Merseyrail BANNING EBIKE even legal ones

[Merseyrailebikeban]

Hi.

I thought I would come on here all the parents know that on the first of January 2027 electric bikes THAT DONT FOLD will be BANNED from the merseyrail network.....Just so were clear that means any e bike that doesn't fold...your Haibike,Cube,Carrera,Voodoo the list goes on.

https://www.merseyrail.org/journey-planning/plan-your-journey/e-bike-ban/

How your children get to school, get to the sports centre, get into town...the list goes on its absolutely UNACCEPTABLE.

They've given outrageous reasoning complete nonsense, the real reason is they don't want to train staff to tell the difference between an e-bike that is legal and one that is for example bought from eBay... they want to save money at the expense of people in Liverpool in general.

Now that people that says a good thing.... what about the loss revenue from bike shops? what about the lost revenue from maintenance of electric bikes ? What about parts ?what about the employment of those people the list goes on....

Liverpool Echo have hidden this behind a paywall a outrageously stupid article

"Merseyrail set to ban common item from every train and station"

Utterly spineless,WHERE WAS THE CONSULTATION.

EMAIL transport secretary see what she thinks of this

[email protected]
Heidi Alexander

I just thought everybody should know if you go out buying electric bikes for Christmas

Its not going OPs way. 93 percent support the ban.

This is a good thing

That's a straw man though isn't it?

Cars are more dangerous to pedestrians because they are bigger and heavier than ebikes but the total number of accidents is nonsensical to compare because there are vastly more cars than ebikes. You'd have to adjust the figures to accommodate for number of miles travelled by ebike versus car on average per head of population.

Ebikes are more dangerous than traditional bikes, but a direct statistical accident comparison isn't really possible in a meaningful way for the same reason.

Nobody is taking a car on a train (with the exception of the channel tunnel, where that's what you sign up for) and ebikes are more dangerous than traditional bikes because of battery fires and the weight of the ebikes.

Good! They're a menace on the road and should be properly regulated.

If your kids rely on rail & bike to get to school and/or sports (sports!) why not just get them a regular bicycle? The entire point of e-bikes is to go distances that previously required multi-mode transport.

As with every E Bike discussion, this thread will fill up with people who don't know the difference between legal ( 250 watt, pedal assisted up to 15mph)
and all the other illegal ones.

People are stating that e-bikes are a dangerous menace. That may be true, but they've got nothing on motor vehicles, which kill, maim and injure tens of thousands of people every year in the UK.

If it was a national ban on bicycles of any description, 93 percent would still support it. For some reason, MN is especially pro-car, anti-cyclist, anti-non driver.

I think views on this are going to depend where you live. Where I am e-bikes fall into three categories:

1. ridden by older people who want to keep their cycling independence
2. ridden by people, often mothers, pulling trailers
3. ridden by mountain bikers who want to spend more time on the fun downhills than on winching themselves up to the top (just like skiers…)

None of them are remotely problematic and all are (as far as I know) riding legal e-bikes.

If you live in a city your experience of e-bikes is going to be wildly different: illegal bikes with throttles, no speed or power limiters ridden mostly by drug dealers, hoodlums, and dodgy food delivery riders.

The policy is that if your e-bike can't be folded, you can't put it on a train. Train staff are trying to mitigate against the risk of fire because you really don't want want a battery fire in an enclosed train carriage.

Not just the risk of fire, but also space. Unfolded bikes take up too much space and can cause obstructions.

Wonderful news for wheelchair users like myself who regularly find the disabled spaces crammed with them.

Good. They are terrifying.

I cant believe anyone would allow their children to ride an electric bike, so unbelievably dangerous.

That will be why its a legal requirement to take a test and have insurance before driving them then, as it should be for electric bikes

Strongly disagree. Our e-bike is 14kg. Less than most regular bikes. And it goes much slower than I do on my non-assisted bike. It’s in no way comparable to a moped.

The fire risk is overwhelmingly from the illegally modified bikes with batteries gaffer taped to the frames, as used by most of the food delivery riders near us. I’ve never heard or read of a single instance of a legal e-bike catching fire. The illegal ones do it all the time.

The problem here is that the police have failed to tackle the hundreds of thousands of illegal e bikes with elevated fire risk and no speed limiter whizzing around the streets. So most people on this thread ignorantly assume those kinds of things are what e-bikes are, and then want them banned because of speeding or fire risk. And the train companies ban them because they can’t train their staff to distinguish between legal and illegal, so they just ban them all.

It all comes down to the police totally failing to do their job, aided by food delivery companies turning a blind eye to the conduct of their riders.

Good. All existing ones need to be seized and crushed. I couldn't give a flying fuck about the losses of them not being allowed tbh.

I don't live in Merseyside, but this is excellent news

They're an absolute scourge in London and I was worried it was yet another problem that was going to come here

Fingers crossed for a general similar ban

Also, cyclists of all kinds should be licensed

Okay ban portable chargers from China? Ban vapes? These have lithium batteries that are much more susceptible and Fire hazards then electric bikes that have been certified.

No, it shouldn’t be. The cost of administering this would vastly outweigh any safety benefits. We already can’t provide driving tests in a timely manner, and you want to introduces whole new bureaucracy, for the sake of a handful of deaths per decade? When many more deaths and injuries could be prevented by simply improving driving standards? Sheer madness.

So what, you didn’t stipulate a particular train

hundreds of cars a day and night get put on trains
its not considered dangerous to put electric cars on a train and that is the point not which train

There have already been petitions for cycles to be registered and tested

tbr last Tory gov gave a resounding no, it’s repentant not worth the hassle. Insurance companies aren’t interested as it’s not viable business

if that’s a Tory government stand, it’ll certainly be less likely with a leftie government and Andy bur ham wanted more bikes in. Manchester - so even more unlikely to happen

Eh?! This thread is about e-bikes.

By awful I mean he absolutely could have killed him had he hit him at the speed he was going on the pavement. My friend managed to pull him out of the way. There are plenty of campaigns about cars/road safety, doesn’t mean arseholes should be allowed to drive e-bikes on the pavement or take them on public transport. I reported it to the police, I knew they couldn’t do anything but it paints a picture and they said it’s a very significant problem.

I doubt if the real reason is a reluctance to train staff to recognise “safe” ebikes. It has probably more to do with safeguarding their staff from argumentative and aggressive passengers who think shouting and swearing wins them the right to do what they want.

Far easier, and much fairer to already much abused staff, to say “No e bikes. End of.”

This. This thread is just showing that most people don’t seem to understand the difference between a proper, legal electrically assisted pedal cycle from a reputable manufacturer and the cheap dangerous Chinese illegal shite you can buy on EBay.

You want e-bikes banned, yet more drivers kill.

yours imo is a knee jerk reaction without looking at road safety and how to make it safer without calling for banning a type of vehicle