OPINION: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CYCLING?
Watt’s the problem?
Laura wonders why some fellow cyclists are snooty about her beloved ebike
We’ve had some adventures, Lily the bicycle and I. She has, without fuss, carried me across rocky fields, through knee-deep puddles, and along countless mud paths. We have commuted hundreds of miles across London, freewheeled to the bike shop with a broken chain, scratched and chipped her paint and left her in places £1,500 worth of bicycle probably shouldn’t be left. We’ve crossed the mighty Cairngorms together, scaled countless steep hills, and carried a shrub across Cornwall in her basket. It might then surprise you to learn Lily is a big, pink town bike, with a battery and a motor. And she weighs 25kg.
I know what you’re probably thinking, because it’s almost a guaranteed refrain, every time I mention I own an ebike. ‘But isn’t that cheating?’ people tend to cry. When I first took possession of Lily, I had never ridden an ebike before. She was a hire bike and the company who loaned her to people offered to loan her to me to experience e-assist for myself. I whooshed up the incline towards Southwark Bridge with a ‘wheeee!’. Hooked, after no time at all, I dreaded the day I’d have to give her back. I was beguiled by her powers against even the fiercest of headwinds. I would smugly leave other riders in my wake at the traffic lights, because even if you’re pretending not to race, such as when you’re off to work, you’re still kind of racing. My other bikes languished under the stairs.
As luck would have it, she was nearing the end of her hire career, and I was offered the opportunity to keep her. As time went on, I got into a more sustainable rhythm with her, and started riding my regular bikes again. I’d use them when I knew I could use the exercise and Lily when I didn’t. She came into her own when I needed to get somewhere in smart clothes, heavy rain (donning otherwise sweat-inducing heavy-duty waterproofs), strong wind or over a longer distance than I’d otherwise consider. Nowadays, we’ve reached a happy equilibrium: some weeks we might travel 100km, but most weeks my other bikes cover that ground.
I’ve met some wonderful people cycling. One woman who uses the same bike lane as me, from Stratford all the way into central London, started out on an ebike, before she built up her fitness and got a vintage racer, sans assist.
Another man had undergone bariatric surgery months earlier, before ditching his moped for an ebike. It not only helped him keep off the weight, but it gave him his fitness back. His ebike commute is something like 20 miles each way: when I peeled off the bike lane that day, he was only halfway home. Over the weeks and months, he gradually turned down the e-assist, as he became stronger.
I’ve seen older rural riders scaling hills they probably wouldn’t have without the motor. I’ve mooted ebikes to people who don’t cycle yet but would like to, friends’ parents with dodgy knees, someone suffering the effects of long Covid, friends in a hilly part of west Somerset, living a couple of miles from the nearest town.
I cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats over nine days on an eroad bike in 2019, after a sudden debilitating fear, four weeks from the event, that I wouldn’t be strong enough to complete the distance unaided. It was an unforgettable experience, and one I still talk about, whether people want to hear it or not. Seeing the sun rise on the Forth Bridge, scaling the mighty Glenshee, making it across Cornwall’s mean hills without crying, it was all thanks to the ebike.
It’s not just me: research has found ebike converts drive 21% less, and cycle 23-25% more than they did before – and half of drivers are open to replacing car trips with ebike trips. Regular e-cycling improves our health, even though it offers less intense exercise than regular cycling. I’m not sure what it is about cycling that we believe needs to involve some kind of suffering, why it only counts if we do it entirely unaided, or why any attempt to make cycling easier, that doesn’t involve pricey upgrades, is met with suspicion and disdain. We don’t call someone a cheat if they drive somewhere.
In more cycling-friendly countries, you don’t hear ‘ebikes are cheating’; people recognise they are part of a smorgasbord of cycling possibilities. So I’m using my column this week to entreat my fellow cyclists not to disdain the e-assist but to treat it with the deference it deserves. One day you too may enjoy a little boost on the hills.
Laura Laker
Transport journalist
Each issue, with her ear to the world of UK cycling infrastructure, Laura reports on the setbacks our community faces – and how we’re fighting back.