What to know about riding e-bikes in national parks

E-bikes are here to stay - that’s the message of a new National Park Service study of whether it should allow motorized bicycles on its paths and trails.

The decision continues the agency’s practice of allowing individual park superintendents to decide whether and where visitors can ride e-bikes. It comes after years of legal battles and debate over whether riding the increasingly popular bikes on trails would harm wildlife habitat and other visitors’ experiences of wild places.

Although many environmentalists have championed e-bike use, holding them up as a potential climate solution and the future of clean transportation in car-choked cities, some have been less enthusiastic about their presence on public lands. In 2019, when the Trump administration ordered park superintendents to allow e-bikes on trails where regular bikes were permitted, a coalition of conservation groups filed a lawsuit, asking the courts to require the National Park Service to study the issue.

The agency backed away from its e-bike mandate, making them optional. Its final analysis, made public Friday, affirmed this earlier decision, finding that allowing e-bikes within the national park system had no significant impacts.

That leaves interested riders with a patchwork of rules, said Rachel Fussell, senior manager of recreation policy for PeopleForBikes, a bicycle advocacy group and trade association. “But I think it’s trending towards opening up access.”

Why are e-bikes in national parks controversial?

Many environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts love e-bikes. Like e-bike advocates, they say that e-bikes are an ideal way to reduce the car traffic and overcrowded parking lots that have plagued some of the most popular parks. But they don’t want them everywhere.

At the heart of the disagreements is the backcountry - the quietest, most unspoiled and often most difficult to access places in the national park system. Conservation groups fear that these remote trails will become overrun by bikers who would previously not have attempted them under their own power, but may be emboldened by the assist of an electric motor. They prefer the Bureau of Land Management’s approach of requiring e-bike riders to keep to roads and trails used by off-road vehicles.

“What we’re concerned about is safety and conflicts and changing the backcountry,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. E-bikes can go faster than 20 mph, depending on how they are classified, and the prospect of a biker encountering hikers or wild animals at that speed has conservationists like Brengel worried.

“Leaving this question up to park superintendents means they will get pressure from local communities to allow them,” Brengel said, adding that some local businesses view e-bike rentals as a new source of revenue. “That’s inevitably going to happen.”

Fussell countered that e-bikes can make national park trails more accessible to older people and people with disabilities.

“It works for everyone,” she said. “What better way to see a national park than on an e-bike?”

Where can you ride an e-bike in a national park?

Some of the most popular destinations in the national park system allow e-bikes anywhere regular bikes can go, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Denali National Park and Zion National Park. The Park Service does not maintain a public list - it suggests calling ahead - but PeopleForBikes keeps what Fussell described as a non-exhaustive tally of national parks’ e-bike policies. It currently lists 36 parks that allow e-bikes and includes the details of their rules.

Some parks, like Arches and Canyonlands, allow e-bike riding on paved and unpaved paths, but not on trails, where regular bikes are also forbidden. A few parks don’t allow Class 2 and 3 e-bikes, which go the fastest speeds, but welcome riders on Class 1 bikes. Acadia National Park has, for years, had a policy of allowing all three classes of e-bikes on its paved roads. But visitors who want to travel on Acadia’s vintage carriage roads, which weave through the park for 45 miles, are restricted to Class 1 e-bikes.

What does the future look like?

The controversy over e-bikes follows years of disputes over allowing mountain bikes in designated wilderness areas on federal lands. The 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits mechanized transportation in designated wilderness, and the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies have interpreted that ban to include bicycles, much to the consternation of some mountain bikers.

For now, both regular bicycles and e-bikes are prohibited in wilderness areas, including those that are part of national parks.

But as e-bikes become more popular and businesses pop up around national parks offering rentals, advocates and opponents alike expect to see more of them on public lands.

Brengel and other conservationists said they will continue to push to limit e-bikes on backcountry trails. While Acadia’s restrictions on speed are welcome, Brengel said, and the park has put up signs saying where only Class 1 e-bikes are allowed, in practice, telling one type of e-bike from another is difficult. “They’re very hard to regulate,” she said.