this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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I'm kind of looking at ebikes for my ~10 mile commute to work, which uses no bike paths. 20 mph would be okay, but faster would be nice. Part of the route is on a country road, the rest is on the shoulder of a 50 mph highway (which is pretty wide and very popular for cycling already).
I understand the bike path concern, but in my use case, there isn't much reason to be limited to 20 mph.
I work for a bike shop, though, so I might be limited to brands they sell. :)
@limelight79 @someguy3 Just because other infrastructure sucks doesn't mean other laws should suck, we should fix the infrastructure.
When I first rode one I thought it should go up to 30 mph 48 km/h, but on reflection that's just too fast for mingling with pedestrians. Infrastructure is still going to have lots of shared paths and lots of interaction with pedestrians, so I think it should be limited to 20 mph. And you just know people will be idiots with them anyway. You see this problem with cars, they go fast and people are idiots so we have to separate them out. The advantage of bikes is that they mingle and can go everywhere, we want to keep that for for pedelecs/ebikes.
Your travel time with 20 mph can be pretty decent when you start grade separating major intersections to take out the wait time at lights, and you don't need signalized intersections everywhere like with cars (if you can get a road off the major roads). Plus when you start exceeding 20 you're really getting into self injury if you just wipe out.
@someguy3 The better infrastructure I was meaning it better options that don't mingle with cars, so the slower speeds are fine.
And any trip that isn't fast enough at 20mph should involve a train ;)