St. C. plans to evolve bike ordinance to include e-bikes
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ST. CLAIRSVILLE - The city of St. Clairsville will be updating its bicycle ordinance to include electronic bikes within city limits.
During Monday's regularly scheduled city council meeting, council passed an ordinance to update Title 9, Section 373 of the city's codified ordinances. The current ordinance states that normal traffic codes are applicable to bicycles and electric bicycles whenever a bicycle or electric bicycle is operated upon any street or upon any path set aside for the exclusive use of bicycles.
The city decided to change the ordinance to add limitations on which roads e-bikes will be allowed on and how they’re dealt with in traffic.
"Basically it had not been updated in a number of years. And here, more recently, we’ve been dealing with more issues with e-bikes, and it kind of affects even how a bike is defined for the city," Law director Joe Vavra said. "So council adopted some updates to that legislation to address some of the issues of e-bikes being on the roadways and trying to keep everybody safe, drivers and people who are on the bikes themselves."
He added that the new ordinance will now allow violations to be cited. Vavra said that the ordinance will go into effect 30 days after the meeting once Mayor Kathryn Thalman signs it.
Thalman said that Monday's motion is not to determine the specifics but to get the wheels in motion for council determining where the e-bikes will be allowed.
She said that the idea came from seeing several children and adults taking the e-bikes on the city's bike trail. The bike trail currently has signs that state that no motorized vehicles are allowed on the trail.
"What really got the ball rolling was having some people down on the bike trail on them and things have changed since that sign was put up," Thalman said. "They're [council] is just trying to keep up with the technology."
She added that before council makes a decision on what streets the e-bikes will be not allowed on, it will meet with police chief Matt Arbenz to see what he believes the safest option would be.
“I would feel horrid if a kid got hurt. I don’t want to see a child or an adult get hurt with this. I mean, I’ve got kids on my street riding them, and I just kind of worry every time I see them because they're on the wrong side of the street, don’t have lights on them, and are just flying down the street," Thalman said. "I know they’re just being kids. And when I was 10, I’d have done the same thing. They just don’t think about how dangerous it can be."
She added that she and council have received a plethora of complaints from residents about children on e-bikes speeding way too fast down residential roads in the city.
Service director Scott Harvey then informed council that the building and grounds committee recently met to discuss the city's old train station.
Harvey said that the city doesn’t have a purpose for the building, and doesn't feel that the building is safe.
"As a matter of fact, I went through council notes from May 7, 2018. The service director at the time deemed the building unsafe and said it should come down. So it’s been eight years plus, and we haven’t found the purpose for the building or reason to refurbish it," Harvey said. "I’m going to recommend that we go ahead and move forward with the demolition on it, unless anybody has a Hail Mary."
He added that he plans to speak with Cumberland Trail fire chief Tim Hall about conducting an evaluation of the building and ask what his recommendation would be regarding going forward with the building.
Council member Don Vincenzo said that the grant money that the city could receive to refurbish the building is nice but the city would have to put an equal or greater amount of funds into the building to get it to where it would be safe for operating as a city building.
"Because we have been blessed with other buildings in the city, we don’t have a specific use for it. We're trying to be financially responsible, even with having had a grant it would have cost a lot of money to rehab it," Thalman said. "It's not deemed historical. I mean, I appreciate it’s an old building, but the most prominent thing that we are concerned about is safety. I would feel horrible if a kid went in there and it collapsed or if somebody got hurt. So we don’t want to see that happen."