CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — As more and more people are riding e-bikes around their community, Castle Rock Police are taking a unique approach to ensure what residents are riding is not only legal, but also safe.
Castle Rock PD's new E-Bike Classification Program gives owners the opportunity to voluntarily get their e-bike inspected by a CRPD officer and if deemed legal, the owner will be given a classification sticker.
"CRPD came up with this idea to help us classify e-bikes visually before we ever have to make contact with the riders," CRPD Sargent Amanda Lane told Denver7's Douglas County Reporter Tyler Melito.
Lane says having these classification stickers on e-bikes will allow for three things. The first is giving officers the ability to easily determine whether that bike should be on the road.
"What that sticker is going to allow us to do is a patrol officer or a community policing officer, or anybody out in the community seeing that bike riding, they automatically can look at the sticker and recognize, hey, that's a Class 3 bike, it doesn't belong on a sidewalk, and then we can make contact with that person," Lane explained.
The second is giving an opportunity for officers to educate the public, according to Lane.
"We want to make sure that everyone knows where they can ride, when they can ride, and what they can ride, because we don't want to end up with a fatality or a kid getting hit on a bike because he doesn't know the laws and doesn't know where he or she is supposed to be riding," Lane detailed.
The third, Lane said, is creating positive interactions with the public in a way they might not have been able to otherwise.
"I think it's actually going to increase our community interactions in a healthy way because now, if we see a kid riding with one of these stickers on, we can wave and say 'cool Class 2,' right? Or 'way to be on the side.' And that way, we're having a good, positive interaction," Lane said.
Lane did tell Melito, however, that just because an e-bike has a classification sticker and is legal to be on the road, doesn't mean a rider can't get pulled over.
"We're looking for that reckless behavior, even if your kid has a Class 2 sticker on their bike, but they're riding through traffic into oncoming traffic, or jumping, you know, sidewalks and grassy areas, or tearing up our parks, we're still going to contact them and make sure that they know that that's not OK either," Lane outlined.
But it's not just CRPD making sure the community knows what is and what isn't allowed on the road. Local businesses like Castle Rock Bike and Ski are, too.
"Hopefully it's something that we can really get all of the residents of Castle Rock to to adhere to and participate in," said Castle Rock Bike and Ski Owner Mark Neel.
Neel and his wife KC have owned their shop in downtown Castle Rock since 2001. Neel notes how much both the community and cycling culture have changed.
"We've seen Castle Rock go from a town of about 18,000 people now up to about 90,000 people," Neal said. "What's nice about e-bikes is it's really brought a lot of non-traditional cyclists into cycling, which has been really good for our sport. For so many years we were just strictly advertising and focusing on the hardcore enthusiast level rider, which is great. But the problem is, we weren't really growing any of the market, and e-bikes has been — it really has saved the bicycling industry."
And while Neel doesn't sell e-motos at his shop, he has noticed them becoming more popular.
"I've been a crazy cyclist since I was a little kid, and that's kind of the the experience I've been wanting to market and sell to my customers so that's really why we never got into the e-moto business," Neel said. "People don't understand is they've kind of handed all their children a legitimate dirt bike that can go very fast and is not really appropriate for letting them use as pieces of transportation around town."
For right now, Lane said the classification program is only available to Castle Rock residents, but she looks forward to working with other agencies in both Douglas County and Colorado to bring the program to other communities.
