The Housing, Planning, & Development Committee met on July 6, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. in the Lakewood City Hall Auditorium to discuss proposed code amendments related to bicycle infrastructure, e-bikes, e-scooters, and other micromobility devices. The meeting included a presentation by Assistant Planning Director David Baas, public comments, and committee discussion. No formal votes were taken, but the committee expressed support for continued collaboration with the CASE Board and increased enforcement of existing reckless operation rules.
All right. I will call to order the July 6th meeting of the Housing Planning and Development Committee. A couple items on the agenda. First, approval of the minutes from the June 29th, 2026 meeting of the housing planning and development committee. I'll make a motion to make a motion to approve. Second. Made and seconded. This is our quorum right now, so that passes. Next order of business update to code amendments regarding bike infrastructure. Specifically at the time shared use code path code amendments kind of came out of the once road project as a way of how we're going to police and regulate that path, but this has quickly grown into a much larger issue that's affecting all the parts of infrastructure in the city, not just shared youth paths, sidewalks and roads as well in regards to e-mobility devices, uh bikes and scooters specifically. I I know myself this is something that's really been problematic over this last year as the explosion of these devices has really it's just gone crazy. There's so many more. So happy to have start this discussion today. Wish we had somebody from the police here, but um I believe I will turn this over to Assistant Director Boss, who has some slides to walk through, and then we can have a discussion after that. Thanks. Thank you, uh Councilman President, Vice President. Um I appreciate the opportunity to come in. Um I can just provide a I will try to be quick. Uh but this is not I think as the introduction kind of uh inferred that this is an effort that's kind of branched over time as it's uh try to get its arms just around the complexity of the growing and increasing complexity of the issue. Um I think you're all aware uh uh any time that we update our code, especially with kind of spot corrections or updating, we try to nest whatever corrections are with Ohio revised code. Um so I will point out as we kind of go through this where I've uh been able to QAB like in a lot of these instances working with the case board um these, the the option was do we keep what we have or do we look to you know adopt what ORC has or do we define our own thing? You can always go your own direction, but it's it is more difficult when you don't nest with ORC because then you're kind of going out on a limb. Um especially when you start talking about enforceability, law enforcement and things. Uh that if if Lakewood has unique code, it does make it harder, I think, for them. Um but based on the complexity of this, yeah. So I had broken this down into three parts. Um we have gotten through one of them uh so far in two meetings with the case uh that just shows you the detail of the discussion uh and the amount of work that you know the case members and the discussion has put into this, and it's all been very good. Um so I think we've kind of arrived at a good uh at least a good point with the definitions, I will say. Um this was this was what was provided to you back in November. Um it was a uh it was an update that was intended to kind of bring the code up to speed with some of the ORC updates that have happened over time. Um updated some definitions, uh, but we really weren't looking to do a total overhaul um of the bike and motorcycle code. Um the introduction of some regulations for shared use pass was built on some of the I will just the resident input that we had gotten up to that point with the Bunts project, which admittedly was a little bent in one direction. Um so the the interaction with the case board, I think has been very valuable in that to bring in a lot of different perspectives. Um you'll hear from them uh hopefully tonight, and you'll you'll likely continue to hear from them because there are a ton of perspectives from a million different directions on this in terms of what should be allowed where and ultimately that's what makes this very difficult. Um I do like uh and and so I'll I'll talk through that a little bit just to get into it. But really to go back to the the first part was we wanted to to kind of pick what devices or or things do you want to define. You have to define things that you will then regulate. Um if you define something, typically there is an intention that later on you will regulate it in some way, share perform. So there's some some kind of the progression of choices that we tried to walk and help the case board through on this. And that's why it took a little bit long, it's taking a little bit longer to go through it, but I think that the outcome is going to be good. So that's that first part was talking about definitions. Um really the first change that we had uh in the November amendment was just to update the definition of motorized bicycle. Um for whatever reason, Ohio revised code updated their definition of a motorized bicycle. And a motorized bicycle is you know the common, it would be a moped. If you're if you're my age and you were the cool kid in middle school, you had a moped, that's what this is. It is it is a gas-powered device that has pedals on it. Uh and so that's it's still it's it's kind of an archaic definition. It still defines things by a 50 cubic centimeter piston-driven engine. Um what ORC did was to differentiate it was they just put a uh uh uh a statement at the end of this that this does not mean electronic bicycles. So in our conversation with CACE, and we'll get into our own kind of obsolete term, which is mobility devices, in the direction that the recommendation of CACE was to go to the new ORC definition, which is I think it's low speed micromobility devices.