Orange County Community in the Heart of Debate Over E-Bikes

0:00From KQED Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your money. Star One Credit Union in your best interest. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from the Exploratorium after dark. Adults 18 plus go home different. Science, art, culture, 650 plus exhibits and more every Thursday from 6 to 10 pm. Tickets at Exploratorium.edu slash after dark. Good morning. This is the California Report. I'm Joseph Jeha in from Maddie, Bolanios. Lift has agreed to pay more than $272 million to settle a state lawsuit alleging it misclassified California drivers as independent contractors rather than employees from 2016 to 2020. Most of the money is set to go to drivers.

1:02Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the deal yesterday alongside city attorneys for San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. He said lift fought the case for six years all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. While lift grew into a multi-billion dollar company and a household name. Its success depended on its drivers. Many of whom came from immigrant communities and communities of color. And still lift failed to protect those drivers and failed to pay them fairly. Lift denies that it misclassified drivers before 2020 when a state ballot measure changed the requirements. The settlement still needs a judge's approval. A new study has found that when applying for building permits, mosques face more pushback over parking requirements than churches. KCBX's Kendra Hannah has more. The study was published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in September. It found that mosques were 16 to 18% more likely to experience opposition than newly proposed Christian churches.

2:04Mark Masood is a law and policy professor at UC Santa Cruz and he co-authored the study. If someone comes to a planning commission hearing and they say, I don't want Muslims in my neighborhood. These people, especially in progressive cities and towns like here in California, will probably not be taken seriously. But another tactic is to raise a more legitimate concern like worries over the amount of parking. Masood says that mosques in general do provide adequate parking, but that they're still asked to jump through extra hoops. In some cases approval can be delayed for a decade or more over permitting issues. The report encourages cities to consistently apply zoning standards to all projects as a way to reduce bias. For the California report, I'm Kendra Hannah in San Locivisco. Governor Gavin Newsom signed three laws this week aimed at addressing some of the most pressing safety concerns surrounding electric bicycles as the device's popularity continues to rise in California. It was not long ago that the headlines about e-bikes seemed full of promise as a replacement for gas guzzling cars

3:07and an affordable, flexible new mode of transportation. But now, a lot of the news is about crashes and serious injuries, often involving kids. LA as reporter Jill Repligol takes us to a hot spot in the debate. The first class has already started at Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, but two of the school students are across from campus detained by a police officer. They're crime, allegedly parking their e-bikes illegally on the street here. Corey Goldbranson, one of the girls' dads, shows up and he's frustrated. We just want our kids to get to school. That's it. The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport, Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses citing safety concerns. A lot of students have gotten around the rule by riding their e-bikes to school anyway, but parking them in swarms on the surrounding residential streets. The neighbors did not like this, and the city responded by putting up no e-bike parking signs.

4:09Goldbranson says the policy is not achieving its goal of keeping kids safe. We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now, so this whole guys of doing it under safety is totally misguided. E-bikes have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit, spotty, and distances longer than some are willing to pedal. For teens and tweens, e-bikes are a taste of freedom and relieve parents of some of their driving duties. But with their popularity has come an alarming increase in serious injuries and even death. At some hospitals, e-bike crashes have become the leading cause sending kids to the ER. Asha Weinstein-Agrowall has studied e-bikes safety at San Jose State University. Her research suggests that the biggest safety problem might be illegal vehicles masquerading as legal e-bikes. There are lots of what I will call bicycle shaped devices in Britain.

5:09Some of them are legal e-bikes, some of them are not, and some are way more powerful than kids can safely handle, she says. They're technically e-motor cycles, which can go 30 to 60 miles per hour. But Agrawall says it's hard for parents and even police officers to figure out what's safe and legal and what's not. Nobody understands this. It's very hard to enforce. The dilemma has become a priority for Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. He's filed criminal charges against four parents for allowing their kids to illegally ride e-motor cycles, one of which killed a man. We understand that young people are not necessarily mature enough to understand what these can do. That's Spitzer speaking at his launch of another strategy for getting a handle on the problem, a buyback event. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters, and e-modos to Angel Stadium, hoping to turn them in for up to $1,000 in gift cards.

6:10Paul Dumont came all the way from Chatsworth with five bikes that he had bought for his kids and grandkids. They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in the storage. Dumont said he wished he had bought them less powerful e-bikes. When I bought them the best ones, I thought they'd be better. The Newport Mesa School District told LAS, its new e-bike restrictions are working to reinforce safety. But that's not how Kelly Newcom sees it. As she sends her 13-year-old daughter Phoebe off to school on her e-bike, she says the district's policy has made her child less safe. There's so many more parents driving than they're in a rush because the traffic is insane. Newcom wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders. That was LAS Jill Repligal reporting. And that's the California report for Friday, October 2nd, where a production of KQED news.

7:15Our engineers are Danny Bringer, Brendan Willard, Christopher Beale, Chris Griley, Steve S. Regado, and Jim Bennett. Our producers are Billy Cruz, Christopher Alam, and Keith Mizoguchi. Our senior editor is Angela Carral, our managing editor is Ted Goldberg, and our editor-in-chief is Ethan Toven Lindsay. I'm Joseph Jehan, thanks for listening and have a great day. Support for the California report comes from Monterrey Bay Aquarium, inspiring conservation of the ocean through amazing live exhibits and global action. More info at Monterrey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. The James Irvine Foundation, committed to a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically. Learn more at Irvine.org and Eric and Wendy Schmidt whose philanthropy works to create a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at TheSchmitt.org.