2 Summers of E-Bike Commuting

As the rain settles to remind us that Summer is over, it's a good time to review two summers of commuting by e-bike, from Ambleside, in West Vancouver, to UBC, on Point Grey.

1. I've had a lot of fun, cycling ~ 20 - 25 km each way in about 50 minutes.

2. The worst experience: getting the controller ripped off, busing home with a very heavy dead e-bike, and paying too much for a replacement, which was mis-configured by the dealer and almost fried my bike's computer. All's well now plus I've removed some of the constraints built in. Generally, security is my biggest problem. Bikes suffer from Vancouver's tolerance of a culture of petty theft; e-bikes have more to steal from. I can't shop on the way home, because rumor has it that the street knows how to break the BionX computer/battery lock, and lugging two panniers and a battery into a store isn't worth it, except at Costco. I wish BionX would build a secure bike; it would be even more useful.

3. Scariest moment: crossing the Lion's Gate Bridge in a 75 Km gale one morning in July. Another biker flew into me because he failed to foresee the vacuum effect of the call box I was resting behind.

4. Best accessory: 120 db Airzound horn -- a bargain at ~$20 from Mountain Equipment Co-op here on the North Shore. The surprise is that blasting away like a truck gets cars respect. I'll follow this up with a detailed post on the "experiment".

5. Risks: it's easy to neglect maintenance and the motor gets you there even with a dry chain or, in my case, only the highest gear working. At my average speed of ~ 30 kph lots gets shaken loose, so I've lost lots of fasteners.

6. I've put e-bike on a new Bell Motivator mag resistance stand (from Costco) so I could continue getting some exercise.

Bottom line: 15 pounds lighter and my WiFit puts my age at 19 years less than my birth certificate, plus all the new ideas -- mostly good, I hope -- incubated during my morning traffic wars.

E-bike First Commute: No sweat

I rode my new e-bike to work today. Using a BionX kit I converted an old aluminum trail bike over the weekend. Apart from my mistakes, assembly went pretty well. It's not simple, but the only special tool needed as a torque-wrench.


The ride was surprisingly simple. I rode 20 km over two bridges each way from West Vancouver to to U.B.C. This is a beautiful ride and the e-bike lets one appreciate it much more than my non-e-bike did. I climbed the Lions Gate Bridge, passing a few fast guys in tights and stopped to take pictures at the top. (I usually can't stop, as I'm rushing to catch my bus.)

Next through Stanley Park, then the West End, over the Burrard Bridge and out along the beaches to the U.B.C. bluff (over Wreck Beach).

The e-bike is fast -- just 50 minutes coming home, when I avoiding the bike paths -- and seems much safer than my non-e-bike. For one thing, I can accelerate with the traffic, so I can merge better and make fewer drivers angry when I ride in centre lane. More on the advantages of regenerative braking in a later post.

Pro-Bikes but Anti-Hybrid

I commute with a human-diesel hybrid: biking the nice bits (Stanley Park and Vancouver harbor) and busing for the busy, hilly, boring bits of Vancouver. Unfortunately, City Council is planning to make my commute much more difficult, by restricting lanes of the Burrard Bridge bottleneck to bicycles.

As a bike commuter, people think I'd favor this change. They forget that many of us that use bikes to commute a ways (20 km in my case, from the far left shore in this picture focused on UBC) often use the bus to save time and sweat.

Vancouver is beautiful in summer, attacting many tourists. My summer bus often gets stuck in tourist traffic, forcing me to hop off early to escape the crowds and heat. With the new bike lane I'll likely need to bail out even earlier. At least I'll have a lane of my own to cross the extra bridge. (To climb it, I'm thinking of buying an Bionx e-bike. Any advice?)

Lesson for Technology & Ethics: It's easy to misidentify prospective winners and losers on a change in regulation. As a bike commuter, I'm likely counted a winner from adding a bike lane. Had someone asked, I'd have self-identified on the loser side.