Deciding to obtain and ride an e-bike adds a plethora of legal, moral, ethical, and sociological complexities to one’s life. That is to say e-bikes are heavier, and not just because the battery weighs ten pounds.

One of those trillion legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations is wordlessly expressed on this recently spotted sign:

Amid the many, many things prohibited according to this sign has been added a little sticker at the bottom right. One could almost be held blameless because the graphic used to denote an e-bike isn’t one commonly seen. It took me at least a second or two to figure out it meant “no ebikes.”

As we happened to be riding ebikes last week when we came upon this sign, my riding buddy and I had to engage the brain into all those legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations. I.e., are we gonna ride this Bosque ditch illegally or not? Tending toward staying legal and with general deep respect for laws and the process by which they are enacted, my tendency is to follow the law. Even when those laws cannot possibly ever, EVER be enforced unless the City of Albuquerque Open Space budget is increased many fold and the decision is made to spend much of that never-gonna-happen funding increase on ebike violation enforcement.

I’d usually stay legal, but must confess that I rode my ebike past the sign last week into the Bosque. Unless unseen enforcement drones were utlilized and the citation bill from Open Space has yet to arrive in the mail, I was not “caught.”

Those interested in where one can and cannot legally ride their ebike along the River can use the map from this webpage as a guide. Or not, depending on one’s feeling at the time about those legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations.

To save you a bit of time looking, basically any dirt path through the Bosque is off-limits to e-bikes; the paved path is on-limits.

That said, the case of the newly created packed dirt six-foot-wide trail we rode upon is an interesting one, as it’s unlike the many single-track dirt paths criss-crossing all through the Bosque. This new packed dirt trail is the first visible work toward fulfillment of an long-standing effort led by Bernalillo County Commissioner Barbara Baca to create an “Atrisco Acequia Madre Project” as explained in this capital outlay request:

“The goal of the Atrisco Acequia Madre project is to develop an outdoor education site
near Central Avenue and the Rio Grande to celebrate acequia culture and to protect and preserve
the agricultural traditions of the Rio Grande Valley, while creating a destination that grows the
economic vibrancy of the Central Avenue corridor. This project is a collaboration between
Bernalillo County, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), the City of
Albuquerque, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA), with
guidance and direction from the South Valley Regional Association of Acequias (SVRAA) and
the originating from one of the oldest irrigation canals in the United States, Acequia Madre de
Atrisco. These four agencies have formed a partnership to fund efforts to document, preserve and
share the history of acequia culture in Bernalillo County. Recommended improvements include
development of an educational site and improved connections to trails, existing nearby public
open spaces including the bosque, the Central Ave / Historic Route 66 commercial corridor, and
interpretive sites, which will celebrate historical and environmental significance of the acequias.”

The more astute/cynical among you might have read the request excerpt above and thought “four governmental entities working together to make something happen? This project is never gonna happen!” And you might be right, but there’s now this really nice packed-dirt trail where there wasn’t one before, and one of the four governmental entities has a sticker on a sign indicating one can’t ride e-bikes on it.

Oh, the legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations.

Understanding that in practical terms any attempt to limit e-bikes in the Bosque is merely performative, it’s still fun to consider some of the following questions while one is illegally riding one’s e-bike over a really nice new packed-dirt trail in the Bosque:

• Is it still illegal to ride my e-bike here if I turn the motor off while riding through?
• Is it still illegal to ride an e-bike with one of those in-frame internal e-bike batteries that make it really hard, if not impossible to tell it’s an e-bike?
• What if I only ride my e-bike in “eco mode” and the pedal assist is only 30% and not what we call “dog mode” (the level of assist one empowers when dogs are chasing you) and 60 or 90% assist?
• Is/should it legal to ride an e-bike on very nicely packed-dirt but not just plain old dirt?

What all these and a hundred other questions/scenarios really get at is the fact that most all legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations for us e-bike riders boil down to social norms and perceptions. The only real penalty I’m ever gonna pay for riding my very obvious e-bike with frame-mounted battery in the Bosque is that look I get from the person I come across on the path who sees my bike. That look, perhaps accompanied by an utterance of disdain, is the fine, the penalty, for my having ridden through that little sticker on the sign.

And that penalty is one I must “pay” despite the additional fact that the look, and the little sticker on that sign forbidding e-bikes, is really due to that small number of e-bike riders who are complete jerks who you want to just punch in the face. Yes, they exist, and yes, we all know all about them, other e-bike riders included. They speed everywhere and are responsible for pretty much all the world’s problems not created by the current presidential administration. They are a menace.

“That look” very much includes the social disapprobation that as an e-bike rider I am one of “them.” Guilty, as charged. Oh well. On to the next trillion or so legal, moral, ethical, and sociological considerations that make up a life riding e-bikes.