Intentional News

Electric Mobility and Liveable Cities

15 min read

Electric Mobility and Liveable Cities

Provenance: seeded from the owner’s comment on GCN’s “I Tried An Illegal E-Bike And It Blew My Mind” (260822 Illegal EBike Evolution Regulation Control) — “let’s practice what I preached… ensure there’s an Envisioning article for how electric mobility can and should be incorporated” — and from his own cycling notes (now migrated: Bike Economy - The Amsterdam Model, Livable Neighbourhoods and Cycling, 15-Minute City, Dutch cycling history, UK APPG eBikes 2026) plus his August 2025/2026 cycling trips in Belgium (Ghent, Ypres). A seed built from others’ visions and the owner’s own experience — not yet his authored vision.

The vision in one paragraph

Cities where the electric bicycle is the default everyday vehicle — not a hobby, not a “cyclist thing,” but the obvious way to do the school run, the shop, the commute, the delivery — embedded in infrastructure that makes it safe and pleasant for a 12-year-old or an 80-year-old. The car remains available but stops being the default: multimodal (bike + train + bus) replaces single-occupancy car journeys for most trips. This is not a dream of a far future: it already exists, fully built, in the Netherlands and Flanders, and is being copied at speed in Valencia, Paris and elsewhere. The UK is not behind because the vision is untested — it is behind because of politics, conflation and piecemeal delivery.

What the vision looks like in practice

  • E-bikes and cargo bikes as car replacement. The bakfiets (cargo bike) replaces the school-run car; the e-bike flattens hills, distance and sweat, removing the “effort barrier” that kept ordinary people on four wheels. Battery-swap services (Valencia) remove range anxiety.
  • Infrastructure that makes it safe for everyone. Protected lanes, cycle-friendly junctions, low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). The Dutch model: laws that favour the cyclist in collisions, no helmet mandate, and design that assumes children ride.
  • The economics of density. Amsterdam’s cycling system contributes ~3% of Dutch GDP via health savings, lower absenteeism and better use of high-value land. Valencia’s Anillo Ciclista shows a ~10× multiplier: ten bikes replace one car in the same road space, and local commerce wins. Micro-hubs let cargo bikes do last-mile logistics where trucks are restricted.
  • Mobility as a service. Bike-as-a-Service (Swapfiets) aligns manufacturer and user incentives for durability; ownership shifts to usership; city-managed circularity (Amsterdam’s Fietsdepot, 100% circularity by 2050) closes the loop.
  • The 15-minute city as the spatial frame. Schools, shops, healthcare and work within a short walk or ride — the anti-doomscrolling, pro-community counterweight to car sprawl.
  • Multimodal as the connective tissue. Bike to the station, train between cities, bike at the other end — the Belgian model the owner experienced: secure bike parking at stations, bike supplements on trains, the fietsknooppunten (junction-node) network linking whole regions.

What is already delivered (evidence it works)

  • Netherlands: Utrecht has overtaken Copenhagen as the world’s most bike-friendly city; the world’s largest bike garage (12,500 bikes); ~1/3 of all trips by bike.
  • Belgium/Flanders: top European investor in cycling infrastructure; the fietsknooppunten node network (built by Sven Nijs’s nodemapp) covers the whole region; Ghent and Ypres are genuinely bike-first. The owner rode there in 2025 and 2026 — “inspiring, and many people in the UK aren’t aware.”
  • Spain: Valencia compressed the Amsterdam blueprint into under a decade.
  • EU: the European Cycling Declaration (April 2024) recognised cycling as a full transport mode for the first time; the Expert Group on Urban Mobility tracks 277 cycling measures; a cycling economy worth ~£7.5bn/yr in the UK alone.
  • UK (partly): London cycle superhighways, LTNs, the APPG for Cycling & Walking’s e-bike report, the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill as a vehicle for marketplace safety.

Why it has not been delivered already (the honest blockages)

  • Status-quo bias and the vocal minority. People resist what is current, and opposition is louder than support (Bristol’s LTNs: ~50/50 opinion, but politicians perceived far more resistance — the “hill of hysteria” is expected and temporary). There is no unifying national “future vision” to absorb the friction.
  • Conflation poisons the category. Illegal e-motos, unsafe conversion kits and gig-economy riders are reported as “e-bike crime,” so a legal, safe, beneficial product takes the reputational hit (the exact problem GCN documented; the same conflation the APPG report warns about). Media and politicians mostly cannot tell an EAPC from an electric motorbike.
  • Regulatory lag. Product-safety law was not designed for the online age; unregulated marketplaces sell uncertified batteries and kits; enforcement (Trading Standards) is underfunded. The gig economy externalises rider behaviour to contractors.
  • Piecemeal delivery. UK cycling infrastructure is built in fragments (a “superhighway” that ends at a roundabout), which maximises friction and minimises the transformed experience that wins converts.
  • Perceived cost and culture. Cycling is framed as a niche identity rather than infrastructure; the car’s sunk costs and status remain culturally dominant.

How the vision gets delivered (levers and timelines)

  • Regulate the marketplace, not the category. Enforce product certification (EN15194/kitemarks) and importer controls under the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill; make online platforms verify sellers; scrappage for dangerous batteries funded by delivery companies; real-time speed monitoring by gig platforms.
  • Build the network, not fragments. Complete protected networks and LTNs to the Dutch/Belgian standard; treat cycling spend as infrastructure investment, not culture funding.
  • Reframe multimodality. Bike+train as the default intercity journey; secure station parking; rail operators that welcome bikes (Belgium already does).
  • Tell the hopeful story. A forward-looking video/communication programme showing what a delivered future looks like (the Netherlands, Valencia, Belgium) — the antidote to the fear-driven coverage.

The owner’s refinement (2026-10-07) — the locker standard, the scooter gap, and who pays for legalisation

What he is adding to the vision — read as Alf. This is a fleet-and-storage refinement, not a retreat from the cycling vision above. It changes what the default vehicle is in the shared, urban, network-integrated case, and it names the two things the note previously left implicit:

  • The folding-and-locker standard is the only one that is interoperable with the rest of the transport network. That is not a preference — it is TfL’s rule. Non-folding e-bikes have been banned on most TfL services (Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR, buses and trams) since 31 March 2025, after a battery fire at Rayners Lane; folded cycles — including folded e-bikes — remain welcome anywhere, at any time on almost all services. A full-size hire bike therefore cannot complete a multimodal journey; a Brompton in a locker can. “Legacy infrastructure” is the right description for a hire fleet that cannot join the network — and the Brompton locker network (Brompton Bike Hire: 70+ lockers at stations, public buildings and workplaces, with pick-up/return at different locations) is the closest thing to the standard already being delivered.
  • The e-scooter is the missing vehicle, and the reason is regulatory, not technical. A folding stand-up scooter is better suited to a locker than a bicycle — it is smaller, lighter, and needs no rack — and yet no locker-based scooter scheme exists at scale. Three reasons, in order of force: (i) private e-scooters remain illegal on UK public roads — rental trials have simply been extended again, to 31 May 2026, so there is no lawful market to build a hire network on; (ii) the industry chose dockless free-floating instead, because docks are a fixed-cost network and the unit economics killed them — Barcelona rejected free-floating outright in 2019–20 after 25 operators applied, precisely to avoid the pavement clutter; (iii) lockers are capital-heavy and space-inefficient (one locker ≈ one bike in the footprint of three or four rack spaces), so they only pay at transport nodes — which is exactly where a scooter would be most useful.
  • Replicating the Spanish rules is the price of legalisation, and he is right that it is the missing condition. Spain did not legalise chaos; it charged for it: from 1 October 2026 all VMP (e-scooter) riders must wear a helmet, breach a serious offence carrying a €200 fine; and from 2 January 2026 scooters and e-bikes require civil-liability insurance. Barcelona makes helmets mandatory for all PMVs. The UK has done neither — it has left the vehicles illegal while their use grows anyway. The honest reading of his point: the UK wants the benefit without legislating the bargain. Helmet-plus-insurance is a politically saleable trade (safety in exchange for legality) and it is what would let a locker-based scooter network exist at all.

My assessment (Alf).

  • Strongest part: the interoperability argument is the best thing in the refinement, and it is evidenced rather than asserted. Folding is not a lifestyle preference — it is the difference between a vehicle that can join a train and one that cannot. A city deciding what its hire fleet should be is deciding whether its bikes are part of the network or a separate mode.
  • Where I would push back — “removed” is too strong as a general claim. Folding bikes are the right standard for shared fleets, station access and small flats; they are the wrong answer for cargo, the school run with two children, touring, disability and the rural long trip — the loads and distances that must move off cars in this vision. The Brompton locker cannot carry a week’s shopping or a child. So the accurate formulation is: the locker standard should be the default for the shared fleet and for network-integrated trips; the full-size e-bike and the cargo bike remain essential as private vehicles and are not legacy for those uses. Remove “legacy” from the whole class and the vision loses the very trips it most needs to convert.
  • The locker arithmetic deserves honesty. Lockers are the most secure option and the least space-efficient; a city cannot locker its way to mass cycling. The realistic mix is lockers at nodes + secure compounds at stations + guarded parking in estates + cheap racks everywhere else. Presenting the locker as the new norm across the board would fail on space and cost before it failed on politics.
  • On the scooter question — “why does this not exist” has a fourth answer he does not name. Beyond legality, dockless economics and locker cost, the vehicles themselves are the weak link: cheap imported scooters are hard to make durable, waterproof, swappable-battery and fold-to-a-standard-size, which is what a locker network would demand. A locker scheme needs a manufacturer willing to build a locker-sized scooter to a certifiable standard — and no one has, because no market exists. That is a self-reinforcing deadlock, and it breaks only when licensing comes first.
  • The helmet clause needs one honest caveat, because it cuts against the note’s own Dutch-model plank. This note elsewhere holds up the Dutch position — no helmet mandate, design that assumes children ride — and Spain’s rule is the opposite approach for a different vehicle class. The distinction is defensible (25 km/h stand-up scooters on pavements versus pedal cycles, and the evidence on helmet compulsion suppressing cycling applies to bicycles, not to scooters), but it should be stated rather than glossed, or the vision will be quoting both sides of the same argument in two different sections.

Who is already doing it well (resources the owner can draw on)

YouTube / video:

  • Not Just Bikes — the definitive channel on Dutch urbanism and why car-centric planning fails; also the Urbanist Agenda podcast. (Not in the owner’s subscriptions — recommended.)
  • CityNerd — data-driven urbanism and transport.
  • Strong Towns — incremental, financially grounded urbanism.
  • GCN — when it does the nuanced investigative pieces (illegal e-bike conflation, the Bristol LTN “hill of hysteria” — the latter summarised in Livable Neighbourhoods and Cycling).
  • Why Dutch Cycling is 50 Years Ahead of the World (documentary-style explainer).
  • The Bike Economy — The Multi-Billion Dollar System of Amsterdam (summarised in Bike Economy - The Amsterdam Model) and the Valencia case study.

Organisations / communities:

  • European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) — the EU-level advocate; co-leads the urban-mobility expert group.
  • Dutch Cycling Embassy — the Dutch export of cycling knowledge.
  • Fietsersbond (BE) and GRACQ (BE) — Belgian cycling advocates.
  • Cycling UK — the UK’s national cycling charity (already appears in the owner’s notes; runs the legal defence fund).
  • APPG for Cycling & Walking (appgcw.org) — cross-party UK parliamentary group (the owner already subscribes; their e-bike inquiry is the policy hub).
  • Wheels for Wellbeing — disabled cyclists’ advocacy (a critical voice for inclusive design).
  • nodemapp.com — Sven Nijs’s Belgian node-network platform (note in nodemapp.com) — the fietsknooppunten system as a model.
  • LFG — Looking for Growth (lookingforgrowth.uk) — a pro-growth, “anti-decline” movement founded 2024, co-founded by Lawrence Newport, associated with Dominic Cummings and the Labour Growth Group, with 22+ local chapters, a Make or Break event at The O2 drawing 1,000+, a National Priority Infrastructure Bill, and visible-issue campaigns (Tube graffiti, phone theft, nuclear regulation).
    • Why it is listed here: it is a ready-made political vector for street-level urbanism asks — it organises chapters locally and picks fights about the built environment. Alignable ground: secure cycle parking and locker networks at stations, pavement clutter, street cleaning, station capacity, cycle theft (it already campaigns on phone theft as organised crime).
    • Honest caveat — it is not a cycling ally by default. LFG is pro-development and pro-nuclear, its co-founder coined “vegetable lobby” for environmental objectors, and The Guardian has criticised its focus on visible disorder as a distraction from structural causes. Expect common ground on infrastructure delivery and street quality, not on traffic-reduction measures (LTNs, road pricing, car restraint) — the two agendas will collide exactly where this note is strongest.
  • The owner’s own communities: his cycle groups (the social “buddies” side — distinct from LCC the campaign, see below), Critical Mass, and the UK APPG channel.

London Cycling Campaign (LCC) — the advocacy engine

Not the “buddies”: the owner’s cycle buddies are the informal social-ride side. LCC proper is London’s 50-year-old campaigning body — ~12,000 members, borough groups in all 33 boroughs, a legal-support partner (Osbornes Law), and a full-time campaigns team. The owner is a member.

What it does: campaigns so “everyone can enjoy cycling safely in London” — infrastructure, road danger, and policy — through lobbying, petitions, legal support for members, research, and events.

Wins (measurable):

  • Direct Vision Standard — LCC’s campaign got Mayor Khan to commit to a lorry permit scheme rating driver visibility 0–5 stars. Result: 62% reduction in fatal collisions between people cycling and HGVs.
  • Love London, Go Dutch (2012–13) — reframed what “good” cycling infrastructure looks like in the UK; the template for protected lanes that followed.
  • Mini-Hollands (Enfield, Waltham Forest, Kingston) — Waltham Forest’s turned 10 in 2025 with measured increases in cycling and life expectancy. The proof that outer-London boroughs can transform.
  • The 50-year arc — cycling went from ~3% to ~4.5% of London trips; on Tube-strike days in Sept 2025 London hit a record 2 million cycle trips in one day (1.3m normal). Shared e-bikes (1.25m Lime users) broadened who rides.
  • Live campaigns now: traffic-free Oxford Street (fighting to keep cycling in it), Car-Free West End, Action on Cycle Theft (petitioning the Met + Mayor), Freedom To Ride (closing the gender gap — under a third of London cycle trips are by women), School Streets growth, and the London Cycling Festival.

Challenges:

  • Political will is the bottleneck. LCC’s CEO (Tom Fyans) has said the current City Hall administration has grown “a little complacent” — the ask is to “dare to dream” bigger, not coast on past wins.
  • Uneven London. The City and Hackney boom; outer boroughs still lack infrastructure and support. School Streets are growing but need to grow much faster.
  • The shared-bike surge cuts both ways. Lime et al. brought 1.25m casual riders in — great for numbers, but new riders (and delivery riders) jumping red lights feed hostile media narratives and political backlash.
  • Live fights: Oxford Street may be pedestrianised without cycling; cycle theft remains unaddressed; lorry danger is down but not gone.
  • The gap to the vision: even at 4.5% of trips, London is nowhere near Utrecht’s ~30%+ — the Dutch/Flemish model remains the target, and LCC is the institutional muscle that could get London partway there.

Why it belongs in this Envisioning: LCC is the difference between the dream (this note) and delivery — it’s the real-world engine that turns Cycling Advocacy Lessons into built infrastructure. Anyone wanting to act on this vision rather than just imagine it: join or support LCC.

How this connects to the bigger thread

This note is the hopeful half of the e-bike regulation story logged from GCN: the problem half names the conflation and regulatory failure; this half names the delivered future that the Netherlands, Flanders and Valencia already prove. It sits inside the intentional-news → polycrisis → envisioning chain described in Purpose of Alf.

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