Council split on new rules for e-bikes, scooters

A near-collision outside a Lloydminster shopping mall is fuelling debate over how the city should handle electric bikes and scooters under its proposed Traffic Bylaw rewrite.

Coun. Michele Charles Gustafson described witnessing the incident during Monday’s Governance and Priorities Committee meeting.

“I was turning into the mall and I was behind a vehicle that was turning left into the parking lot. A person on a device sped across the road from Wayside Plaza, and on the driver’s side of that vehicle, as the driver was trying to make the left turn, swiped that vehicle,” said Charles Gustafson. “The driver was able to stop, but the person fell off and rolled.”

She said the rider got up and kept going.

“I was shook for the next 30 minutes,” said Charles Gustafson.

The draft bylaw defines power-assisted bicycles for the first time, using Saskatchewan’s existing standard, pedals required, under 500 watts, no motor assistance above 32 km/h. Alberta has no equivalent definition. E-scooters and other micromobility devices are addressed separately, though the city says it’s still waiting on provincial direction.

Charles Gustafson said the draft doesn’t go far enough to address what she witnessed.

“As I’m reading this bylaw, the overwhelming feeling was, this doesn’t fix it,” said Charles Gustafson.

Andrew DeGruchy, the city’s director of public safety, said the city’s hands are tied on what can legally use a roadway.

“The federal government or the province needs to stipulate what can and cannot be used on a roadway or a sidewalk. We can’t do that,” said DeGruchy.

He said the bylaw is meant as a stopgap until provincial rules catch up.

“We do hope for further provincial changes related to micro-mobility devices, and we may implement a bylaw for that once the government of Alberta catches up to it a little bit. But this is just what we’re suggesting in the absence of that so far,” said DeGruchy.

Charles Gustafson said that leaves advocacy as the city’s main tool in the meantime.

“So then we’re just going to have to get our advocacy gloves on and start knocking on some doors,” said Charles Gustafson.

Coun. Jim Taylor raised a different concern, that the proposed power-assisted bicycle definition may be unenforceable as written.

“I feel by defining what that is in this bylaw and then allowing it to open up, that it’s on our roadways without proper training, classification, determination, that we are going to open up some potential issues,” said Taylor. “I would rather see this definition taken out.”

Taylor said devices can be modified to change how they’re classified.

“There are ways to change the classification of a power-assisted bicycle… if I get pulled over by a bylaw officer and they’re trying to tell me my bicycle only goes this or that, and I can press two buttons on my bike to change the power peak and what it can put out, then we’re going to get into a whole lot of it,” said Taylor.

DeGruchy said the city will review the concern before the bylaw returns to council.

Mayor Gerald Albers said the issue may end up being resolved at the provincial level rather than the municipal one.

“There’s been communities across the province that are asking the province to push, and we’ll see a resolution come forward, I believe,” said Albers. “I hope that before someone has a major accident, because I think that’s always pushes legislation, but it’s not the right time for that.”