Stanton officials are joining a growing list of Orange County cities trying to keep their streets safer by curbing reckless e-bike riding as Newport Beach officials plan to debate stricter rules on electric bicycles.
Newport Beach officials are also banning riding the bike at one of the city’s elementary school playgrounds.
“There’s been a bit of a rise in accidents related to e-bikes, not only in Stanton, but across the county,” said Cesar Rangel, Stanton’s director of Public Works and Engineering, at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
“In addition, they’ve also been mal-use in our city parks, and so this code will help us to enforce those laws in our parks and our trails as well.”
Officials are tightening regulations on e-bikes in the two cities on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a host of new bills into law by Orange County state legislators prohibiting buying products to modify the speed of the bike and requiring red reflectors on the back.
The new rules also require riders who get cited for not wearing a helmet to take a safety course and prohibits the sale of class 3 e-bikes to kids under 16-years-old.
[Read: Cracking Down E-bikes: Orange County’s Battle for Safer Roads]
Even before the state bills, local elected officials have been looking for ways to tighten regulations on e-bikes after they started to gain more popularity in recent years particularly in the Southern part of OC and along its coast amid complaints of kids riding recklessly.
Now, more than half of the cities in the county have adopted new e-bike rules that often vary from city to city – an inconsistency in regulations that OC Grand Jurors found make it confusing for police and residents to enforce and follow the rules.
[Read: Orange County Grand Jury Blasts Uncoordinated Regulation of E-Bikes]
On Tuesday, Stanton officials voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance regulating e-bikes , motorized bikes and skateboards that prohibits speeding, texting while riding, riding against traffic, doing wheelies and not yielding to pedestrians and cars when entering a road.
The ordinance is based on Anaheim’s e-bike ordinance.
To view Stanton’s ordinance, click here.
Councilman Donald Torres said Stanton has a lot of pedestrians and called on the city to educate kids and young adults on the rules.
“I see a lot of kids from Western (High School) on their bicycles, but I think we should be educating our young adults when it comes to this stuff,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“A lot of kids don’t know the rules. They ride their bicycles going the wrong way on the side of the street, and that’s always dangerous.”
Councilman John Warren also echoed the need for public education to ensure public safety.
“There’s not really an instruction manual for our juveniles to understand what this looks like,” he said at the meeting.
“I’ve seen in some circumstances where an e-bike was on Beach Boulevard and driving in a hazardous fashion, and I had seen a motorcycle deputy make an attempt to stop that kid and inform them.”
That same night, officials in Newport Beach agreed to discuss at a future meeting implementing stricter regulations on e-bikes including banning reckless riding, requiring helmets for kids under 18 and upping penalties for violations.
Officials in the coastal city also voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance introduced last month banning the use of e-bikes at the Newport Beach Elementary School playground.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.