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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
The E-Bike Crackdown
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License plates for e-bikes sound...ridiculous. Imagine: DMV trips, new fees, insurance quotes, and a bigger wall between people and the cheapest form of electric transportation in the US. With gas prices climbing and more riders looking for alternatives to driving, we dig into why some states are moving in the opposite direction and what that could mean for e-bike adoption, affordability, and climate goals.
We start with New Jersey’s newly passed law, which combines registration, plates, licensing requirements, and insurance expectations, plus a shift away from the familiar three-class e-bike standard used by much of the country. Then we look at California’s proposal and the broader pattern: policies that treat bikes like cars, even when most riders are just trying to get to work, school, or the grocery store without another car payment.
Safety is the hard part, and we don’t dodge it. We talk about fast riders, illegal modifications, and those “not really an e-bike” machines that behave like low-speed motorcycles. But we also make the case that smarter enforcement and clearer rules on trails can address bad behavior without punishing everyone. We even revisit class 3 e-bikes and the 28 mph cap, explaining why higher assisted speed can be risky in crowds but genuinely safer in mixed traffic where cars move at 30 mph.
If you’re curious about going car light, we share practical ways to combine e-bikes with public transit and why that middle ground can save thousands per year. Subscribe, share with your most opinionated e-bike friend, and leave a review with your take: should states regulate behavior or regulate the bike?
Why E-Bike Rules Are Changing
SPEAKER_01This week on transit tangents, we look at legislation in several states aiming to require insurance, registration, and license plates for e-bikes. We'll cover the impacts as well as go over some of the reasons that we should be making it easier to buy and use e-bikes in the US, not create more barriers to entry. As gas prices are rising across the world, folks who would normally be opting to get into their cars for anywhere they're going in their day-to-day are now probably going to start considering alternatives, including biking, public transportation, e-biking, carpooling, and many more alternatives. You'd think that the government in the United States would be doing anything in their power to make these sorts of changes easier for folks to do, but unfortunately, in a few states, we're seeing exactly the opposite.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, from California trying to require all e-bikes to have license plates, to New Jersey effectively classifying all e-bikes as motorcycles. It does seem like we are headed in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, especially with politicians on both sides of the aisle pretending at least that affordability is an issue that they really care about. You would think that this would be something they would be putting forth, considering it's not only good for the environment, good for getting more cars off the road, but it also is good for your wallet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so today we are gonna jump into some of these crazy new laws that we're seeing pop up around the country, uh, how they're gonna be implemented, and talk about ways that you could consider using transit, using a bike or even using a car if you're trying to go car light. Um, we think this is a really relevant conversation, especially look at the last couple weeks. Uh, this we are currently filming this on March 25th of 2026. So look at the last couple weeks, and gas prices are through the roof. Um, so definitely, I think, uh, a relevant conversation to have now.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. And uh, if you're watching this, chances are you are probably someone who already does use public transit in your day-to-day or at least on a weekly basis, uh, or you're someone who rides a bike, rides an e-bike, or you're at least into this sort of thing. So this also could be a good one to send to a friend who maybe isn't so transit curious, I guess. Transit curious or e-bike curious.
New Jersey Law Hits Riders Fast
SPEAKER_02Um, but that was the name of one of our uh episodes, or we we put it out there as like I think it's like our third episode with Hoffman or something. We talked, we're talking about the transit curious.
SPEAKER_01Transit curious, or was it e-bike curious with uh Kelsey? I can't remember.
SPEAKER_02We we I think we used it for both. I will say I'm really excited that we're back on the e-bike topic because it has been a really long time since we revisited the the cult of the e-bike. So yes, oh my god, I I forgot about the cult of the e-bike.
SPEAKER_01If you if you remember that, you are one of the OG, like the real ones. To to kick us off here, though, and I want to shout out Streetsblog for highlighting a lot of these. Uh, I read through quite a bit of their reporting on this ahead of time. This first one that caught my attention was a law in New Jersey that actually just passed in January of this year. And it does a couple things that are pretty shocking and are a major detriment to the wide adoption of e-bikes, in my view at least. So to kick it off, it is gonna require a registration and a license plate for every e-bike of any class in the state of New Jersey with a$15 a year fee to be able to do it.
SPEAKER_02I can only imagine like the license plate being like, you know, if you go to a tourist souvenir shop and you have the little tiny license plates that say like Chris or Lewis on it, that's what I'm saying. I used to have one on my bike.
SPEAKER_01I definitely did too, yes. Yeah. Um but I mean, it's funny, but it is also like it's definitely a barrier that doesn't need to be there. Um beyond the license plate, uh, it also you you're required to have a driver's license to operate one. So uh kids now are no longer able to use e-bikes. Um, and those who are 15, uh, you're able to ride an e-bike with some sort of permit. I was reading, reading like actual legislation is so hard to do sometimes. So uh I was parsing through and understanding what I could, but a 15-year-old may be able to actually go and demonstrate uh that they can ride an e-bike with a permit during daylight hours and all sorts of things like that. Um, and then a big one here was the requirement for insurance to me, which kind of stood out as a kind of ridiculous barrier here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that is a bit ridiculous to require insurance to ride a bike. Also, I'm thinking on the permit for a 15-year-old, do you have to ride with an adult at all times? Right. I'm kidding about that part, but it it yeah, it seems absolutely ridiculous that we're putting these kind of restrictions on on e-bikes themselves. Another really concerning thing about this New Jersey law is that uh it actually eliminates the existing uh US standard for three classes of e-bike. When we talk about the US standard, we're talking about over 40 states that all have come together and they all use the exact same metrics for I for you know identifying what class of e-bike, you know, where where a bike falls into its class based on speed and other things. Um it's a complete departure from that old system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's just gonna make regulating any of this stuff properly more complicated for no reason. And just so that folks who may not understand what the different classes of e-bikes are, I'll outline them here. So a class one e-bike is an e-bike that just has pedal assist. So as you're pedaling, the electric motor will help kind of give you a little bit of a boost as you're going, uh, up to 20 miles per hour. A class two e-bike also has pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour. The only difference is that you also have the uh addition of a throttle. So you can also, uh in addition to pedaling, use the throttle to help you accelerate up to 20 miles an hour. And then the last class of e-bikes, um kind of currently under those standards, is class three, and it has both pedal assist as well as a throttle up to 28 miles per hour, so um a little bit faster. And instead of that old system, we're kind of moving into three new categories.
SPEAKER_02So, with this New Jersey law, the new categories for what they consider an e-bike, you have a low-speed electric bike, uh, which has pedal assist assist up to 20 miles an hour, so basically like the old class one. You also have motorized bicycleslash moped, which is any e-bike with a throttle that goes up to 28 miles an hour, so similar to the old class two and three, and then you have electric electrified uh motorized bicycles, which are capable of speeds over 28 miles an hour. That one I think is a little bit more reasonable to place some restrictions on. Once you have a vehicle that's moving, you know, 30 miles an hour down a road, that does present a lot more risk than a vehicle that's moving at you know 20 to 25-ish miles an hour.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Yeah. Risk like both to the person riding it. But in so many of these cases, to me, it's also like risk to just random people in the streets because like you're, you know, when you're taking making the decision to go out and get on one of these things, like you're having that risk on you, but you once you start going too fast, uh, there also becomes a risk to just general people out in public. This law, like I said, uh, was passed in January and took effect immediately. There is a six-month grace period for folks who had former class one and two e-bikes uh in order to give them time to figure out insurance and registrations. So um again, to recap to the insurance and registrations, registrations are$15 a year. Insurance, just taking a look at quotes, could be anywhere from one to$200 per year, which I mean that that is definitely a barrier here for folks. It's not something you should have to really be worrying about when you're talking about insurance for your bike. Um starts to feel a little bit ridiculous.
California Joins The Plate Push
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Uh, there's also a one-year moratorium on online sales of new e-bikes just to make sure that the laws are being followed and that the industry sort of catches up with what New Jersey has implemented. And after all of this, if you are caught not abiding by any of these laws, it is up to a$60 fee for each offense. So now we are also punishing people uh for not abiding by having insurance and having the permit and having the license plate uh on a bicycle.
SPEAKER_01So that is that is the overview of the New Jersey law. Again, this one was already passed. Uh, there are a handful of other states that are trying things similarly. The next, I would say biggest one, and we have I I mean, there is more info on this, but I don't want to get too into the specifics because some of it is changing and subject to change. So uh California is another state where this is happening, and you know, this really shouldn't be happening in a state like California. California should be doing everything in their power to incentivize people to get out of their cars and onto bikes. Um, but alas, here we are. Uh so the California law proposal is gonna require a license plate again for all e-bikes. So uh again, just another barrier, folks are gonna need to go to a DMV or whatnot to be able to handle this. Um and it's gonna require a registration for all class two and class three e-bikes. So that is basically any e-bike with a throttle is gonna now also require a registration. So, broadly speaking, I think that this, you know, it it might not sound like a lot, but I do think that this is a step backwards in terms of making alternative transportation other than getting in a personal vehicle uh easier. This is definitely a step back and the wrong direction, in my opinion, of where we should be going.
Speed, Safety, And Bad Actors
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I think, you know, we talk so much on this channel about what it is like to go car light. Um, that has not been my experience, but that has been your experience, especially living in a city like Austin, where you know there are prohibitive costs to owning a vehicle from the insurance and the gas and storing that vehicle and any repairs to that vehicle and registrations and inspections, and you know, the list kind of keeps going on and on and on. And so, yeah, for states to now require some of these things for again bicycle ownership is very, very frustrating because as we said at the top of the episode, gas prices are continuing to go up. We are focused on trying to you know reduce carbon footprints. Um, we're trying to help make people healthier, make cities safer. All of those things are aligned with promoting bike ownership and bike ridership in cities. So definitely, definitely frustrating here.
SPEAKER_01Totally. And, you know, I I I do want to say, like, I definitely understand the concerns, right? There's definitely a lot of discourse I see online surrounding people who really don't like e-bikes in cities. I see a lot of stuff from New York in particular, where it's like, oh, these e-bike riders are going too fast and all this sort of stuff. And there totally are e-bike riders who, frankly, are assholes and will buzz by people going too fast. They will modify their e-bikes so that they can go faster than what the manufacturer intended. And I don't think we need to create a whole new set of laws in order to prevent that. I think we need to enforce the laws and rules that are in place in a lot of these cities and not make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to go ahead and and purchase an e-bike. So I think that that's an important piece here where it's like we don't need new laws and new categorizations. We just need to like enforce the actual system.
SPEAKER_02And that's a good point. It's probably honestly, it's in my opinion, it's probably not the standard e-bike user that these laws are really now they're made for, but that's not how they started. I think it if you've been out there in the cycling world, you have seen that there are e-bikes, sure, but then there are the bikes that are kind of just low-speed motorcycles that are disguised as e-bikes. You know, you see in Austin, I I will ride my bike through the west part of town, and you'll see a teenager on what is essentially a dirt bike that looks like a um e-bike with pedals, but they're not touching the pedals, they're just throttling and just blowing past you. So, yes, there are those cases where I can absolutely see where these laws are applicable and where they're needed. But for the general rider who's has a tier one, maybe a tier two e-bike, you know, maybe not so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and to be perfectly clear, my thoughts on this have shifted over time. So this is uh this is I'm referencing something that is like two years old at this point. But about two years ago, uh, while I was living in Austin, I walked into the REI uh on South Lamar, and there was uh an ad right inside with an e-bike that said, like, you know, uh get out and enjoy the city at 28 miles per hour or something. And I like I took a picture of it. I don't even know why I took a picture of it from remembering, but I posted a tweet that afternoon that said, Thoughts on class three e-bikes. I have a class two, max speed is 20 miles per hour, and that feels sufficient. I worry that 28 miles per hour might cause more conflict than good. Am I wrong? I also feel like I would hurt myself if mine went 28 miles per hour. So I I kind of like tweeted that into the void. Uh, I don't usually get a lot of engagement on my Twitter account. I'm uh I've I've had the account since like 2009 or 10 or something ridiculous, like since high school, and I just I knew I shouldn't use it anymore, but I do. And for whatever reason, it just like blew up for me. It had like a couple hundred retweets and I got a ton of engagement on it. And people thought I was for the most well, some people agreed with me, and many people thought I was really wrong. And in reading through their replies, I I feel like I I came around to understanding why uh this these class 3e bikes that can go up to 28 miles per hour might be a good idea. My my initial thought though, as I said in there, uh, you know, I think I would get hurt sort of thing is is safety. You know, going 28 miles per hour is it's dangerous. I mean, if you've gone 28 miles per hour on a bike, it can feel pretty dangerous, especially if you're in a city with traffic and people and all this sort of stuff, like you really shouldn't be going that fast in those instances. But, you know, to to my point I made earlier, you are putting yourself in that situation. So that is just kind of one piece of the puzzle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and if your bike is going faster than 28 miles an hour, because uh my my opinion is 28 should should be the ceiling for these bikes. Um and the reason for that is because you know, you talk about your e-bike. My e-bike uh in Inventon, it it is marketed as going up to 20 miles an hour, so I think it classifies as a class two, it has a throttle. Um, I get made fun of all the time for using a throttle, which I never use it, but anybody who's on like a standard bike is like, oh, you're just throttling up the hill. Anyway, uh, but my bike has an unlock mode, which allows you to unlock it to 28 miles an hour. Um, and of course I've left it on the unlock mode because there are instances where I am on a long stretch of road and I can go, you know, a lot faster. Um, but anything faster than that 28 miles an hour when you are passing people, especially on a trail uh where it's a mixed-use trail of pedestrian and bicycles, which is going to be common most places around the US, it can absolutely be dangerous. You don't know if that pedestrian is going to step out in the way.
SPEAKER_01Right. And like frankly, like, you know, uh in those instances when we are going by people on trails like that, like we shouldn't be going 20 miles per hour. But but the I my my point is that like you know, we shouldn't need like a law changing to do that isn't going to be the thing that do it, like that fixes it. We just need to not be jerks when we're riding in these positions, essentially. But on the other flip side of this, like I was saying, that was kind of my opinion on the uh the beforehand was that these class three e-bikes that go 28 miles per hour probably shouldn't be a thing. But after reading some of the replies to that tweet, my mind was changed for a couple of reasons. Uh, one of the things that was pointed out to me was that riding a class three e-bike in mixed traffic is actually far safer in a lot of cases. So in many parts of the United States, we don't have great bike infrastructure. You're not in dedicated lanes everywhere you're going. And instead, you're having to mix in with traffic and be in the flow of traffic. And in a city, being able to go 28 miles per hour, that's actually pretty helpful because most cars are going to be going, you know, on a road that is a speed limit of 30 or so, and you can kind of get in with the regular flow and speed of traffic so you don't have cars that are awkwardly trying to pass you in weird moments pretty quickly, shifting in and out. You can just be up to speed, which I think is an important element to this. Um, it's also far easier to carry heavy loads if you're someone who is on like a cargo e-bike and having the ability to have an e-bike that maybe you're not gonna ride that cargo e-bike going 28 miles per hour, but being able to have a cargo e-bike that has a better motor on it to allow you to kind of carry a heavier load is gonna make it easier for you to be able to do so and kind of trade the car for a cargo e-bike. And then lastly, and Chris had kind of already said this before, when you're on long stretches and you're on a farther commute where it's like, hey, I'm commuting, you know, 10 miles or 15 miles or something to work or to an event or whatever it may be, if you're in a part of town where there's nobody around, you know, you're not hurting anybody by not going 28 miles per hour. And if it means that you will take the e-bike instead of driving a car, like I think we should do anything we can to encourage more people to take the e-bike. So um, for those reasons, I ultimately was convinced that cluster e-bikes are fine. I do think that that 28 mile per hour number is a good limit. We shouldn't be allowing anything faster than that without a license. But I do think that the current standard feels appropriate to me.
Car-Light Living With E-Bikes
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the the only thing I'll add there is uh completely agree with your point about uh long commutes because as we've also talked about many times in the show, the US cities are not really always set up for cycling. We don't have that many compact cities. So if you're trying to encourage more people to forego the car at least a day or two a week, we do and and transit hasn't caught up. We also need to have some means for people to be able to make these long distances, you know, 10 miles, go to a European city and cycle 10 miles. Like you're outside of the city now, you're out in the cows, like it's you know, in the US you go 10 miles and you maybe have just made it to your downtown or like halfway there. So if we want to encourage people to use these bikes or to use a bike, um, I think these bikes capping them at 28 miles an hour is a a really good solution for convincing people to, you know, consider that over their car.
SPEAKER_01No, definitely. And I think that like, yeah, I mean let's let's transition into that uh just because you like you've gotten us started on it, the benefits of biking in the e-bike more e-biking more broadly, um, and it will kind of round off the conversation on you know, maybe even pairing e-bikes uh with a bit of public transit and how you can potentially go car light with it. So in addition to yeah, making cycling way more feasible, um, it it's also just like healthier for you. Obviously, like riding a regular bike is good for your health, it's exercise, but even riding an e-bike when you think about it. I mean, sure, you're not exerting as much energy by riding uh an e-bike versus a regular bike, but you're exerting more energy and you're moving your muscles and your body and all this sort of stuff more than you would if you were sitting in your car. And I think that's a healthy thing. Getting getting you outside and active is a good thing. And then, I mean, we lightly touched on this before, but uh the cost benefits can really be immense. So uh Chris earlier on mentioned that while I was living in Austin, um, you know, my husband Jerry and I were living car light. Uh when we moved in together, I sold my car and we just had Jerry's car and e-bikes. And basically, uh Jerry would commute to work on his e-bike or by taking the bus. We lived along uh, I mean, if you're from Austin, we lived on North Lamar near the Triangle. Uh Jerry would either take the 801 or ride his bike, his e-bike into work at UT. Um, I mostly work from home, but occasionally would need to go somewhere working in video production for a shoot. On those days, I would uh take the car when needed, but ultimately most of our kind of day-to-day trips we were able to do on the bikes. We'd go out to eat on the bikes, we'd go to a coffee shop or whatever on the bikes. Um, we would split, you know, going to the climbing gym, we would do it sometimes on the bikes. Sometimes we would drive. Uh, we saved grocery shopping mostly for driving, um, but it was the kind of thing where we did cut down the amount of car trips we had pretty dramatically because we had the e bikes, and uh like we were able to eliminate all of the costs of an entire car as a result of it, which I did the math on this, and I was saving over eight thousand dollars per year by us going car light. So I mean it's a huge car like a cost savings.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and for a lot of people, um, that$8,000 a year is a make it or break it number. I mean, a lot of people just can't afford uh not only having a vehicle, but the repairs and the the registrations and um the insurance. Insurance is so expensive. So for a lot of people, a bike is the better alternative, and we are just creating more barriers uh to allowing people to use those bikes. But again, this goes back to the whole point of this discussion, which is some of these may be good ideas for really high classes of e-bike, but for the standard you know, cyclist who just wants a power-assisted bike, these are are really awful barriers to to entry, I guess, for using these. But for people who are out there who still want to go car light, if they want to forego a couple car trips a week, there are other options, especially uh if you live in cities with a transit system, maybe look at transit as one of those alternatives because there are a lot of the same benefits that you can get from transit uh that you could also get from trying to cycle around your town.
SPEAKER_01Totally. And or and or mix mixing them together, even is a nice option as well. But yeah, I mean, uh public transit can make it so that again, if you can go car light, go from a two-car household to a one-car household where you know maybe one person in your house is able to work from home a couple days a week or or all week, do you need to have two cars and maintain two cars and have those two-car payments when or can you replace some of those trips with public transit, whether that be even you know, a bus, a train, whatever it may be, it's worth just like opening up Google Maps and seeing what transit stops are near your house? Um, if this is something you're looking at for the first time because like, damn, gas prices are getting high, my car cost me a lot of money in general. Like, what are the options that are there? And like trying to figure out what those are is like a really good first step to be able to kind of take a peek and see because so many people are just so uh they don't even know what where the bus that goes by their house is. I know growing up there was a there was a bus. I lived in a suburb of of Rochester, New York, and I used to see a bus go by all the time. I had no idea where it went at all, didn't even think about it, never rode it. Like, and you just don't, you know, you don't know until you take the initiative to go and look, and who knows, it may go somewhere really useful for you where you can replace not every trip, but maybe you can replace that one trip to the gym. It could be to work, it could be to your cousin's house or whatever the heck it is. It doesn't need to be every trip to go car light. Um I and I think that that's something that you know people think, oh, if I'm gonna go public transit, I'm gonna have no car. Like, no, there is a middle ground, and that is a place that uh I think more people need to be looking at.
SPEAKER_02Right. Freedom of mobility, Lewis. We want freedom of mobility, all the options. We want buses, we want trains, we want bikes and e-bikes, and also sometimes your car.
SPEAKER_01Although apparently we don't want the freedom to be able to just buy a bike and go ride it without having to register it with the government and have them take your serial number down and go and check in to have a license plate registered. This doesn't sound like the America that that was there when I when I when I left eight months ago. Things are things are getting bad.
SPEAKER_02The we I was referring to is me and you, not the not the collective societal we.
Resources, Thanks, And How To Help
SPEAKER_01Definitely interesting to take a look at some of these new laws. Um I hope that this is not the start of a new trend and that states are able to figure out how to kind of you know solve some of the potential safety concerns without creating a whole new regulatory framework that essentially is collective punishment for all bike riders, all e-bike riders, um, because of a handful of people who are breaking laws and riding irresponsibly. I hope that there's an alternative way uh to be able to solve this. Um, also, shout out to Streetsblog for covering this. They do all sorts of great, if you if you're not familiar with StreetsBlog, they kind of have a overarching US version, but they're active in many cities across the United States talking about all sorts of transportation and urbanism type work uh across the US. So worth checking them out.
SPEAKER_02So, with all of that being said, um, if you want to support the show, please check out our Patreon, check out the merch store wearing one of the shirts today. Um, you can also just subscribe to the video, subscribe to the channel, share it with your friends, share it with all of your friends who ride e-bikes and get their opinions on it. Um, also, you can buy us a coffee or contact us via our email. We do love seeing all the communication uh to us.
SPEAKER_01That is it. Uh, without further ado, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit tangent to that.
SPEAKER_00Public transit wherever we're set. Watch me go.