Riding an E-Bike Is Not Cheating

A growing body of research shows that electric-assist bikes may have profoundly positive health impacts—and not just for the people who ride them but for society

-bikes have been around for over a decade, first as urban utility machines and, increasingly, as performance models for enthusiast recreational riders. But there’s a persistent criticism that using a bike with electric assist is cheating compared with conventional, purely human-powered machines. (This isn’t the only reason people hate e-bikes, but it’s a common one.)

What might surprise you is that this criticism isn’t just leveled at fitness riders. Even urban riders hear it. And in a twist, some of the most vehement e-bike hate comes from other cyclists.

So it’s fair to ask: How, exactly, are e-bike users cheating? Sure, if you enter an organized, nonmotorized bike race on an e-assist model, that’s cheating. You owe it to your peers to compete on equal terms. But if you ride a traditional, solely human-powered bike, and you’re upset that you got beat to the top of the climb by someone on an e-bike, or if you grimace when a rider on a midtail cargo bike speeds by on the bike path in town, consider that someone else’s choices don’t have anything to do with you. It’s not as if you’re getting less of a workout.

Of course, there’s the argument that e-bike riders are somehow cheating themselves out of the proper physical benefits of riding a bike, a criticism that seems thoroughly rooted in our puritanical drive to equate hard work with virtuosity. But a growing body of research suggests that even that argument fails. According to many studies, e-bike users ride at moderate to vigorous intensity levels (admittedly, they ride faster, too). Studies also show that they often cover longer distances than people on pedal-only bikes. Plus, in many cases, e-bike trips are replacing car trips.

As a caveat, a number of these studies either feature small sample sizes or are surveys, in which it’s harder to prove true causation. But the general conclusions are consistent: riding an e-bike offers genuine health and fitness benefits. This is true whether you’re an urban commuter or an enthusiast getting after it.

No, the Motor’s Not Doing All the Work

Electric assist definitely reduces the human effort necessary to go a given speed, but by how much? A small 2017 study (only eight participants) in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity compared exercise intensity for e-bike commuters with pedal-only bike commuters and found that, in terms of intensity, e-bike commuters were still engaging in moderate physical activity, similar to brisk walking.

Brisk walking might not be what you’d call a hard workout. But consider that public-health officials identify physical inactivity as one of the most significant problems in public health in the U.S. The foundational government recommendation for baseline physical activity is at least 20 minutes a day of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as… a brisk walk.

A 2018 study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine recruited 32 overweight, sedentary participants to compare the cardiorespiratory fitness benefits of commuting on an e-bike versus commuting on a conventional bike. At the end of a four-week trial, where subjects rode at least three days a week, researchers found that peak oxygen uptake, a measure of aerobic fitness, actually increased more in the e-bike group than the group on conventional bikes.

Initial research suggests that the fitness benefits aren’t only relevant to sedentary individuals. A brand-new study out of Brigham Young University, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, compared measured and perceived exercise intensity in a group of 33 amateur cyclists who hammered a short loop on both conventional and electric mountain bikes. The study found that the average heart rate for riders covering the loop on an e-bike was 93.6 percent of their heart rate while riding the same loop on a conventional mountain bike. (Rider speeds on the e-bikes were also four miles per hour faster on average.) Surprisingly, however, participants’ perceived exertion for the e-bike loop was much lower than for the conventional bike loop. That is: they didn’t see riding e-bikes as physically taxing, though they were, in fact, exercising at the same physical intensity.

Collectively, this research hints that riding e-bikes offers physical benefits, even though it doesn’t seem like exercise.

People Who Use E-bikes Ride More Than People on Conventional Bikes

Back in 2016, the European Journal of Applied Physiology published results from a small University of Colorado Boulder study that quantified usage patterns over four weeks of real-world e-bike commuting. Twenty sedentary subjects were recruited to ride at least two hours a week at whatever pace they chose. Participants saw significant improvements in objective health measures like blood pressure and glucose tolerance. They also voluntarily rode twice as much as required: four hours a week on average and almost 200 miles per participant over the four-week study.

Yes, we should be cautious of inferring conclusions from studies with small sample sizes. But the general pattern in the University of Colorado Boulder study is backed up by other research. A 2018 survey from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities at Portland State University canvassed almost 1,800 North American riders, mostly commuters, who had recently purchased e-bikes. Some 25 percent of respondents had used their conventional bikes daily, but that number almost doubled when they converted to e-assist rides. Notably, 6.6 percent of survey respondents didn’t even own a conventional bike before buying an electric-assist model, and some 93.5 percent of those participants rode their e-bike at least once a week.

When asked why they hadn’t previously ridden as often, participants had three common responses: hills were too difficult, destinations were too far, and they didn’t like to arrive sweaty. Those are all things that e-bikes can help with.

Finally, in June, a massive survey published in the peer-reviewed journal Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives found that physical-activity levels were similar between e-bike riders and conventional cyclists, in part because e-bike riders had “significantly longer trip distances.” The more striking comparison was between e-bikers and non-cyclists. Authors reported “substantial increases in physical activity” in people who switched from cars to e-bike commuting. (The survey had over 10,000 initial respondents in seven European cities and over 1,000 participants still responding to biweekly questionnaires after a year.)

E-Bikes Aren’t Just Replacing Conventional Bikes. They’re Replacing Cars.

The accusation that e-bikes are cheating completely falls apart if the alternative is hopping in a car. A 2017 research paper in Transportation Research offers some insight. First, the authors examined 14 older studies showing that access to e-bikes reduced car trips substantially, with the bikes replacing cars for between 35 and 76 percent of trips. Then the authors set up an original study in which 80 residents of Brighton, England, were loaned e-bikes to use; here they found a more modest effect, with a roughly 20 percent reduction in car miles traveled.

The authors noted that Brighton in general has lower rates of car use and higher rates of walking than other parts of the UK, so impacts on driving might be lower than the same experiment conducted in other parts of the country. But the June Transportation Research survey broadly corroborates the findings: e-bike use led to 23 percent fewer trips by conventional, pedal-only bikes and 25 percent fewer car trips (rates varied city to city).

E-bikes, it seems, are so seductive that they replace car trips even when people don’t intend to use them that way. A different 2017 study in Transportation Research found that e-bike buyers in the Netherlands were using e-assist models to replace conventional bikes, not cars, but that car trips went down as a result. People were more willing to commute on e-bikes than on conventional ones.

So is using an e-bike cheating? Research shows that the physical benefits of e-bikes and conventional bikes are more similar than critics make them out to be. Even if you account for the assist, e-bike users seem to ride their bikes more frequently and for longer periods, which makes the physical-fitness contest a draw, at worst. If we look at cargo bikes, which riders use to haul heavy loads, I suspect any differences nearly disappear. And for urban use, at least, they’re replacing sedentary travel modes at equal rates to replacing conventional bike use. This means the comparison isn’t always e-bike to bike—it’s e-bike to sitting on your rear in a 180-horsepower, 4,000-pound sarcophagus.

The point isn’t what you’re riding, it’s that you got out at all. Maybe the next time you grab your car keys, ask yourself: Why do I need to use the car for this trip? What are the obstacles to doing it by bike, and would an e-bike help solve those issues? Maybe the real cheating is that alluring, lazy excuse we all give ourselves: it’s easier to go by car.  SOURCE

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Ontario’s carbon price experience is a cautionary tale

Selling carbon pricing to citizens is a challenge. Ontario’s experience shows the importance of effectively communicating the public benefits.

Photo: Ontario Premier Doug Ford surveys flooded areas on April 26, 2019, in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Ontario is unique in the politics of carbon pricing in Canada: a carbon pricing champion transformed into a leading opponent. Some write off this reversal as a political deus ex machina — an unpredictable (and almost unbelievable) series of political events culminating in the election of populist Doug Ford as the Progressive Conservative premier in June 2018. A more detailed look, however, shows that there are bigger lessons to be learned from the Ontario experience about conservative populism and carbon pricing politics.

Similar populist arguments about the consumer costs of carbon pricing are resonating in other provinces (including “yellow vest” protests in Alberta modelled on anti-gasoline-tax demonstrations in France). Understanding how the populist critique of carbon pricing was effective in Ontario and developing options to better prevent such an attack from succeeding elsewhere are important.

Prior research points to promising strategies for countering populist attacks on carbon pricing, attacks that have focused on the threat of rising household costs for “working families.” Just across the border, for example, a coalition of 10 Northeastern states managed to make utilities pay for their emissions for the first time ever by neutralizing this consumer pricing issue. Designers of the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) succeeded politically by reframing emissions rights as part of the publicly owned “atmospheric commons,” and dedicating nearly all revenue from the auction of those rights to tangible public benefits that are widely distributed among residents. In particular, a majority of RGGI’s revenue went to consumer benefits: programs to improve energy efficiency or renewable energy options for residential buildings.

Other US carbon pricing programs, such as California’s, have stressed public health benefits: investing in programs to reduce co-pollutants associated with greenhouse gases and to provide better environmental quality in disadvantaged communities. In both cases, these tangible public benefits have been critical to the political durability of the policies in heading off or weakening attacks based on consumer prices that have defeated carbon pricing proposals at the federal level in the US. A similar dynamic has also played out in Canada with the now-popular British Columbia carbon tax, which returns most revenue directly to residents of the province.

One irony of the Ontario story is that the province stressed some of the same public benefits in its climate change policies before launching its carbon price. The province’s 2003 coal phase-out, which eliminated all coal-fired electricity production by 2014, had major climate change implications but was promoted primarily on the basis of public health gains from reducing other air pollutants associated with coal-fired power. A related and more controversial policy, the feed-in tariffs that provided higher fixed subsidies to new sources of renewable energy, were also promoted substantially on non-climate grounds, emphasizing job creation and economic development. Meanwhile, opponents blamed the feed-in tariffs in particular for increasing energy prices as well as for the placement of large wind farms in unwilling rural communities.

Although the province formally authorized participation in an emissions cap-and-trade program across the economy, in partnership with Quebec and California in 2009, implementation was delayed due to controversy over energy prices, leading to Liberal Party losses in the 2011 election. Only when the Liberals regained a clear majority in 2014 were they able to renew their commitment to a broad carbon pricing program, under the leadership of the new premier, Kathleen Wynne. With a new leadership team experienced in carbon pricing, the government announced its plans to implement carbon cap-and-trade and became a leader in promoting climate policy action at the provincial level across Canada.

The resulting cap-and-trade program was fairly ambitious, affecting more than 80 percent of emissions in the province and setting a 37 percent reduction goal by 2030. It also required emitters to buy a majority of emissions allowances from the government, creating a projected pool of more than $8 billion in revenue to spend on projects to reduce emissions over its first five years of existence. After enacting its own carbon price in 2016, Ontario was an important advocate for the 2016 Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change to protect existing provincial policies. The federal framework included a backstop that would impose carbon pricing on provinces with inadequate climate policies — ironically, that category now includes Ontario.

The Ontario approach had two features that made it more vulnerable to the populist consumer pricing critique. First, the government talked primarily about economic development and reductions in greenhouse gases as the priorities for spending the cap-and-trade revenue. It said much less about consumer or public health benefits. In this vein, the initial five-year spending plan for carbon revenue dedicated only about one-third of its funds to programs to reduce consumer energy costs. These consumer programs also started relatively late and were criticized for subsidizing expensive, luxury electric vehicles (think Tesla) rather than lower-cost options.

Second, the government also chose to emphasize how many programs the carbon price would fund, without really explaining how carbon pricing was supposed to work. This lack of transparency about the policy design — including about the goal of increasing the relative cost of higher-carbon energy sources to discourage their use — may also have made the policy more vulnerable to misrepresentations by the opposition. MORE

 

Clean power, right in the heart of fracking country

“Along with other early adopters of clean energy across the country, Don Pettit has helped lay the groundwork for an industry that now attracts tens of billions of investment dollars each year.” 

The Bear Mountain wind project in BC. Photo by Don Pettit

Pettit has noted intrusive, disturbing changes to those rural lands in the decades since he first arrived in Dawson Creek.

“Since then it’s been a steady stream of industrialization… but the biggest shift imaginable has been the arrival of the fracked gas industry. There’s flares blasting away, and they stink, and surveillance cameras with lots of ‘No Trespassing’ signs. Some of my favourite spots are essentially destroyed.”

“Everything was rolling along nicely. We could have had factories producing wind blades, and we were on the verge of launching a major wind industry with thousands of jobs in B.C.. But just as it started to get going they dropped it.”

“Wind prospectors were coming into the region from all over the world. We wanted to tap into that and try to make at least one of these wind facilities at least partially locally owned — which we did. And I think we set a very high standard for community-supported wind development.”

Their ground-breaking work led to PEC’s inaugural green energy project, the Bear Mountain Wind Park, being fully commissioned in 2009, even as fracking activity was peaking in the Peace. B.C.’s first large-scale wind park at 102 megawatts, it stands a few kilometres south of Dawson Creek and continues to power the South Peace region.

And then, in 2010, things inexplicably went south.

Along with other early adopters of clean energy across the country, Pettit has helped lay the groundwork for an industry that now attracts tens of billions of investment dollars each year. A report issued last week by Clean Energy Canada, entitled Missing the Bigger Picture, calculates that the renewable energy sector employed about 300,000 workers in Canada in 2017 and has significantly outcompeted the rest of the economy in growth.

Yet Pettit has noted intrusive, disturbing changes to those rural lands in the decades since he first arrived in Dawson Creek.

“Since then it’s been a steady stream of industrialization… but the biggest shift imaginable has been the arrival of the fracked gas industry. There’s flares blasting away, and they stink, and surveillance cameras with lots of ‘No Trespassing’ signs. Some of my favourite spots are essentially destroyed.”

The potential health benefits of a transition to renewable appear similarly impressive. A 2016 Pembina Institute analysis estimated that by phasing out coal-fired power entirely by 2030, 1,008 premature deaths, 871 ER visits and $5 billion worth of negative health outcomes would be avoided between 2015 and 2035. And unlike the air and water contaminants emitted by coal and natural-gas plants that sicken local populations and warm the planet, Pettit enthuses that solar energy has “no moving parts and no pollution.” in energy price so communities can build business plans. No such program exists in B.C..

“Alberta has a program called community capacity building. It’s about communities wanting to replace some of the power that they’re using with solar, but they can also make them bigger than they need and put extra power into the grid and get paid for it.”

One significant benefit is a locked-in energy price so communities can build business plans. No such program exists in B.C..

When asked what the provincial government could do to promote its spread, he answers without hesitation. Instead of spending billions on Site C to power the fracking industry, which he says would mostly benefit big corporations in the short term, it could offer small, targeted incentives.  MORE

Why Don’t You Have an Electric Bike Already?

The Bloomfield Bicycle Company’s Guide to Cycling in the County maps several PEC road routes  for cyclists to enjoy. [See video below] Now ebikes are available from local vendors and offer an additional way to get around and enjoy our island treasure.  But as this article explains, using an ebike as your go-to mode of transportation also comes with a raft of health benefits.  They’re fun. Really fun. And they’re the most energy efficient mode of travel on the planet.

If you’re already making most of your daily trips by bike or on foot, you don’t need to read further. An electric bike is unlikely to improve your life. For everyone else, read on!

Would you like to be stronger and smarter? Would you like to be happier and healthier? Would you like to keep depression at bay without medication? Would you like to reduce your stress by 40% and sleep better? Would you like to do all this in everyday clothes, without sweating, and have fun while you’re at it?

It’s time to get an electric bike. It will change your life. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

The benefits to cycling are legion. If a pill or a gadget could make you happy, improve your immune function, make you less likely to take sick days, make you less likely to get depressed, cure your depression better than current medications, give you more energy throughout the day, help you sleep, improve your skin, promote your brain health, prevent heart disease and type 2 diabetes, prevent dementia, reverse heart disease and diabetes, prevent multiple kinds of cancer, help you age well, and help you stay mobile and active until a few short years before your death, you would see people standing in line for days to purchase it. But the fact is exercise can accomplish all of the above for you. Indeed, 30 minutes of exercise a day is basically a wonder drug that is cheap, available to all, and has few side effects. Since you already have errands and commutes to do, walking or biking these trips is an easy way to ensure you get your vital 30 minutes a day. I’m a big fan of walking, but due to how our poorly US suburbs are designed (as opposed to The Ten Minute Neighborhood) most people can do few of their daily trips on foot. However, daily trips on an e-bike are very doable because e-bikes are just that great. Even better, they’re fun. Really fun. And they’re the most energy efficient mode of travel on the planet. MORE