Modesto: $500, Then $2,500, Then $5,000. Not Law Yet.

Modesto has not banned an e-bike yet. The Modesto Bee, Dean J. Condoleo, published the story on 14 October 2026 and updated it at noon the next day. The city council voted 6-0 to introduce an ordinance that would rewrite the bicycle rules. Introduction is not adoption. The Bee says it has to come back for a final vote, and that it would take effect 30 days after that final passage. There is no effective date to put on a calendar. Two thousand five hundred divided by 500 is 5. Five thousand divided by 500 is 10. Those are the fine steps the story prints: $500, then $2,500, then $5,000. A misdemeanor is listed as the alternative. The story does not print a jail term.

A sidewalk ban is not a downtown ban

The ordinance, as the Bee describes it, takes electric bicycles, electric scooters, and certain motorized skateboards off city sidewalks. A bicycle with no motor is a different sentence: off the sidewalk only in the defined downtown. Do not tell a pedal rider the whole city just closed its sidewalks. Do not tell an e-bike rider that downtown is the only place it matters. The sidewalk page is the state-by-state version of this fight. Modesto would be writing the local no. It has not finished writing it.

Fifteen, twenty, and five

The general number in city parks and on recreational trails would be 15 mph, unless a sign posts something else. The parks director could authorize up to 20. Twenty minus 15 is 5. That is the whole gap, and it is a permission, not the default. The 5 mph line is where the accounts split. The Bee says a rider may not go faster than 5 mph while approaching or passing a pedestrian, a bicyclist, a person on a horse, or another trail user, if the rider has not yielded. Yielding is the condition in that sentence. ABC10, the same day, says the limit drops to 5 mph when passing, and then says there is also a requirement to yield. Those are not the same rule. One of them makes the yield the thing that lifts the 5. The other states the 5 as the passing speed. This desk will not pick one.

Off-highway electric motorcycles would be prohibited in city parks. That phrase is not a Class 1, a Class 2, or a Class 3. The class chart is pedals, watts, and a speed. A machine with no pedals is the other category, and the parks director would also be allowed to keep some electric devices off named parks and trails. ABC10 adds a procedure the Bee’s summary did not: the council waived the first reading, and the final decision is the next meeting. Unanimous, in that clip, and 6-0, in the Bee, can both be true if six members were in the room. Neither source prints an empty chair.

The fine is the number people will remember

A first offense at $500, a second at $2,500, a third or later at $5,000. The story also says a parent or guardian who knowingly permits a violation can be assessed $2,000 per minor. The minor is under 17, and the city can require that minor to take an operator course. Knowingly is doing work in that sentence. The Bee says council members asked how the city would enforce the speeds, how it would identify a juvenile, and how parental responsibility would work. The story does not print the answers. Wheelies, jumps, spins, and other stunts would be banned on public streets, sidewalks, pathways, and parking lots. So would swerving at a person or a car, carrying a passenger where the machine was not built for one, and riding through a parade you are not in. A street takeover, in this draft, is at least two riders, coordinated, interfering with traffic or making a hazard or a nuisance. Two is the minimum. One rider doing a wheelie is the stunt line, not the takeover line.

What the July story counted

The October ordinance story does not reprint the crash table. The Bee’s 15 July story, the same reporter, does. Modesto police documented 97 injury collisions involving e-bikes or electric scooters in 2025, nine of them severe. Through the first half of 2026 they had documented 34 injury collisions, two of them severe head trauma. Thirty-four divided by 97 is 0.35. The year was only half over, and 34 is not yet half of 97. Half of 97 is 48.5. The California Highway Patrol’s Modesto office, in that same July piece, went from 18 reported e-bike crashes in 2023 to 53 in 2024. Fifty-three minus 18 is 35. Thirty-five divided by 18 is 1.94, which is the 194 percent increase the paper printed. It is an increase, not “194 percent of the old number.” Fifty-three divided by 18 is 2.94 times. Those counts are scooters and e-bikes together in the police line, and they are not a finding that this ordinance would have prevented any one of them.

Six to zero introduced it. Thirty days after a final vote is the clock, and the final vote is the missing date.

Police could use cars, bicycles, e-bikes, radar, speed signs, and the real-time crime center. Park rangers could educate. The city could impound a device for up to 30 days to stop the conduct, protect someone, or keep evidence. Unclaimed after 90 days, with notice and an appeal, it can be disposed of. Ninety divided by 30 is 3. Impound is not the fine, and the fine is not in force. Chief Brandon Gillespie, as the Bee reports him, said the draft came out of months of concern about dangerous riding and groups that block traffic and do stunts. That is the reason on the record. It is not an effective ordinance. If the council adopts it, the date of that vote plus 30 days is the day this page has to be rewritten. Until then the state law page still outranks a draft.