Colorado Springs officials have found public support for expanding electric bike access on city-owned trails.

Though, that’s not broad support — around 60%, according to survey results parks department leaders recently presented to the city’s Trails, Open Space and Parks (TOPS) working committee.

Of 3,804 responses collected from an online survey from June 14-Aug. 4, 60% reportedly responded in favor of allowing Class 1 e-bikes on parks and open space trails where other bikes are allowed, while both Class 1 and 2 would be allowed on urban, commuter trails.

The city has permitted Class 1 e-bikes on those commonly paved paths — e-bikes with motors that provide boosts to riders who are pedaling up to 20 mph. Class 2, meanwhile, is defined by e-bikes providing motor assistance regardless of pedaling, also up to 20 mph. (Class 3 provides assistance up to 28 mph.)

On this summer’s survey, the city asked about another “alternative:” to limit Class 1 and 2 e-bikes to urban trails and continue to outlaw them from parks and open spaces, as allowed by “Alternative 1.” The urban path-only “Alternative 2” showed 35% support — a surprise to Kent Obee.

The longtime local parks advocate has supported e-bikes on urban trails and opposed them in parks and open spaces. Obee noticed 22% of survey respondents claiming a neutral stance on his preferred Alternative 2, compared with just 4% on Alternative 1.

“Like they had to vote for 1 and then had to vote against 2?” he asked.

TOPS Manager Lonna Thelen recognized that possibility — the survey giving the perception respondents had to vote for one alternative or the other. “It’s possible they were neutral on 2 because somehow there was that thought,” she said.

But the survey closely aligned with more informal e-bike surveys previously put out by the city and Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates, said Cory Sutela, executive director of that mountain bike group.

“Almost exactly the results we did with a survey in” 2020, he said. “Fairly split opinions.”

That year was around the time conversations about e-bikes ramped up around Colorado Springs and across the Front Range, around the time the state defined the technology capabilities by three classes. While several Colorado cities and counties have decided on varying degrees of access, the question has lingered in the Springs.

“We are bound by another level here with the TOPS ordinance,” Thelen emphasized at the recent working committee meeting. “We have non-motorized use in the TOPS ordinance.”

Voters approved the sales tax initiative in 1997 to purchase the likes of Red Rock Canyon, Stratton and Blodgett open spaces, as well as parts of Ute Valley Park and land around Pulpit Rock.

Under the voter-approved ordinance, motorized vehicles would be barred from those purchased lands — the legal matter that has come to the forefront of the local e-bike discussion. State and federal definitions of e-bikes, along with the Americans with Disabilities Act, have been parts of the discussion as well.

While Thelen has previously said a voter-approved change to the TOPS ordinance would be necessary to expand e-bike access, she sounded non-committal when asked at the latest TOPS working committee meeting.

Thelen said the goal is to present a policy recommendation to the TOPS committee and parks board in October. As to how that policy might be enacted: “At this point, we’re not certain,” she said.

If not by a vote of the people, Obee predicted pushback. “Because the ordinance is pretty clear,” he said.

Parks leaders have recognized other complications: conservation easements and deed restrictions on several properties barring e-bikes.

And “the big one, which is enforcement,” Scott Abbott, regional parks, trails and open space manager, said at the TOPS committee meeting.

Pressed by committee members on what enforcement would look like — how Class 1, 2 or 3 bikes would be recognized, how speeds would be checked — Abbott said: “We’re definitely working through all these what-ifs and hypotheticals to create some sort of enforcement policy.”

But talk of enforcement detracts from more necessary talk of education and etiquette, e-bike advocates say. Enforcement talk can be villainizing, said e-bike rider Kent Drummond: “What the public is hearing is e-bikes are all going 20 mph and they’re dangerous.”

It’s not about bikes, advocates say, but about riders — just like it’s about drivers of a variety of cars on the highway.

“They’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be,” e-bike rider Bill Santiago said. “You gotta deal with individuals, not so much focus on bikes.”

TOPS committee member Blaze Panariso said he indeed heard too much talk on bike classifications and enforcement that he saw as difficult to impossible.

E-bikes are already out on the trails, Panariso pointed out, suggesting it was past time for the parks department to set a policy and be ready to adapt.

“At this point, we’re kind of behind,” he said. “We have (Class) 1, 2 and 3, and type 4 and type 5 and type 6 and type 7 and type 8 and type 9 are coming. … You can spend a whole lot of energy arguing about something that, quite frankly, isn’t gonna matter, because they’re all riding them on trails anyway.”