E-bikes are becoming dominant in Boston/Cambridge also. The Citi Bikes are fine, they're small and slow (and frankly the problem with them is new riders who are seemingly completely unaware of anything). It's the huge delivery bikes, the bros on pseudo-mopeds, and the humongous (and usually empty) baby-cart bikes (e.g. Tern) that are dangerous in bike lanes and mixed-use paths.
(Again -- I love that these are displacing cars. I just wish they physically displaced the cars also, and not pedal bicyclists and pedestrians.)
Our (Cambridge) bike infrastructure has really just come into its own after decades of advocacy by pedal bicyclists. So seeing it suddenly flooded with what are effectively mopeds and Vespas really hits a nerve, like it's 1990 all over again.
I think you'd probably better just get over your aesthetic reflex. Getting the family bike moms into your coalition is important to the future of American cycle advocacy.
In Berkeley the local safe streets advocacy org is now easily 80% ebike moms. I could bore them with my story of how back in my day (ten entire years ago) I took my kids to school on a manual-pedal longtail, but I don't.
E-bikes are becoming dominant in Boston/Cambridge also. The Citi Bikes are fine, they're small and slow (and frankly the problem with them is new riders who are seemingly completely unaware of anything). It's the huge delivery bikes, the bros on pseudo-mopeds, and the humongous (and usually empty) baby-cart bikes (e.g. Tern) that are dangerous in bike lanes and mixed-use paths.
(Again -- I love that these are displacing cars. I just wish they physically displaced the cars also, and not pedal bicyclists and pedestrians.)
Our (Cambridge) bike infrastructure has really just come into its own after decades of advocacy by pedal bicyclists. So seeing it suddenly flooded with what are effectively mopeds and Vespas really hits a nerve, like it's 1990 all over again.