict e-bike use to city streets or bike lanes in areas like schools and churches.
Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark said the city’s existing rules aren’t getting the job done, with kids creating a “new public safety challenge” when they ride irresponsibly, and asking city staff to set up new limits on where the bikes can be used and require riders to follow right of way laws.
“They’re all over the place,” Van Der Mark said at the council’s Tuesday night meeting. “Updating the ordinance will strengthen these rules.”
But that proposal also faced some pushback from Councilman Chad Williams, who worried the shift would put more kids in the path of traffic on their way to and from school.
“The real offenders I think in our eyes are the kids riding out in the street, doing the wheelies, doing no helmet, flipping people off,” Williams said. “Then you can see these timid kids that they’re going to school. They probably were instructed by their parents ‘please try and stay off the roads. You can see how putting this kid off the sidewalk and into the road inherently just brings about more problems.”
The Huntington Beach Union High School District also has a program offering permits to kids who ride e-bikes to school that requires kids to take safety training.
Surf City is one of dozens of cities grappling with the same problem across Orange County, with many cities choosing to adopt bans for where e-bikes can be used or adding other rules to restrict their use and require rider training.
[Read: Cracking Down E-bikes: Orange County’s Battle for Safer Roads]
It’s also not the first time city leaders have grappled with the issue.
City leaders already adopted new rules that ban people from riding e-bikes in a “un-safe manner,” a rule that Williams pointed to as something police officers can already enforce.
“The ones that do ride unsafe on the sidewalks, we already have an ordinance against that,” Williams said.
Van Der Mark raised concerns for the city’s elderly population, and said the rules still needed more tweaking.
“We’re still going to work on the language,” Van Der Mark said. “We have a large elderly population, it’s becoming a problem.”
City Council members unanimously asked Police Chief Eric Parra to take another look at the issue and come back with recommendations to beef up the city’s existing rules, which he said should be possible.
Parra said it has to strike a balance.
“We want to be comprehensive, but we want to be mindful of how we can make it safe for the commuters, safe for the kids, but not overregulate.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.