Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good afternoon. Again on Wednesday, 01/14/2026, practice saying that '20 '26, we have Damian Leonard from our Legis Council office and on the list of representatives, list of concerns and potential issues, there is, on that, where we try to get to everything, issues around e bikes and also, what are some of the current rules, laws, etcetera, on bicycles and roadways. Big general statement, but I know a number of the members had this as something they were interested in hearing more about. So I suspect the questions will help drive us as well. So I will happily turn it over to you. Welcome and good afternoon.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Hi. Welcome back and good afternoon. Thank you. For the record, I'm Damon Leonard from the Office of Legislative Council. It's good to be in here again. I realize I was in here the other day, but I didn't get to talk. So I'll do that spiel today. So I've got a short presentation for you. As I promised before we went on air, there's a short quiz at the end because I'm sure that you will all be such experts on e bikes after reading the statute that you'll be able to discern the e bike from the moped, or as we call them, motor driven cycles in the statute. So I'm looking forward to that. They're not the same thing. They are not. So let me pull up my PowerPoint here, and we'll go ahead and get started. Alright. So I wanna be really clear. I am going to talk to you about the bicycle laws. I am not the person to talk to you about safety issues with e bikes. I'm not the person to talk to you about practicalities with complete streets, that sort of thing. I can tell you what the laws are, but you have other experts that you should hear from on issues around pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, complete streets, transit options, alternatives to cars, things like that, who can talk to you about that. So I just want to be really clear that I'm here to talk to you about the laws. And I'm going to steer away from any questions about safety or usage or that sort of thing. But what I do want to be really clear about is there are a lot of vehicles on the streets that you're going to see from the statute that look like e bikes, but that are not e bikes as they're defined in our statute. And so that's something to keep in mind as you're going forward. And that may be something that you want to discuss with the advocates is, what do we do to address things that don't match up with our statute? Do our statutes need to evolve? Are there other ways to regulate this? And how do you make sure that the person who's using an e bike that can do 20 miles an hour to carry their children to school and cut down on traffic in a downtown area isn't caught up in a regulation that addresses someone who's got a modified vehicle that can do 45 miles an hour and doesn't fit within the statute. And so that's, I think, something that you'll want to discuss with the advocates because they may have suggestions there. And you're dealing with a couple of different things when you get to So really quickly, we have three classes of e bike that are defined in statute. This is the standard definition of e bike. It's employed in most states in the country. It was originally proposed by a group called People for Bikes who were looking for a way to define e bikes back in the day and get a standardized definition. When you go to other countries, e bikes have different requirements in their statutes. So for example, in parts of Europe, there's a 20 mile per hour or 16 mile per hour speed limit. In Canada, the maximum wattage in motors is 500 watts instead of 750. But what we're looking at here is that in The US and in Vermont, you're looking at it's a bicycle. The pedals work. Okay? So they're not foot pegs that you rest your feet on. You can pedal this bike if the motor is off or the battery is drained. It has a saddle or seat for the rider, so it's not a scooter. And it has an electric motor, which is capable of less than seven fifty watts. 750 watts is about one horsepower. So for a class one ebike, the motor provides assistance only when the rider's pedaling, and it ceases to provide assistance when the bicycle reaches 20 miles per hour. So if you're on a downhill and the bike is going 25 miles an hour, the motor is cut out, and it will resume providing assistance when the bike drops below 20 miles an hour again. Class two e bikes, these have become increasingly common. These are the e bikes where you can throttle the e bike. You don't need to pedal. The motor will propel it on its own. So if you've ever seen a person on a bike going up the hill without pedaling, they're probably riding a class two e bike. Again, the motor here can go up to 20 miles an hour, it cuts out at 20 miles an hour. And then class three e bikes are again, they only provide assistance when the rider's pedaling, and the motors will cut out at 28 miles an hour instead of 20 miles an hour. These are commonly e road bikes. E mountain bikes tend to be the 20 mile an hour variety for a variety of reasons, including safety. When going uphill in the woods, 20 miles an hour is a lot easier to manage than 28 miles an hour. Just a qualification, class one is one or

[Representative Cohen]: two for mountain bikes or just

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Just class one, typically. Although that's what you'll find if you look on the internet is these rules are not hard and fast. But from major manufacturers, like you would find in the bike shop down the street, you'd find that many of the mountain bikes are class one. Many of the commuter bikes and road bikes will go across the class one, two, and three realm there. But you can find a lot of class two bikes on the internet from a lot of different manufacturers because these have become very popular for commuters because it's something that you can ride in the bike lane. You can pedal when you're on flat ground. When you go on the hill, you can stop pedaling. You can rest. You don't get to work or to your shopping trip all sweaty. And so class 2s have become very popular. Our

[Representative Kate Lalley]: class 2s are the cargo bag, long tail bikes, bikes that couple of kids

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Those would be either class one or class two, depending on the So and that's gonna I you could potentially have a class three cargo bike too. I haven't seen them.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Yeah.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But I'm, again, not the be all and end all of ebike knowledge. But class one and class two, it's gonna depend on the maker. Some makers like to have it just be a pedal assist. So you're you're riding your bike home, and the motor is helping you get up the hill. And when you're carrying two little ones or a ton of groceries on the back, seven fifty watts is really appreciated on hills like we have here in Vermont. So to give you guys a rough comparison and this isn't apples to apples. The motors provide power differently than a human. But a Tour de France rider can do 400 watts for about an hour. So it gives you a rough estimate there. But they're also not hauling 100 pounds of kits behind them. So that gives you the idea there. So a regular human, one of us probably can do somewhere between one hundred and two hundred watts on the bike. So that seven fifty watts gives you a lot of assistance with the speed limiter and the way your wheels put the power down on the pavement, though. It's enough to get up the hill here in Vermont. It's not enough to race away. So and most of these bikes, too, they're designed for practicality. And that's something that's built into the statute. And that's what you get with the speed limits. That's the way they've been built. They're designed to be something that you can ride comfortably, where it's not going to get away from you and get out from underneath you. The power the other thing to keep in mind, is with the batteries, these bikes weigh a lot. In many cases, they're upwards of 60 pounds. And a typical bike weighs 20 to 35 pounds, depending on gears and size and so forth. So you've got a lot of bike weight, and the motor helps you haul that around as well.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: How easy to put on a bike

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: What's that?

[Representative Kate Lalley]: How easy to put on a bike rack?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Depends on the bike rack.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Oh, really?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. So it depends on the bike rack. You're now seeing powered bike racks where you can drive the front wheel in, it'll pull the bike up. Or you can clamp it around spots on the frame that are designed to be held and it'll lift it up off the ground for you. So they've changed all sorts of things. So within the realm of e bikes, so these bikes that fall into these classes, they are required to comply with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission requirements. The motor has to disengage when you stop pedaling or apply the brakes. These are standard across the country requirements. The class three bikes have to be equipped with a speedometer, and they're required to have this label here that you see on the left side. So they have this label. It tells you what class they are, how much wattage it comes from the motor, what the maximum speed is, and this one included information on the battery too. So it's a 48 volt battery with 320 watt hours. And this this was a bike when I was down the street at the bike shop this past weekend. I just snapped a picture of one of the down tubes on one of the bikes there. And so this tells you it's a class three bike. It has a motor that is not up to the maximum power, but it can keep you going up to 28 miles an hour. It happened to be a road bike, so it's conceivable that you could actually use that wattage out there. So generally, with e bikes, they're treated the same as regular bikes. They can be ridden in the same places. You don't have to register them. You don't have to get them inspected. You don't need to get a title. You don't need to have a driver's license. You don't need to have motor vehicle insurance for them. And they're not subject to requirements that are applicable to ATVs. This is all language that came out of the Model Act that people for bikes put together that was then adopted. Upwards of 40 states now have adopted the Model Act in some form. And part of the reason they did this is because different states because of the way all of our laws varied, in some states, had to register your e bike, or it was treated like an ATV. And so you had all these different requirements, and this just sort of cleaned it up and brought in everything here.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Damon, do you have an estimate of when Vermont adopted these regulations?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Vermont regulations. Vermont adopted the e bike regulations in the last ten years. I can't remember exactly which session. I want to say like 2019. Somewhere

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: in the ballpark. You remember, Rob? Five or six years.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I would say. Yeah, it's about six years ago, I think, is my recollection. Definitely in the last decade. So the other thing with e bikes is they can generally be ridden wherever bikes are allowed, except that our statute allows municipalities to regulate use on multi use trails and bike paths. And the requirements are a little bit different depending on whether it's a class one or two or a class three e bike. But the bottom line is municipalities can regulate use. Representative Cohen.

[Representative Cohen]: So can municipalities I'm thinking of, like, state owned trails, Trail, the Trail. Do municipalities regulate if that trail runs through or not?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's a great question. So in that case, it would be actually the authority with jurisdiction over the trail. So if it's a state rail trail, the states can regulate it. Yep. Thank you.

[Representative Cohen]: I And into that point, do you know if the state has regulated no e bikes

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I don't know what the state's regulation is off the top of my head. I do remember when we put in the authorizing language for the state to adopt rules, it included e bikes in that.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: You can use them the

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. You can use them on the LTRT.

[Representative Cohen]: You can ride e bikes on the trails, which is interesting.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm not sure if I get it, but we're going run into some things that aren't as that are more controversial and we're going to regret. I'm sorry.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Follow me right after. Yeah. The the takeaway, though, is the state can regulate it, and it sounds like the state permits their use on the trails. The other thing you can do on the trails is you can set you can set speed limits and things like that without specifically limiting the use of an e bike. So this is something that actually New York City has done because so they have lots of commuters and other folks who use e bikes, and then they also have lots of what are essentially mopeds that look like e bikes that can go much faster than an e bike can. And so instead of saying, we're going to crack down on e bikes because so many manufacturers use them, they said, we're just going to set a speed limit on our bike paths because we have runners, walkers, regular bicyclists, and so forth. And so they've set a speed limit instead of limiting the use of e bikes in order to address some of the speed issues they were getting with. From reading the news stories, it sounds like their issue was folks doing deliveries within the city who would buy faster vehicles and then race down the bike paths to get around traffic. And it was creating a safety hazard for folks. And so they just set a speed limit. And that gets around the issue of trying to figure out if someone needs registration or something like that. It's just a hard speed limit. And the law enforcement there can simply say, this is a 15 mile an hour zone. So class three e bikes, they do have one additional caveat. They can't be operated by someone under 16 years of age. However, that person could ride as a passenger if you have one of those cargo bikes with seating. Are

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: you aware of any municipalities that have issued any regulations around these e bikes?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I am not, but I'm not the expert on that municipal regulation. I do know that actually, that's let me take that back. I know that South Burlington was looking, and I don't know if they passed the resolution to regulate the use of e bikes on certain bike paths in town. And I do know I've gotten questions about that authority. And the response is that it's in the statute that municipalities can regulate it, but it becomes a town by town issue for the bike paths or the state or whoever is the authority who oversees the bike path.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And for somebody who doesn't use these or wear these, what kind of time frame or range are you talking about on one of these cargo bikes you mentioned, these class three bikes? Obviously, depends on going up and down hills. But what do

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: we have these last? An hour, two hours, five hours? Depends on the model. So just like an electric vehicle, it depends on how big the battery is, and it depends on how much power you're using. So a lot of the current bikes come with multiple modes. So they have an eco mode, a standard mode, and maybe a boost mode that uses full power. And most of the time you're using somewhere in the middle. Eco mode would use the minimum, and the boost mode might use the maximum power. And then how often are you using that power? So if you're using it to go up hills, you're using maximum power. You have a small battery, you might only get an hour. If you're using eco mode and you have a large battery and one of the newer efficient motors, you could go all day potentially or, like, several hours. Okay. So it's wide ranging and it's Yeah. Didn't matter. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But it is You can substantially improved over where it was five years ago versus ten years ago and where it's gonna be in five years.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. And actually, on one of the I think on one of the pictures later, you may actually see a bike that has in place of a water bottle, it's got a booster battery on it, just like for your phone. You can extend your range by doing that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Would these be only charged are they chargeable till the car gets charged, is

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it talking about an outlet? You're charging them off an outlet in the wall. So it's more more of a regular Yeah. Think think lawnmower or power tool battery instead of car battery in terms of your voltage and the sort of size and weight of the battery depending on the bike. Thank you. Yeah. Obviously, don't spend any time in this area. Yeah. So and that's fine. And it's it's something that's changing. Early e bikes had battery packs that were so if we go back, if you look at the orange bike on the bottom, you can see there's sort of this black bump just sitting out in the open. That's an earlier design on the e bike where they literally just, they tacked a battery on, they ran a wire, they had a hub motor back here. And so the hub motor would add power to help make it easier. These two newer bikes, you see how they have a really fat down tube here that is filled up with a lithium ion battery. And then the manufacturers will often sell different models with different sized batteries, or you swap out your batteries with some manufacturers. You pay less for the one with the smaller battery. And then later on, you might upgrade it to a larger battery. And so that's a more modern kind. And then you'll see in the quiz later on that some of the newest bikes have it's hard to tell them apart from a regular bicycle because the batteries are slimming down, except that you can see the motor. So yeah, thank you. Representative?

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Yeah, a regular bike can also be adapted for an electric bike.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right, so there are

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Actually, that's sort of like a battery can come on and off.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Yeah.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. You can do a do it yourself kit and adapt your old mountain bike, put a battery on it, swap out the wheel to put a wheel with a motor on there. There are a variety of kits out there. You can find them all over the Internet for these things. So

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Pouech and then representative Will.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Just safety comment adapting your own bike. These batteries can be dangerous and there are instances of people buying a kit off the internet and then having a fire from those batteries. I know my bike shop won't let you bring your e bike in unless it is one that they trust, like what they sell or, so it is an issue, and I'm like Somebody has more of

[Representative Kate Lalley]: that in for you.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's gotta go. So one of the things you can see here with the label here, and you'll see this on the e bikes that fall into these classes, is very often they'll have their certification from a third party testing. So this has got a UL certification under Rider's Laboratory. There are a number of other certifying entities. And basically, what they're doing is they're looking at the battery, the motor, the electronics, and they're certifying that it's not creating an undue fire hazard. It's not going to be dangerous to have it around your house, etcetera. So they've looked at it and meets their standards for safety and quality of construction.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Wells, what do

[Representative Kenneth "Ken" Wells]: those bikes cost? It varies widely. Most e bikes will run so you can find now e bikes that run less than $1,000, but many bikes start around 2 or 3,000 and can go up to, for a high end e bike that you might use for e Enduro mountain bike racing or something like that, you could spend over $10,000 easily. But for most consumers, you're looking at for a really simple class two bike that you might take around town to get to and from your job or get errands, you could go under $1,000 for a recreational bike with some of the bells and whistles. You'd be in the 2 to $5,000 range.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Is it subject to sales tax or purchase use tax? There are sales tax. Not motor vehicles. And that's actually one of the things here. Mopeds are subject to purchase and use as a motor vehicle. E bikes are subject to sales tax. And you do run into now that there's a little bit of blurring where e bikes stop and mopeds begin and this is, again, not for or against or saying where you should draw the line, but there is some blurring here as to where purchased new stacks should be charged and you should have registration and so forth.

[Representative Cohen]: Was that the quiz question? Should I do that

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: in the end? No. The quiz questions are pretty easy, but it'll kind of demonstrate how there's some blurring because of technology at this point. And I don't know that it's time to revisit the laws, but it's something to keep in mind, as things have advanced a lot in the last decade in terms of the appearance and look. So moving on to motor assisted bicycles, I want to bring this and the next category in here. So now we're getting into more of your traditional mopeds. Motor assisted bicycle is the next level up from e bike. So they're rated to 1.3 horsepower or 1,000 watts under our statute, which for those of you who are moped enthusiasts, you'll know that a lot of them ran two, four, six horsepower, so they actually exceeded this. But I put in an example of a nice classic there up top. And then this new guy here, which is an all terrain e bike that's often marketed to hunters because you can haul your gear deep into the woods. It's an all wheel drive e bike. So it's got two seven hundred and fifty watt motors, one in each wheel. So running rear wheel drive or front wheel drive, it qualifies as a class two e bike. Running all wheel drive, it still tops out at that speed, I believe, but then you've you've got 1,500 watts. So now you've actually exceeded even the thousand watts here. And like so many things now, you can control it from your app and decide. So are these two considered a moped? So subject to purchase This one would actually probably This one here is a good question. I'm not sure where it should fall under the statute. So if you have it set in rear wheel drive or front wheel drive mode, it's a class two e bike. If you have it set in all wheel drive mode, it probably falls under motor driven cycle, which is the next category up and would be subject And to purchase and there are some questions that are coming up now because this is a relatively new development as the motors are shrinking down and battery capacity is growing. I'm just thinking So it's

[Representative Cohen]: rail trail stuff if we're eliminating what's on it.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. And one of the things to keep in mind with something like this is if I owned one of these, I could set it to if I'm hauling gear into the backwoods during hunting season, I can set it to all wheel drive and run full power to make sure I can get my gear up into the woods. But then when I'm out with my family, I can set it to rear wheel drive at regular e bike power and run it like that, get more battery life, and keep the power more manageable for just my body weight. And so then the question is and again, I don't know what the answer is here, but how do you regulate?

[Representative Cohen]: And then my next question, do mopeds do they have to be registered? They get a little So motor

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: assisted bicycle, let me walk through the definition of this. So and it's gonna depend on whether you're a motor assisted bicycle or a motor driven cycle under our statute.

[Representative Cohen]: So So under our statute, though, like a moped motor assisted bicycle?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Does not need to be registered. Does not need insurance. But a motor driven cycle, which the big difference there is engine size and whether it has operable pedals. So this, if you remember the mopeds where you'd start pedaling and then get the engine to turn over, that's what this is. And these do not need to be registered. They can be a bike or a trike. The motor has to be speed limited to 20 miles an hour, just like the e bikes. And it's rated for an operator who weighs one hundred and seventy pounds on a flat surface that's paved. So it's really specific. Only if I'm on the moon. And then these guys can have either an internal combustion engine or an electric motor, and they're topped out at a thousand watts or 1.3 horsepower. And then they're generally also treated the same way as regular bikes. You don't have to register them. You don't have to get them inspected. You don't need to have a driver's license. They're subject to sales tax, not purchase and use. You are not permitted to operate them on sidewalks. The law is silent as to bike paths and multi use paths. The law is also silent as to some of the other things like insurance that were cited in the e bike. And I think part of this is just it's a much older law. And the only thing we did is update it with the electric motor language when we added the e bike definition. And you can't ride them on a highway by a person under 16 years of age. This is important if you all have ever seen the little dirt bikes for kids. Those often run a small motor that puts out somewhere in the one and a half or two horsepower range. As long as they're on private property or off road, they're fine. It's once they get on the highway that they have to be 16. And then the use may be regulated by municipalities. So you may see municipal, different municipal regulations around the state.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So up until this point, until we get to the next category, no helmets, no training, no nothing is required?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The that is my understanding, except that we do have a helmet loft kids, I believe. I have to double check that. But I believe it's minors. The helmet law applies. Sorry. That's alright. AI is listening to me. And then so this is the final kind of what we would call a moped. Again, this can be a bike or a trike, and these guys are limited to, in our statute, two horsepower. So that's 1,500 watts or 50 cc's for the engine, 50 cubic centimeters displacement. So I got an example of a beautiful classic Pouech here, which I think that's gorgeous. Classic there. That's the only reason I included it.

[Representative Cohen]: It's a year old, really

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: trimming. Yeah. Yeah. These are limited to 30 miles an hour on a level road surface. And they're equipped with a power drive system that functions directly or automatically and doesn't require clutching or shifting. So different from a motorcycle. In that way, you don't have gears to shift. There's no clutching. So if they do have more than one gear, it's an automatic transmission. No pedals. No pedals, yeah. That's the big thing. It's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: pedals, it's got pedals on it.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's got pegs, but they're not operable pedals where you would actually

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Pedals are operable right there, I'm seeing?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, oh, actually I do see them. They might be, They might be. So that's a good point. I thought they, when I looked on my laptop last night, I just saw pegs with my eyes. But you're right, that's a cranky. But they don't have to have operable pedals. There's no requirement here. You can have just pegs. And then with these, you again run into So I showed you earlier there's that e bike that has all wheel drive and can do two horsepower. So maybe that falls into this motor driven cycle category. But then you've also got things that are being marketed as e bikes that can do 2,000 watts, 4,000 watts. So now we're talking two and a half horsepower going up to gosh, I used up all my quick math almost five horsepower. And so then where does the statute fall on that? I'm not saying that it should fall one way or the other, but our statute doesn't cover some of these vehicles that are coming out now as technology is advancing. So basically, we enacted this several years ago. The classes still apply to most major manufacturers. They've stuck to these classes. But you are seeing other manufacturers who are going outside of this as people demand more power, more speed, and so forth. And the question is and this is something you want to hear from your advocates about is it something that you want to address in the statute? Is it worth addressing? Does it get to this question of safety for e bikes and similar vehicles? And I don't know what the answer is.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Damian, just to so motor driven cycles, otherwise known as MOSTADs, these are subject to purchase and use?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: My understanding is these are subject to purchase and use. They're treated as a motor vehicle for purposes of our statutes.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: So you need a license.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. So they're considered motor vehicles. They're treated similarly to motorcycles. They are exempt from title requirements. You do have to be 16 years of age and have an operator's license to operate them, and you're required to pay an annual registration fee of $34. I would really be interested to hear on whether DMV has actually had anyone register these vehicles. But I don't know. Maybe they are being registered in the state. But it's definitely something out there. It's in the statutes. You have registration fee for them and so forth. So they were considered like a light motorcycle at one point. But technology has moved on in many cases.

[Representative Cohen]: So no plate or a plate?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, they do have to be registered.

[Representative Cohen]: They have a little plate.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They should have a little plate and so forth. But DMV would be better to answer questions about what they actually provide for these vehicles, if any, are registered in the state. And so that's the end of the presentation. And that brings us to the quiz. So let me set it up. I'm not a robot. So the first quiz here is, which one of these is a class one e bike? Can't see. I'll show you in a second.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Did we shout it out or did we use all that?

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Did we put out a piece of paper on Alright. There

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: we go. Which is a class one e bike?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: On the right.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'll get there in a second. Maybe the better question is, which is a class three e bike? On the right is three and

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: on the left is one.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: The one on the left can have a bigger battery.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So this one is a class one, this one can be a class one, class three or exceed class.

[Representative Cohen]: A trick question?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: A trick question. So it's interesting, this is something you could buy down the street in a local bike shop. This company, I don't know if they're sold in Vermont yet, but they've come out with a motor that's actually used by a lot of different bike companies, but they've put in the software there where you can modify the outputs. You can ride as class three, class one, or you can put it into a boost mode that exceeds those classes. So go ahead.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: But there's no way for us to visually, you know that because you researched that product. But

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: visually, this quiz is bogus.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I like the

[Representative Kate Lalley]: bike on the right, it's really pretty.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: All right, so the second You guys might be detecting the theme of these questions here. All right. And this one here should be easier because you've seen one of these bikes before. So which one of these is a class II e bike on the right?

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: What is that? Yeah.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And so this is a Class two e bike. This one can be a Class two, or it can actually be a motor driven cycle under our statute because it has more than 1.3 horsepower if you use both the front and the rear wheel. So this is not to say that either of these are good or bad. It's to say that there's a gap in the statute that is not capturing what's happened since you adopted the law. And that's just something that I became aware of, looking at these limits and then looking at what was out there on the market. So it just sort of raises questions for you from a policy standpoint of, do we need to update the statute to better capture the vehicles here while we're looking at the issue of can we improve safety? Or you set with the current standards. And other questions of, for some of these bigger bikes, should they be subject to the old motor driven cycle regulations where you have to register them and have an operator's license? Or should they be subject to the less restrictive e bike regulations?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Can

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: you tell if our regulations now require if you buy, even if it's just the beginning class one, two, or three, that the bike identifies itself as what it is?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the class one, two, and three e bikes have to have that label I showed you earlier. So that yeah. So the label I showed you earlier is is standard, and I think 41 or 44 states require that as part of recognizing the class of the e bike, and that was in the model legislation that was put out that the states adopted. Interestingly enough, you can now buy those stickers on Etsy. So for example, the silver bike I showed you before, that can be a class one or a class three or Exceed. It ships with a class one sticker, but then you can buy other stickers for it to indicate what you have. But most of these bikes, the ones that are coming standard as class one, that sticker is clear coated onto the bike, so it's extremely hard to remove. Some of the others, though, it's an aftermarket thing where you put your sticker on if your jurisdiction requires it.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So by putting that class one sticker on a bike that could be glass three or even above, it'd be like buying a motor vehicle that already comes with a plate and an inspection sticker.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mean, it's more, I think it's more equivalent to the stamping that goes on with mufflers that meet federal requirements. You're certifying as the manufacturer that this meets the requirements for class one, two, or three e bike. And so they're voluntarily certifying that it meets the state's requirements to qualify for the benefits that e bikes have under the statute, including not having to register it, not having to have a driver's license for everything but a class three e bike. You don't have to have a driver's license for that either in our state. In some states, you may be required to have one. But not having to be 16 years of age, etcetera. Versus the higher powered mopeds where you do have to have a driver's license, you do have to register, you may need to get insurance depending on the state you're in, etcetera. These stickers that

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: you can get, I'll be honest with you, why why would you want them?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: If I had a class one sticker on there,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: surely I wouldn't want to put a two or three on there.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: More likely if I had

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a three, I'd want a one on there.

[Representative Cohen]: That's what they're selling on Etsy.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Yeah. So I can't answer the question for why you would want to purchase a certain sticker. But it could be that folks who are riding in place where you're restricted to a class one or two want to have their bike appear to be a class one or two and

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Reach in your pocket, pull that other sticker out. I'm good Or

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it may be that, I mean, people buy stickers for plenty of reasons. But in this case, a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: lot

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: of the bikes, like the sticker I showed you earlier from the local bike shop, that was clear coated on. So it's not removable. For some of these other bikes where you can set it, you get to choose your sticker aftermarket. And so it does raise other questions about the sticker requirement, which is something in our statute currently. If you have the bike, it has to have a sticker on it when it's sold that says class one, class two, or class three, and sets forth your wattage and your max speed. So anyway, that's the overview of the laws. Questions?

[Representative Kate Lalley]: Question, comment. Just looking at a class two e bike, which does not require any pedaling and can go up to 20 miles per hour, that sounds like a motor vehicle to me. If you don't have to pedal, and it can go up to 20 miles per hour, that like a bike's tail. So I think there are clearly so many nuances in e bikes. And your exercise, Damien, showed us how very difficult it is to look at a bike and identify what it is. So I think about safety on bike trails, and maybe a speed limit is the right way to go, and requiring pedaling. Because again, if somebody's not pedaling and they're going 20 miles per hour, that sounds like a motorized vehicle. Just sharing some thoughts.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, I don't think I can weigh in on whether the reasons for or against. I think that's better for the advocates. But I think one of the things to to note is that a a class two e bike can be ridden with the battery disconnected like a regular bike. It otherwise operates identically, except that it has that motor and battery. So the reason it gets the class two is that it does have a throttle, so you can stop pedaling and then use it. Most frequently, in my own experience, I see that when people get to hills. Or they're dressed for work and they're riding the bike and they're they huddle a little bit and then coast with the bike carrying them along. So it's and again, this is these are policy questions for you. And I think you have advocates in the room and others who are can testify on this who can give you a lot better nuance as to why the benefits of having a class two or not and the benefits of should there be another should motor assisted and motor driven cycle definitions get updated to cover these other vehicles? And are there other things that you should look at? And I can't answer that. All I can say is that the current statute does not match up to the reality that's outside the statute beyond certain bikes that have stayed within those classes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Lalley, and then Representative Burton.

[Representative Kate Lalley]: My reaction to this is that this is like so many things in our society right now where what you see is not necessarily there's not necessarily a reciprocity between something actually is or what it does or that sort of thing. It seems like this is going to become an ignored case. The fact that you can have life that looks like one thing can actually do lots of other things. I'm wondering, said, if the speed focusing on speed and the context is could be a more productive direction to go in.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'd be interested to hear what

[Representative Kate Lalley]: advocate partners kind of think about that in terms of where we may be headed as a body. It does seem like it's a society, does seem like there are a lot of challenges, I've sort of heard about them this summer from concerned folks and think we need better tools.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: What's that, Representative Burke, you're last, you're the

[Representative Cohen]: last for I'm

[Representative Kate Lalley]: sure that local notion can answer a lot of your questions, and then, what did you say that organization, people for bikes?

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They were the folks who originated the model legislation. I know they still exist, but I don't know if they're active in Vermont or not. It looks like Robin is, though.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: They actually have a representative in Stowe for pizza and buns. I'm not kidding with the syrup, but for reference, the person and I can connect the other.

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And they can answer a lot more questions about the evolving state of the law. I did look at NCSL's information on this. Their information is a little bit dated. But they did include notes about how some areas are enacting speed limits or allowing more local control over things like bike paths and so forth to sort of allow people to address the situations that they encounter in their areas. I mean, you can imagine speed and type of vehicle can matter a lot more in some context than in others, depending on congestion and so forth. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So we do have a 02:00 an area that we need to get into in terms of our security briefing. So we are gonna stay online for just another second, but we're all done with this topic. But Damian, thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. Yeah.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So I will make a motion that the committee enter executive session in order to discuss sensitive information that if disclosed, propose a risk to state property to secure.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Second. We shall move into executive session for our security briefing for the next

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Do you need a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: vote? Committee should vote. Oh, I'm sorry. I won't pay it. When they say the eyes appear to

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: have it. Eyes appear to

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: have it. And we are entering into executive session for our security briefing. We are offline

[Damon Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: for