Amsterdam wants a maximum speed of 20 km/h for electric bicycles

ANPEA customer looks at an e-bike in a bicycle shop

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 07:58

Amsterdam wants to reduce the maximum speed of electric bicycles to 20 kilometers per hour. This should improve road safety in the city.

Cycle paths are becoming busier and the speed differences on the cycle path are increasing, making it especially dangerous for children and the elderly, writes Het Parool.

Traffic alderman Melanie van der Horst therefore wants to reduce the speed for electric cyclists to 20 kilometers per hour. Such a maximum speed for cyclists on cycle paths is not possible at the moment; this requires new national regulations. Alderman Van der Horst will make a case for this in The Hague.

Cycling on the road

Before then, the capital already wants to slow down cyclists with the help of technology in certain areas. “For example, an app must turn red when the cyclist enters this area or the steering wheel must give a warning through a vibration,” the newspaper writes.

The municipality also wants to introduce a pilot to move faster cyclists to the roadway. At the end of this year, the maximum speed for a large part of the roads in Amsterdam will be 30 kilometers per hour. E-bikes must then adhere to the same maximum speed on those roads.

“A faster cyclist is thus tempted to cycle on the road or to reduce his speed on the cycle path, which is expected to increase road safety on cycle paths,” the newspaper quotes from a letter from Van der Horst to the city council.

E-bike advance continues

The e-bike remains popular in the Netherlands. Of the 855,000 bicycles sold new in 2022, 486,000 were electric. The share of e-bikes, both in numbers and in turnover, has been rising for 10 years in a row, trade association Bovag recently reported.

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