Food app delivery drivers on their glorified e-mopeds, which are still classified as e-bikes, have brought a certain danger to San Francisco’s bike lanes.
I’m someone who’s grown accustomed to feeling my back moisten with sweat going to and from destinations in San Francisco. As a distance runner who grew up in the car-centric south, evolving into an urban cyclist over the past few years has nicely filled the liminal space in my day-to-day life that exists between a need for cardiovascular exercise and yearning to travel at highway speeds, nursing a canned Diet Coke that, like my back, wets as time goes on. Life in the bike lane checks off an exercise requirement and the desire to travel faster than one can on foot.
Like so many San Franciscans—a city that boasts one of the largest populations of bike commuters anywhere in the country—I take glowing pride in my ability to climb the city’s hills on my own will and volition. However, ego can only take one so far up a 15% grade before humility takes front and center.
In an increasingly electrified world, analog cycling is competing with a new class of riders who are helming a new two-wheeled means of transportation: the e-bike.
Acoustic bikes, i.e, those that rely solely on human power to function, have been around for centuries. In 1817, inventor and engineer Baron Karl conceived a two-wheeled contrivance which he called a “velocipede” or “hobby horse” that allowed its rider to utilize their feet to push off the ground and propel the rider forward. Pedals and crankshafts wouldn’t be introduced on bikes for another 22 years, and even longer until the first pedal bike would be patented in New York City.
E-bikes, though ostensibly novel in perception, are about as old as cars themselves. The world’s first e-bikes found themselves on cobble-stoned roads around the late 1890s and reached speeds of around 20mph; unlike modern-day e-bikes, which ironically enough usually are electrically assisted to similar speeds, 20th-century iterations rarely could go more than a few miles on a charge. However, unlike the personal car, e-bikes were adopted slowly and were considered an anomaly on roads for much of the 1900s.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that most urban planners and bike historians agreed that e-bikes experienced a shift in innovation and public perception. The COVID-19 pandemic is widely referred to as a nexus that helped catapult e-bikes into common use — a once-in-a-generation outcome of embracing microbility due to social distancing and a lack of more mainstream travel options. At current market pacing, individual e-bike sales could reach parity with acoustic bike sales in the 2030s, particularly among urban populations.
San Francisco has all the means and makings to make it a global cycling destination… for both regular and e-bike cyclists. But I’d be remiss not to wax irritated on the current e-bike situation in SF that’s maddening, even for the calmest of analog cyclists.
When SFGate’s senior culture editor Dan Gentillen wrote about his criticism of San Francisco’s e-bike problem, I nodded effusively at his observations. Gentillen’s didactic distillation on the need to better enforce e-bike classifications— “I don’t think we need to limit the speeds of e-bikes at all — we just need to restrict where e-bikers can ride” — is met with an ethical imperative around safety.
Two-wheeled bundles of metal weighing over 100 lbs and traveling at speeds north of 28mph (or even 20mph, for that matter) have no place in the bike lane. These “motorcycle” or “moped” styled e-bikes are dangerous to operate inside narrow green lanes populated by humans pedaling at near glacial paces going up hills. Such vehicles are far removed from their e-bike monikers and sit firmly in motor vehicle classifications they pulled inspiration from in the first place.
However, I was left yearning for vindication on a more specific source of rage not highlighted in Gentillen’s column. Its a problem that can be refined into a single expletive sentence: The fucking food delivery drivers on thier fucking e-bike mopeds are ruining cycling in San Francisco.
The past few years have seen a boom in year-over-year growth for food app delivery services since the pandemic. As of publishing, Doordash and Uber Eats — the two companies with the majority of market share at 67% and 23%, respectively — continue seeing annual growth of around 20% each. Estimations show San Francisco has roughly 2,000 active Uber Eats and DoorDash drivers … and an increasing number are ditching their cars for other means of transportation.
What they’re choosing are effectively battery-operated mopeds weighing almost 120lbs that are allowed in bike lanes because of two flimsy pedals that are akin to T-rex arms — pointless and demonstrative. Models from HMP Bikes (which, ironically enough, only sells moped-styled e-bikes) are the most commonly helmed by San Francisco food delivery drivers; their retro-futurist style is now synonymous with food delivery in the city.
The company proudly exclaims that their “ebikes,” aside from their designated moped, are described as “class 2” ebikes. E-bike classification remains ambiguous and allows for wide interpretation, depending on state and local laws. Class 1 and 2 e-bikes allow for speeds of up to 20 mph and require pedal assistance. Class 3 bikes can travel upwards of 28 mph on throttle speeds alone, but still require the existence of pedals to be classified as e-bikes; of the three e-bike classes, only class 3 ebikes are deemed illegal to operate in some cities and states; many European countries have outlawed e-bikes with moped- or motorcycle-like styling and require proper licensing for those riding class 3 ebikes; there’s growing calls by activist group in the United States to adopt similar unitalitral law, which would, by proxy, forbid such e-bikes to ride in bike lanes
HMP has taken an increasingly common approach to skirt past Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations: offering stubby pedals on slightly underpowered moped-styled e-bikes for legality purposes. The company proudly remarks about this, writing that most of their bikes require “no license, registration, and insurance required,” broadening their appeal amongst food app delivery drivers, many of whom don’t have California driver’s licenses.
These motorists are more often than not among the most reckless, careless, frankly rude “cyclists” in the bike lanes.
They speed past cyclists, inches away from clipping unsuspecting handlebars. They’re shouting … on speaker phone … possessing no hint of wisdom about corded and Bluetooth headphones. They weave through traffic without a care in the world, not using any hand signaling and possessing no riding decorum — and, worse, they frequently travel up the wrong side of the road and spill into the bike lane for convenience. They appear to only acknowledge the existence of other food delivery riders who are also commanding e-mopeds, paying dust to acoustic bike riders. They commit the cardinal sin that bike-centric urbanists hold in villainy: treating the bike lanes as extensions of the road for the sake of convenience.
(About a month ago, I was stopped in the bike lane at a traffic light when one like-described food delivery driver pulled up next to me on an e-moped. The man had three blinding and humming phones mounted on his bike, two with different food delivery apps open and one showing a FaceTime conversation. With his free hand, a lit blunt pillowed smoke in my direction. By sheer proximity, I managed to catch his gaze looking around and immediately shot him a stare that conveyed my utter disdain and disgust; before the light turned green, the man had put the blunt inside an ashtray hidden in an out-of-sight compartment.)
San Francisco’s gem as a capital for micromobility and cycling shines bright, and there’s no evidence to suggest it won’t continue shining as such. If anything, the ongoing e-bike renaissance will only make that niche glow brighter. To have miscalculated electric mopeds running amok through SF’s growing network of bike lanes, holsering fast food would only dim the city … and madden those with seaty backs climbing up Polk Street.
Feature Image: Courtesy of Instagram via [at]hmpbikes
You may want to re-read the 3-class ebike law, because you got a few things wrong:
Class 1 – no throttle, max pedal assistance 20 MPH
Class 2 – throttle-only max 20 MPH, pedal-only max 20 MPH
Class 3 – NO throttle, pedal only to 28 MPH
The above all max at 750W of power, though some say of “continuous” or nominal power while some systems can reach 2kW at peak output. The max speeds can be hacked, but warranties are voided and insurance claims denied when the alterations are discovered. Yes, they check…
Fully functional pedals are indeed a masquerade for many mopeds to mimic e-bicycles, but by definition “mo” = motor etc. A quick look at HMP’s weakest offering shows 3kW nominal and 5.6kW peak power, which should absolutely be barred from cycling lanes.
Complain to your local traffic police – if enough folks do so, they’ll enforce. Posts like this can help, but errant facts presented with relentless indignation won’t to help spur such action – it just sounds like elitist whining with poor fact-checking.
Just my opinion…
I agree that seeing ebikes clogging up bike lanes is really irritating for people on regular bikes. The whole point of an ebike is to assist someone to ride in a way that they could not do on a regular bike. Why aren’t they using novel routes instead of the city’s regular bike lanes? They could just as easily take the hilly routes or ride with traffic on main thoroughfares without bike lanes.
No it’s the e-mopeds you’re confusing that go 40 mph. There are very few ebike riders in San Francisco who own their own e-bikes. Many shops have gone out of business.
The eMopeds use bike lanes that’s unlawful because they have peddles. They are a very threatening gang that’s aggressive towards others on the road looking for trouble.