Source: Fietsbaraad

The municipality of Amsterdam is working with telecom company, Odido, and the Townmaking Institute to explore the prospect of temporarily and/or locally limiting electric bicycle speeds in the city, to improve road safety in certain areas.

Intelligently reducing e-bike speed is a method that is being developed to improve safety in specific road scenarios, such as school zones, bad weather conditions, or road closures. In order for this technology to work effectively and ensure that required speeds are maintained, electric bikes would need to be connected to a communications network at all times.

The speed change technology has already been piloted on a closed circuit and the next stage of the project would be to test it on a busy cycle route. It has been reported that implementing this type of intelligent speed control for e-bikes on a large scale is likely to take a long time, as agreements need to be reached with the European Commission and electric bike manufacturers. There is also a need to gather evidence across the city on when and where cycling speeds need to be limited, and whether a maximum speed for cycle lanes would also be possible.