Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Have you got an e-bike?

The city of Kunming now sees hundreds of thousands of ebikes on the roads every day.

Now I am back in the city where I grew up, and I could no longer imagine going anywhere by riding a bicycle.

It is way too dangerous to do that now. There are still bicycle lanes on the roads, but these lanes are mostly occupied by a new type of bicycle: electronic bicycles. They look very much like motorcycles, only that they were powered by batteries. They are faster than traditional bicycles, but are considered non-vehicles and therefore run in the same lane with bicycles.

Worse, they compete with pedestrians for road rights, because as non-vehicles, they don’t have to stop when there is a red light, and they cross the street on crossing lines together with pedestrians.

Read the full story here.