E-bike rail ban will limit my family's freedom, says mum

A single mother from Liverpool has said that a ban on certain types of e-bike on the city's Merseyrail trains will "severely curtail" her family's freedom.

Non-folding e-bikes will be banned from the services and stations from January due to safety concerns about battery fires.

The company said the ban was a decision "it had not taken lightly" and "our overriding responsibility is to provide a safe environment for our staff and our passengers".

However, hundreds of cyclists have taken part in a protest against the ban outside a meeting of the Liverpool City Region transport committee.

Chairman of the committee Steve Foulkes said he hoped "all parties could get round the table" but it looked like Merseyrail was "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut".

Lucy Granville, from Aigburth in the south of the city, said her utility e-bike was akin to a family car. She said: "I've been doing the school run on this bike for years" and added she and her son used it to explore by taking it on the train to places like West Kirby.

She said the ban would mean "those adventures would be curtailed".

She continued: "This bike and the train in combination facilitate a much broader range of exploring and things for us to do.

"We have a very tight budget as a family and really value what you get from going on the train, and then using the bike for going further at the end."

Sue Dixon from Formby has been riding an e-bike for the last four years with a local group.

She said "Often we use the train because we're nearly all over 80.

"We're hoping the trains will never let us down, because when we're tired the train's our saviour."

She urged Merseyrail to rethink the ban, adding: "Think it through. There's other ways of keeping the trains safe. These expensive e-bikes are very safe and it's not fair."

Foulkes said: "There must be a path where good, legal, law-abiding citizens can use their e-bikes to go about thei business and use a joined up transport system."

He said "ideas had been floated" on how to "solve the problems" and he still believed a solution could be found.

Merseyrail said: "Although incidents are rare, lithium-ion battery fires can develop quickly, are difficult to extinguish, and can produce intense heat, dense smoke and toxic gases.

"This is a particular safety concern in enclosed parts of the network, such as trains, tunnels and busy underground stations. If a lithium-ion battery fire happened in one of these spaces, smoke and toxic gases could build up quickly and would be harder to clear through ventilation.

"The unique operating environment of the Merseyrail network means that the consequences of such an incident could be particularly serious.

"Taking these factors into account, we concluded that an e-bike ban was the most appropriate way to reduce the risk to passengers, colleagues and emergency responders."

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