Sign This Petition to Legally Define Electric Bikes in New York State

20 April 2012 by Laurence Clarkberg

I created the following petition encouraging New York State to legally define electric bikes. Currently electric bikes are in a kind of legal limbo, and the bill that would bring them out of that limbo has been stuck in committees for several years. Please read the following petition. If you agree with it, send me your name and your official title as a token of your agreement. After adding everyone’s name to the list I’ll send it off to Albany. You can also comment on this bill on the NY Senate website.

-Larry Clarkberg, Friends Bike Clinic

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Dear Senators Dilan and O’Mara,

We are writing to you to encourage passage of New York Senate Bill S1357B. This bill would legally define electric bicycles as follows:

HAVE A POWER OUTPUT OF NOT MORE THAN SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY WATTS; BE INCAPABLE  OF PROPELLING THE DEVICE AT A SPEED OF MORE THAN TWENTY MILES PER HOUR ON LEVEL GROUND; AND BE INCAPABLE OF FURTHER INCREASING  THE  SPEED OF  THE  DEVICE WHEN HUMAN POWER IS USED TO PROPEL THE DEVICE AT OR MORE THAN TWENTY MILES PER HOUR.

Ithaca has a great biking community and supportive city administrators. Because of the hills here, however, everyday bicycling is limited to the most athletic of us. Electric bikes could change all that. Electric bikes would enable more students and families to choose bicycling as a means of transportation. However, the ambiguous legality of electric bikes in New York State has had a stifling effect. We feel this is the opposite direction our elected officials should be taking; electric bike use should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

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We the undersigned support immediate passage of New York Senate Bill S1357B-2011.

Larry Clarkberg, Director, Friends Bike Clinic

David P. McCobb, Assoc. Professor, Cornell University, and bike commuter

Alan R. Bleier, Sr. Research Assoc., Cornell University, and bike commuter

Kent Johnson, Junior Transportation Engineer, City of Ithaca Engineering Office

Victoria Armstrong, Project Associate, Creating Healthy Places, Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County

Govind Acharya, City of Ithaca, Chair, Planning & Development & Commissioner on the Board of Public Works

Thea Clarkberg, electric bike commuter

Graham Ottoson, Nurse Practitioner, bike commuter

Karim Beers, Cornell graduate student

Tobias Hanrath, Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering , Cornell University

Dwight Mengel, Chief Transportation Planner, Tompkins County Dept of Social Services, and bike commuter

Sylvie Froncek, Recycle Ithaca’s Bicycles

Laetitia de Freslon, Marketing & Operations Manager at The History Center in Tompkins County, bike commuter

David Kay, former Chairman, City of Ithaca Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council (BPAC)

Jeanne Leccese,  Coordinator, Creating Healthy Places, Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County

Daniel Keough, Voting member of the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council of the city of Ithaca, NY, and daily bike commuter

Chris Proulx, City of Ithaca Alderperson, Ward 5

Ray Weaver, Way2Go program manager Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County

Anna Cook, Ithaca Carshare, Assistant Director – Fleet, and bike commuter

Jennifer Dotson, City of Ithaca Alderperson Ward 1, and bike commuter

Fernando de Aragon, Director, Ithaca Tompkins County Transportation Council

Robbert Van Renesse, Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University

Gail Steinhart, City of Ithaca Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council

Jeff Inman, owner of Cayuga Ski & Cyclery bike store

Christopher Sturgeon, motorcyclist

Lauren Goldberg, Head of Ithaca College’s Bomber Bike Initiative

Eric Duchinsky, commuter, Brooklyn, NY

Ken Stuart, Senior Web Developer for cornell.edu and want-to-be-an-electric-bike-commuter

Josh Lower, Pedestrian and Bike Commuter, Ithaca NY

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