Appeal for speed limit on Amsterdam bike paths as fast e-bikes gain in popularity

The increasing popularity of e-bikes, often with performance enhancement kits installed to make them go faster, is causing dangerous situations on Amsterdam bike paths, according to the Amsterdam department of the Fietsersbond. Therefore, the interest group for cyclists wants the municipality to set a maximum speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour on the bicycle paths, Het Parool reports.

The organization took about 2,000 speed measurements on the Amsterdam bike paths last month. It concluded that regular cyclists cycle at an average of 17 kilometers per hour. Souped-up e-bikes reach an average of 30 km/h, and some fatbikes even go up to 37 km/h.

The speed of cyclists in Amsterdam is a bit of an issue because many of the city’s cycle paths are much narrower than standard. That makes overtaking dangerous. A few years ago, the speed differences between bicycles and scooters prompted the municipality to move the latter onto the roadway. Suped-up e-bikes now seem to be taking scooters’ place on the bike paths, according to Parool.

Another aspect of cycling has become much safer over the past two decades. New figures from the RAI Association and Bovag show that the vast majority of cyclists now have proper lighting - 87 percent have a good front light, and 82 percent have a working rear light. Two decades ago, those percentages were 30 percent lower, AD reports.

The organizations attribute the increase in proper lighting to advancing technology. “In many new bicycles, including e-bikes, lighting is automatically built into the frame,” a spokesperson for the RAI Association said to AD. New lighting is also much more robust and mostly consists of LED lights, which can last a bike’s entire lifespan.