Opinion: Miami’s New Bike Plan Ignores its Biggest Challenge: E-Bikes

Sixteen years after Miami adopted its first Bicycle Master Plan, safer streets for cyclists remain more promise than reality. As the city weighs a long-delayed update, a glaring omission — how to handle e-bikes — exposes the growing gap between policy and the dangerous realities on the ground.

Editor’s note: Hank Sanchez-Resnik is president of Bike Coconut Grove, co-founder of Friends of the Commodore Trail, and a member of the county’s Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee. He was a leader of the group that advocated for the City of Miami’s first bicycle plan, adopted in 2009. He wrote this Community Voices piece for the Spotlight.

When my wife and I moved to Miami from Berkeley, Calif., in 2005, I thought it was for an experimental visit. One thing led to another and here we are, firmly ensconced in Coconut Grove, 21 years later. 

For decades, beginning in New York City, I’ve been a strong advocate for safe urban bicycling. When we arrived in Miami, I considered giving up bicycling completely. Everywhere I went, people told me they were terrified of biking. The statistics justify their fears: South Florida is one of the most dangerous places in the country for bicyclists (and pedestrians). 

I and many others in Miami were determined to change that. We conferred with community leaders and elected officials. We went to a lot of boring meetings. Finally, we convinced the City of Miami to adopt its first ever bicycle master plan, which was passed by the City Commission in September 2009. Bicycling Magazine later identified Miami as one of the most promising cities in the country for bicycling.

My bike remains my primary means of transportation, and Miami still has a lot of promise for safe cycling. But it’s a promise that, so far, remains unfulfilled. Now e-bikes are on the scene, making everything else a lot more complicated.

Sixteen years after the adoption of Miami’s bike plan, a new Bicycle Master Plan came before the City Commission in November 2025. It was deferred to the January 22 meeting in order to get more community input. It’s been deferred again to March. It has a lot of problems. 

A main shortcoming is its lack of focus that would help policymakers identify projects that merit attention now, not years from now. To remedy that, local bicycling advocates have developed criteria for 10 high-priority projects that could — and should — be completed in the next five years. We’ve also called for a commitment from the City of Miami to update the plan every five years. 

After the adoption of the 2009 bike plan, the city supported a staff bicycle-pedestrian planner position. Eventually, that position morphed into something else. Today, the closest Miami gets to a full-time staff member for bicycling is a “Transportation Planner” who’s responsible for multiple projects, among which the Bicycle Master Plan is just one.

A much more serious problem: The updated Bicycle Master Plan is out of sync with the evolving realities of urban bicycling. A lot more people are riding bicycles in Miami than in 2009, and, as a result of Miami’s relentless overdevelopment without infrastructure to support it, a lot more motor vehicle traffic is clogging our roadways. 

The idea that our streets are for cars only is antiquated. Miami’s traffic congestion, among the worst of any city in the U.S., is testament to that. Miami will never have enough street space for all the cars competing for it. In addition to better mass transit, Miami needs to make space for “micromobility”—bicycles, scooters, and, yes, e-bikes.

In 2009, e-bikes scarcely existed. Now they’re everywhere, and concern about them has become part of a national debate.

Just weeks ago, an elderly Miami couple who live on Grove Isle were struck by an e-bike driven by a 15-year-old while walking on the Commodore Trail on their way into Kennedy Park. They were hospitalized for three weeks and will need four months for a full recovery. Previously, in Key Biscayne, a teenager on an e-bike collided with, and killed, an elderly woman on a pedal bike. Another teenager on an e-bike crashed into a middle-aged male bicyclist on the Rickenbacker Causeway, resulting in the man’s death. 

A key issue is how e-bikes are defined and how to deal with the different e-bike categories. The Coconut Grove and Rickenbacker incidents involved electric dirt bikes, which are much heavier, faster, and potentially more dangerous than bicycles with electric motors. 

Policymakers everywhere are grappling with legislation that will take the different kinds of e-bikes into account and establish rules about which types are allowed on which kinds of streets or off-road paths, what the speed limits should be, and what rules should govern licenses, helmets, and age limits for e-bikes. 

A consensus on these issues is beginning to emerge, but we’re still in the early stages of incorporating e-bikes into the overall bicycling and transportation mix. A key criterion is the power of the engine. E-bikes are generally defined as having motors below 750 watts of power. According to the Miami Police Department, the “dirt bike” that hit the couple on the Commodore Trail “is rated at 750W and had no pedals so…is not legal on our streets.”

What does the updated Bicycle Master Plan say about e-bikes? Not a word. When asked about that, Collin Worth, the city’s transportation planner, commented in an email that “By Florida statute, e-bikes are bikes.” In other words, according to Florida law, e-bikes are the equal of regular pedal-driven bicycles. But, clearly, they are not. 

Worth also replied to the question about e-bikes with, “Do you have something in particular you would like to see?”

How about, for starters, an entire section of the updated plan on e-bikes, with some innovative ideas about ways Miami might address the issue? It will take time to develop that, but the City Commission could require an addendum to the Bicycle Master Plan with a strong and realistic e-bike chapter, and then adopt it when it’s ready. 

In the meantime, the world around Miami is buzzing with concern about e-bikes. Other cities have adopted e-bike legislation, and a new e-bike bill is being reviewed in Tallahassee. E-bikes are here to stay, and they’re a distant, dangerous cousin of pedal bikes.

There’s still time for public input to the updated bike plan. For a web page devoted to the plan, click here. The page has several components, including both the existing plan and the proposed new plan, a community survey about bicycling, and an interactive ArcGIS map where users can pinpoint locations that need improvement and then add their comments and suggestions.

It’s not too late to get involved in promoting bicycle safety in the City of Miami. It will never be too late for that. But Miami should make it a major priority — and include e-bike-related safety in the discussion.