"After years of legal battles and debate, the National Park Service has decided to treat electric bicycles more like regular bikes than motorized vehicles."
"E-bikes are here to stay — that’s the message of a new National Park Service study of whether it should allow motorized bicycles on its paths and trails.
The decision continues the agency’s practice of allowing individual park superintendents to decide whether and where visitors can ride e-bikes. It comes after years of legal battles and debate over whether riding the increasingly popular bikes on trails would harm wildlife habitat and other visitors’ experiences of wild places.
Although many environmentalists have championed e-bike use, holding them up as a potential climate solution and the future of clean transportation in car-choked cities, some have been less enthusiastic about their presence on public lands. In 2019, when the Trump administration ordered park superintendents to allow e-bikes on trails where regular bikes were permitted, a coalition of conservation groups filed a lawsuit, asking the courts to require the National Park Service to study the issue.
The agency backed away from its e-bike mandate, making them optional. Its final analysis, made public Friday, affirmed this earlier decision, finding that allowing e-bikes within the national park system had no significant effects."
Anna Phillips reports for the Washington Post August 28, 2024.
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