Shakopee, Minnesota — If you want to make tracks on a Minnesota trail this spring, be aware that e-bikes are everywhere, and the majority of them aren’t going anywhere.
“I’ve been arguing for these things for a very long time,” said Jason Tufty, as he displayed his electric-assist mountain bike. “They are a lot of fun. I’m in my fifties now, and I get to ride alongside younger people. These things are fantastic.
Tufty is the president of Minnesota Off Road Cyclists (MORC), which maintains 17 trails throughout the Twin Cities area. He admits that e-bike adoption on local trails has taken some time and continues to cause confusion.
“We’re in a grey area,” he said. “Nobody seems to know what the rules are.”
In the midst of the confusion, he claims that a class of not-quite-e-bikes known as e-motos is complicating matters even further.
“The performance difference is what is the real problem,” according to him. “This bike is only 250 watts, the law will allow up to 750 watts and most of these e-motos are probably over 1,000.”
E-motos are difficult to define, but they encompass all three types of e-bikes permitted on Minnesota trails.
“So, the bikes we’re talking about don’t have pedals,” explained Kyle Sobota, Shakopee’s senior planner. “They’re like a dirt bike without pedals. “They have footpegs.”
Sobota, who also coaches the Shakopee mountain bike team, says the city has joined others in displaying signs indicating that e-moto bikes are not permitted.
“It’s an issue that a lot of trails are seeing,” he informed me. “We see riders out here and we try to educate them and let them know that it’s not allowed for e-moto use.”
However, the effort to police the issue has also created confusion about which e-bikes are acceptable.
Tyler Walters, a salesperson for Pedego Electric Bikes in Eden Prairie, said that throttles are permitted, but the maximum speed is 20 miles per hour. “Everything that we sell off our floor is a legal class two bike like this.”
Minnesota allows Class one, two, and three e-bikes on state trails. Class two and three bikes, which both have throttles and pedals, can cause confusion. Class two bikes are limited to top speeds of 20 mph, whereas class three bikes can legally reach 28 mph.
“We have some models that we can reprogram to be a class three but it’s not something we do often,” Walters told reporters. “You know, 28 miles per hour feels a lot faster when you’re on a bike than in a car.”
Because of the throttles, some local mountain bike trails only accept Class One bikes.
“Class One is what I have here today,” Tufty stated. “Class one is pedal assist only, so there is no throttle on this bike.”
While some trails have slightly different rules, Tufty says the majority are working toward a policy that reflects the state. However, he claims that e-moto bikes continue to be the most serious issue worldwide.
“If you’re going 40-50 miles an hour and somebody is just pedaling along at 10, that’s a real fast rate of closure and somebody is going to get hurt,” Tufty informed the crowd. That’s our main concern.
And, because most are not street legal and are driven by teenagers, the concern does not end at the trail.
According to the state, no one under the age of 15 should ride an e-bike on a state trail.
“If I had somewhere to tell a kid on an e-Moto he could go ride in the metro, it would really probably solve some of our issues,” Tufty admitted. “I don’t foresee that happening right away, but that could be a goal.”