Jacksonville could soon have new rules for e-bike riders, including a proposed 15-mile-per-hour speed limit on sidewalks and shared-use paths.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance has cleared three Jacksonville City Council committees and is now headed to the full council for a vote.<\/p>\n
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says it takes reckless and unsafe e-bike use seriously, but is raising concerns about whether riders would receive enough notice about the proposed speed limit.<\/p>\n
JSO says the ordinance would initially include 26 signs throughout the city and questions whether that would provide sufficient or fair notice to people subject to the new restriction.<\/p>\n
Councilman Michael Boylan, who proposed the ordinance, says the 26 signs would only be the first phase. He says more than $500,000 remains from a previous Safe Streets initiative that allocated about $45,000 to each City Council district for traffic-calming devices.<\/p>\n
Boylan plans to introduce legislation that would allow those funds to be used for additional e-bike speed-limit signs in individual council districts.<\/p>\n
The ordinance does not include an age restriction. Boylan says parents and guardians would decide whether a child is mature, old enough and physically capable of operating an e-bike.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville resident Kristin Messiana says she supports having parameters around e-bike use, particularly with the number of pedestrians downtown.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s great actually there should be some parameters around E bikes I’ve heard horror stories about e-bikes so having 15mph acquired to the e-bikes I think would be a great thing, for safety for kids. There’s a lot of pedestrians especially downtown in this area, said Messiana.”<\/p>\n
Messiana says she hopes riders follow the proposed speed limit.<\/p>\n
“I just hope that people stick to the 15 mph and they don’t increase it from there”<\/p>\n
The full Jacksonville City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance September 22.<\/p>\n
If approved, the ordinance would need the mayor’s signature. Boylan says he expects the new rule to take effect December 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville could soon have new rules for e-bike riders, including a proposed 15-mile-per-hour speed limit on sidewalks and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,4040,118,117,76126,13730],"class_list":["post-402151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-city-council","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-michael-boylan","tag-speed-limit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}