The Fullerton City Council has taken steps towards implementing new regulations for e-bikes and electric scooters, following the release of the 2023-2024 Orange County Grand Jury report, titled *E-Bikes: Friend or Foe*. The report highlighted the challenges posed by the rising popularity of e-bikes, which have seen a 269% increase in sales from 2019 to 2022, with over one million units sold annually.
The Grand Jury found a lack of uniform regulations across Orange County’s 34 cities, leading to inconsistent enforcement and confusion among the public. It recommended that local governments develop specific policies to clarify rules for e-bike use.
In response, the Fullerton Police Department, working in conjunction with the ActiveTransportation Committee, proposed updates to the Municipal Code aimed at improving safety on sidewalks, bike paths, and roadways. The new regulations would penalize unsafe operations of motorized wheeled conveyances, including e-bikes. Key provisions include prohibiting reckless maneuvers, disobeying traffic signals, and operating at speeds exceeding 10 miles per hour on sidewalks or 15 miles per hour on paved trails.
At the City Council meeting on February 3, 2026, Councilmember Nicholas Dunlap opposed the regulations, advocating for a complete ban on e-bikes on sidewalks. The council’s initial vote passed 4-1, with a second approval required at a future meeting for the new rules to become law, effective 30 days thereafter.
The regulations will also apply to electric scooters, which are already restricted from sidewalks per California law. The Fullerton Police Department anticipates that these updates will enhance enforcement capabilities and ensure the safety of residents and visitors alike.
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Categories: Education, Health, Local Government, Local News
Unfortunately, council voted to limit ebikes to 5 MPH on sidewalks. This might sound reasonable until you realize that most of our arterials effectively push cyclists to ride on the sidewalk instead of the street, because most roads lack bicycle infrastructure and car drivers are incredibly impatient when bikes ride on the road.
This includes roads like State College (especially in front of CSUF; the city has resisted calls to create bike lanes here, and students are forced to ride on the sidewalk instead); Bastanchury and Malvern (high car speeds, no bike lanes, and no pedestrians); Orangethorpe (bike lanes are spotty and feel extremely unsafe); and more.
5 MPH is not a sustainable speed for sidewalks and not reasonable for people simply trying to get where they need to go.
Car drivers get upset at cyclists riding in the road, but then also get upset when they’re on the sidewalk. They don’t seem to understand that our infrastructure makes cyclist safety nearly impossible.
They also ignore the fact that cars are the main safety risks posed to both cyclists and pedestriants. We’ve had nearly a dozen severe bike & ped injuries on our streets over the past 6 months, all caused by cars. These rules would not have prevented any of them.
Cars carry a road user fatality rate 60 times that of ebikes, yet ebikes are the ones with speed governors, not cars (to be clear, I don’t take issue with speed limiters on ebikes, but I do take issue with the lack of them on cars).
These rules also fail to address the issue of non-street-legal electric motorcycles and electric mopeds, which have highers speeds and more powerful motors than ebikes, but which the public often confuses for ebikes.
If you want bicyclists off the streets and sidewalks, give them proper bike lanes and usable infrastructure, including safe intersection treatments.
And if you really want safety, then in addition to safe infrastructure, advocate for speed limiters on cars.