The TTC will not institute a seasonal winter ban on e-bikes and e-scooters — for now.
Board members instead voted to refer the issue back to the TTC’s Racial Equity Office for additional analysis after it came to light during Tuesday’s board meeting that the office was not involved in drafting the initial report.
The recommendation that e-bikes be banned from Nov. 15 to April 15 came out of a report prepared by TTC staff after an e-bike caught fire inside a Line 1 subway car on Dec. 31, 2023. Three people were taken to the hospital as a result.
Toronto Fire Services determined that a failure of the e-bike’s lithium-ion battery caused the fire.
The TTC’s report supporting the ban claims that winter conditions, including temperature fluctuations and contact with road salt, can increase the risk of a lithium-ion battery catching on fire — especially considering the lack of federal regulations for e-bike batteries.
The proposed ban would have a heavy-handed impact on food delivery workers, TTC commissioners noted. Some gig workers commute from the suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area with their e-bikes in order to do deliveries downtown.
During the board meeting, TTC chair Jamaal Myers asked if the TTC’s Racial Equity Office had been involved in writing the report that proposed the seasonal ban. It hadn’t.
“My question is, why wasn't the racial equity office brought into this conversation or this analysis when we know, even casually, that this would have a disproportionate impact on equity-deserving groups?” Myers asked, noting that a large number of gig workers are racialized.
The TTC’s chief strategy and customer experience officer, Josh Colle, responded that the agency “strongly considered and fully recognized those equity impacts,” but “did not do a formal assessment, in part because the original direction was to assess fire safety.”
The motion to refer the issue back to the Racial Equity Office carried with five votes to four. The equity office’s review into the matter will be presented at the next TTC board meeting on Dec. 3.
Beyond the issue of the equity office not being formally consulted, commissioners noted the TTC’s proposed ban would stand in contrast to already-established regulations within the Metrolinx transit system.
Metrolinx, which operates GO Transit, updated its e-bike policy in April this year to ban uncertified e-bike batteries. Metrolinx staff have been directed to inspect passengers’ e-bikes before boarding and affix a tamper-proof seal to e-bikes that meet the requirement.
Currently, there are no restrictions on importing or selling uncertified e-bikes in Canada, but manufacturers can choose to get their e-bike products “CE” or “UL” certified — referring to the Conformité Européenne and Underwriters Laboratories Of Canada certifications, respectively.
Three battery experts told TorontoToday that the most important step to making e-bikes safer is to ensure that all e-bikes in Canada undergo safety testing and achieve certification.
The TTC’s proposal would have gone a step further than Metrolinx, banning all e-bikes, regardless of whether they’re certified or not, during the winter months. The same battery experts were split on whether a seasonal ban is necessary.
City councillor and TTC commissioner Dianne Saxe took particular issue with the discrepancy between the TTC’s plan and Metrolinx’s regulations.
“We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We cause confusion every time we reinvent the wheel. We should have consistent, clear rules,” Saxe said during the board meeting, noting that a large number of TTC riders also use Metrolinx systems.
“Many, many people use the systems in an integrated fashion and we shouldn't have separate rules without a really good reason.”
Saxe went on to argue that the proposed ban would leave gig workers out to dry.
“What are they supposed to do? Starve for six months of the year? Are they supposed to buy a car and then drive around downtown Toronto trying to deliver their sandwiches? It doesn't give them a way forward,” Saxe said, noting the TTC should be supporting climate-friendly modes of transportation.
Commissioner Fenton Jagdeo pushed back on Saxe’s characterization of the impacts to gig workers, arguing that they would adapt to the ban. He drew attention to statements Interim Fire Chief Larry Cocco made earlier in the meeting, who spoke about the unpredictable nature of e-bike batteries and the difficulties firefighters face in extinguishing these fires.
“They're highly volatile failures,” Cocco warned. “We had an incident where we responded to a [lithium-ion battery] fire, and 87 days later, those batteries also failed again … there’s no predictability.”
Cocco said the Dec. 31, 2023 e-bike fire could have hurt more people if it wasn’t for the fact the subway train was just arriving at the next platform when the fire broke out.
“If you look at the video, you'll see the environment in that train was no longer tenable in a matter of seconds,” Cocco said, adding that if TTC riders hadn’t been able to exit onto the platform, “there would have been critical injuries and or possible death.”
Fire extinguishers are not effective at suppressing fires caused by lithium-ion batteries, Cocco added. To date, there have been 59 fires related to lithium-ion batteries in Toronto. The interim fire chief characterized the situation around e-bike fires as “low probability but extremely high risk.”
Later in the meeting, Saxe drew attention to the fact that the e-bike involved in the Dec. 31 fire was uncertified, and if the TTC were to adopt Metrolinx’s regulations, that bike would not have been allowed on the subway.
While she acknowledged that the Dec. 31 fire was “very frightening,” she argued that the proposed ban is “an over-the-top response to a problem we haven't had yet.”
“There hasn't been a fire with a certified battery as far as I know in any transit system in Canada,” she claimed.
There’s an obvious difficulty with checking each e-bike for its certification before it gets placed on the TTC, which the transit agency noted in its original report.
“Adopting the same e-bike requirements as Metrolinx was considered, however, this was ruled out. With customers using e-bikes to access TTC services throughout the day via 70 subway stations across the city, including many unstaffed entrances, it would not be practical or feasible to implement a battery inspection initiative without adding significant new staffing resources,” the report reads.
But in Saxe’s view, a ban would be even harder to enforce than a restriction on uncertified e-bikes, noting that community buy-in is critical for getting people to comply with regulations.
“If we have a limited rule, which is the same as Metrolinx, then we do give [e-bike riders] a way forward,” Saxe said. “And if we give them a path forward… then there is a reasonable chance of getting their consent to comply.”
