Electric bicycles – or e-bikes – continue to pose a problem according to members of Meadow Lake city council. According to city manager Amanda Flasch’s monthly operational overview, which was presented at council’s regular meeting Monday, Aug. 25, July saw the city’s bylaw department busy with a variety of casefiles the most common of which were traffic, waste and nuisance abatementrelated. Councillor Mauri Young, however, asked if the bylaw department reported any concerns or incidents involving e-bikes. “They’ve been zooming around town pretty good lately,” Young said. Flasch said there wasn’t anything about e-bikes in the files she reviewed, but added community safety officer Joe Hallahan was on holidays for two weeks in July. Mayor Merlin Seymour, meanwhile, said there is a bylaw in place when it comes to e-bikes. “They can’t be a certain size and you need to wear a helmet,” he said.

Several councillors quickly responded to his comment by stating, “nobody does.” “Joe’s problem has always been, once you stop someone (for violating the bylaw), where do you put this $3,000 bike?” Councillor Conrad Read remarked. Young said she saw an e-bike zoom past her house the previous Saturday around 10 p.m. “Education about e-bikes and scooters is the best way to do it opposed to giving out tickets,” Seymour said. “Positive tickets seem to work, but, unfortunately, I haven’t had too many ice cream coupons as of late.” Several councillors responded to this by stating, it’s not children riding the e-bikes as much as it is adults, while councillor Connie Marsh-Yuhasz suggested placing signs downtown indicating no bikes are allowed on the sidewalks. “The problem is there’s no way to police that,” stated councillor Marty Bishop. “There are so many grey areas, and what I’m waiting for is for a car to hit someone (on an e-bike) and then we’ll really have to deal with it.” Seymour agreed. “Especially when the e-bikes and scooters are flying through the intersections at the four-way stop,” he said. “They don’t even slow down. I’ve seen that quite regularly.” Read also shared a close call he had with someone on an e-scooter, while Seymour said it may be a good idea to re-examine this issue with school just around the corner. “With school starting shortly, maybe someone from the bylaw department or even administration could contact the school division about giving a short presentation at the schools or something along those lines,” he said. Read again reminded Seymour it’s mainly adults who use e-bikes. Councillor Tom Harrison echoed this. “It’s not a lot of kids using them – maybe high school age and older,” he said.