BikePark Wales have become the first and – as far we know – only bike park or trail centre to start charging more for e-bikes.

It will now cost £15.00 for a day pass for folk wishing to ride their electric mountain bike at BikePark Wales. Normal bike prices have also gone up but only by £1 (to £8.00).

Why?

Trail maintenance costs is the stated reason. The reasoning behind the move is that e-bikers ride more miles, or do more runs, compared to a regular bikers. BPW are claiming that e-bikes can do approximately double the amount of laps/miles/runs than a normal bike.

BikePark Wales’ explanation

Taken verbatim from the video…

“It’s not because we hate e-bikes. We don’t hate e-bikes at all. It’s because on an e-bike you’ll probably ride between, let’s say, six and twelve laps of the bike park on one day whereas your average peal rider will probably ride around four or five laps in a day.

“Our visitor pass has always been about reinvesting everything from our pedal passes back into the trail network,l so actually every penny will be taken from a day pass back into maintaining the trails and building new trails.

“So e-bikes put more wear and tear on the trails and therefore it’s only fair that they pay more towards the pot that’s put there not only to maintain but also to put towards new trails […] This has got nothing to do with us discriminating against e-bikes it’s just a fairer way to charge to ride the park.” – Martin Astley, BikePark Wales Director.

e-bikers’ reaction

Let’s just say, it’s not been warmly received.

(Apologies for the rude words in some of the comments)

Ouch.

The above is a screengrab of the current top comments on the YouTube video.

The two most common complaints is that it’s a ‘disability tax’ for the less physically able riders who opt to ride an e-bike, and a more practical point that the batteries on e-bikes don’t last long enough to do the amount of extra miles/runs/laps being claimed by BikePark Wales.