Bend officials struggle to respond to mounting concerns around young e-bike riders

Published 5:30 am Sunday, July 16, 2023

In the early weeks June, before a 15-year-old died after being hit by a minivan while riding an e-bike in Bend, residents emailed police, describing what they saw as a growing problem among the city’s teenagers.

Dozens of electric bicycles parked at Pacific Crest Middle School, even though it’s illegal for teens under 16 to ride them.

Teens near Columbia and McKay parks, allegedly speeding, not wearing helmets, driving on sidewalks, using their phones, sometimes with two people per e-bike.

And on June 17, the day of the fatal crash, one resident wrote: “I see near collisions on a daily basis.”

“We need to have police stationed around pulling kids over and giving them citations,” the resident said. “A kid is going to get killed soon so please put an end to it.”

But Bend Police officers seldom cite people for violations while riding e-bikes. Only two of 10 biking-related citations in the city since Jan. 1, 2021, involved e-bikes, and one of them was a warning. The other eight citations do not say whether the person was riding an e-bike or not.

Current laws around e-bike use among youths are murky, officials say. And police would rather educate residents than cite them, said Sgt. Tim Guest, who oversees the department’s traffic division.

Now, regional officials are planning meetings to discuss rules and strategies to improve safety and enforcement as e-bike use soars. Next week, officials are planning a roundtable to discuss the issue with city officials, police, the mayor, the school district superintendent, a state representative, a county commissioner and more.

“I have never seen anything like it in terms of concern from our community members,” said Bend City Councilor Megan Perkins.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of an e-bike, which provide a fun, convenient and cheap form of transportation. Increasingly, teens have sought out these bikes in place of cars, providing them a sense of freedom, officials say. Plus, an e-bike is easier and faster than peddling all over town.

“The speed is part of the draw,” said Brian Potwin, executive director of Commute Options, a Bend-based nonprofit that focuses on transportation. “It gets you where you need to go quickly. But the speed is where the danger comes in.”

The danger has been on display in recent weeks. Since May, 12 of the 41 bike crashes in Bend involved e-bikes, according to Bend Fire & Rescue data. That’s 29%.

The complaints about unsafe riders that police received in June weren’t the only ones about the increasing use of e-bikes among youths, received by city officials in recent months, records and interviews show.

Riders, many of whom are teens, are running stop signs and stop lights, biking the wrong direction, failing to put lights on their bikes, zooming past people in local parks and spinning and tearing up grass, officials say.

“People just need to slow down,” said Jeff Hagler, park steward manager for Bend Park & Recreation District, who estimates he receives two or three complaints each week about e-bike riders.

The growing use of e-bikes has raised questions about current rules and how to enforce them.

Currently, no part of Bend-La Pine Schools’ student transportation rules say anything about e-bikes. E-bikes are allowed on trails and pathways in nearly all Bend parks, but not if they exceed 20 mph. Oregon law does not clearly state what penalty there would be if a teen under 16 was cited for riding an e-bike.

“The laws just haven’t caught up,” said Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend. She said state laws around e-bike enforcement need to be clearer, but added: “I don’t really want the police to write a bunch of tickets. They don’t want that either. I do want that to be a part of our tool box, but that’s not the plan.”

So far, Bend Police have cited at least one person in 2023 after an e-bike crash. The rider was on the wrong side of the road prior to a crash in the area of 3rd Street and Franklin Avenue, records show.

In 2022, the department issued a warning to an e-bike rider for improperly using a lane and riding on a sidewalk after he crashed into a car on Southwest Brookswood Boulevard and then rolled onto the ground.

Police will stop any vehicle, or bike, that is committing a traffic violation, said Guest, the Bend police sergeant. However, he said, “If we have calls that are a higher priority, we have to go to those and it doesn’t give us as much time to respond to traffic violations or e-bikes.”

What’s clear to Guest is that many residents don’t know that kids under 16 aren’t legally allowed to ride e-bikes, or adults aren’t telling them. Still, if police officers stop kids who are riding these bikes, they would prefer to educate them rather than issue a citation “if that will change behavior,” Guest said.

Just last week, police stopped three 13-year-olds who were riding a single e-bike on a sidewalk, Guest said. Police talked to the kids and their parents.

Officials say they are taking steps to address the increased use of e-bikes among young people, from planning education events in schools to reassessing existing infrastructure to ensure that it’s safe to ride on the road.

State and local officials are urging parents to educate kids around safe e-bike riding and tell those under 16 that they cannot legally ride them. They plan to discuss e-bike safety and enforcement from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18, at the Larkspur Community Center Multi-Purpose Room on Southeast Reed Market Road, Bend.