Earlier this month, the Santa Barbara City Council published a climate action plan which set the goal of being climate neutral by 2035. In the United States, 30 percent of carbon emissions are from transportation. To become a climate neutral city, we need sustainable transport options.
Santa Barbarians have already embraced a flexible, affordable and sustainable form of transportation – the electric bicycle. It makes sense. Santa Barbara’s geography is perfect for e-bikes. We have beautiful weather all year round, low density, and lots of hills. In addition, e-bikes have been shown to increase the distance that people travel (by approx 3 to 6 kilometers) and increase the number of female riders. Recent data collected by my team at UC Santa Barbara shows that in Santa Barbara and Goleta, e-bikes account for almost 50 percent of all bicycles.
Not everyone is happy about the arrival of e-bikes on our roads. E-bikes disrupt transportation in Santa Barbara. In part, because e-bikes happened on roads and paths that were not designed for their use. consequently, people worry about safety, especially the safety of our teenagers.
Evidence on how to safely incorporate e-bikes into our roads is still being compiled. So how do we set policy to improve e-bike safety today?
The answer is to build more and bigger bike lanes.
All the evidence shows that the safety of cyclists requires separation from motor vehicles. When there is a strong barrier between vehicles and bicycles, the chances of crashing are high a tenth that of the bicycle next to the cars.
Adding e-bikes to bike lanes has some of the same challenges as having fast and slow cyclists sharing the same space. The behavior and speed of a cyclist in spandex who aims to set a personal record is not the same as a typical commuter or a family riding with children. Especially for heavily used bike lanes, fast cyclists maneuvering around slower cyclists can cause conflict and crashes. Interestingly, similar safety issues also emerge when walkers and cyclists share the same space.
We are always doing research that provides decision makers with evidence on the best way to safely integrate e-bikes into our transport network. However, we have a wealth of research that has shown that different modes of transportation tend to be safer when separated from other modes. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians all benefit from having their own space. Even mixing pedestrians and bicycles on multi-use paths has been shown to increase risk of crashand the recommendation is to create more space and design areas of use.
More and bigger bike lanes will help us build a transportation system that is future proof. It will be able to handle the increased demands and have enough space for many types of transport that will be necessary to meet the climate goals.
Even the best bicycle infrastructure will not completely stop the risky behaviors of teenage e-bikers. I saw the same things you have – e-bike kids on phones, without helmets, and many people on a bike. But, some of the most dangerous behaviors, such as riding on the road, is the result of not having a suitable safe space for e-bikes, and the separation of e-bikes from cars will reduce the consequence associated with a lot of risky behavior that we commonly see e-bikes.
To be sure, the carbon benefits of e-bikes cannot be realized with other electric vehicles (EVs) alone. The carbon required to make an electric vehicle, the cost of purchase and the impact on the grid means that EVs cannot be the only solution. E-bikes are less expensive, more sustainable to build, and run on much less energy. E-bikes and EVs complement each other, and multiple forms of transportation should be supported if we hope to make carbon neutrality real.
Cities need to build infrastructure for the future. More and bigger bike lanes will future proof our transport network, supporting the transport changes needed to achieve climate neutrality. E-bikes are disruptions, but the tension brought by the disruption is an opportunity for change and innovation. Santa Barbara can be a national leader in building a carbon neutral city and transportation system, which should include safe e-bikes. Imagine if we succeed! Fewer cars, less air pollution, reduced carbon emissions, and more freedom to move safely and sustainably through our city.
Trisalyn Nelson is the Dangermond Chair in Geography and a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project and the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2014, Prof. Nelson founded the BikeMaps.org website for crowdsourcing bicycle safety data around the world.
