Council tables e-bike law

The Columbia Falls City Council last week voted to table a city ordinance that would restrict e-bikes and e-motorcycles along with other electrically powered vehicles on its sidewalks and city parks.

The move came after resident Ed Albrite, a former e-bike seller, implored council to take a closer look at the law.

“It’s not the bike,” Albrite said. “It’s the user ... Don’t punish the public for one or two bad actors.”

He said council should consider perhaps a training requirement for younger riders.

Council didn’t subscribe to that, but Mayor Don Barnhart was concerned that language in the law might sound as if it was prohibiting e-bikes in city parks, most notably River’s Edge Park.

The law doesn’t ban e-bikes from city parks or city bike paths for that matter, as long as a person is pedaling, what’s known as “pedal assist” in the e-bike world.

The law reads “A bicycle, as defined in Montana Code Annotated ... a moped, motorized scooter, skateboard, or any other wheeled device, whether electrically or motor assisted or not, may be operated or ridden on and along a public sidewalk, public path, or within a public park only under human propulsion and may not be operated on or along such sidewalks, paths, or within such parks if the bicycle, scooter, skateboard or other wheeled device is under a power from an independent power source.”

Columbia Falls Police Chief Chad Stephens said that means as long a person is pedaling, they’re fine.

The law also requires riders under 18 to wear a helmet and everyone is obliged to follow speed limits.

But in the end, council decided to table the law and clarify the language in committee and then bring it back to council. Councilman Mike Shepard voted against tabling it, as he was fine with the law as written.

The city definitely has a problem, however. Younger folks on e-motorcycles have damaged parks (they like to jump the hills in Marantette Park), ridden high speeds on sidewalks and streets and one 16-year-old crashed into a car earlier this year while speeding down a sidewalk, impaling his head into the windshield.

He was going about 40 mph at the time of the accident, police said.

So the city is likely to pass some sort of law by this spring, when the snow has melted.