Is RI ready for party bikes? New legislation would allow them in Ocean State
The party bike at the Sea Shell Motel in Misquamicut has seating for 12, a big canopy and day-glo LED displays that, according to owner Tom Riley, "light up like a disco at night."
It does not carry beer or wine, but unless Rhode Island lawmakers agree to make it street legal, this non-alcoholic variant of the "pedal pubs" popular elsewhere will be stuck in mothballs when visitors return to the beach this summer.
Riley and co-owner Debbie Stebenne bought the party bike fully loaded with options last spring for around $30,000, started a business to sell rides on it, hired a tour guide and cleared it with the Westerly police chief.
Just as it was arriving from the manufacturer in China, the Division of Motor Vehicles lawyers stepped in.
The party bike couldn't use public streets without a license, but they had no license to give it. It is too large to be considered a bicycle and too slow to qualify as a motor vehicle.
It's been under a tarp in the motel parking lot every since.
"These things are popular around the country," Riley said Friday. They operate in Connecticut and Massachusetts and it was just surprising to us to learn we couldn't operate here."
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Fortunately for Riley, legislation inspired by his predicament is moving in the General Assembly. It would create a new class of unconventional pedal-powered vehicles, technically described as "quadricycle passenger vehicles," allowing people to use them on Rhode Island roads without having to register them like a car or truck.
It passed the House of Representatives 64-3 Thursday night with no debate.
If you've been in Nashville, Austin, New Orleans or other non-New England cities in recent years, you've probably seen quadricycles even though no one would call them that. Pedal crawler, beercycle, beer bike and pedal pub are more common ways to describe them if not party bike.
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The vehicles have four wheels and countertops running down the center with riders on either side pushing pedals underneath. A driver steers the van-size contraption and operates the stereo system. Some have space for a bartended between the rows of riders or a keg above the front bumper.
A Wikipedia entry on party bikes says they are popular with tourists and also for corporate team-building retreats.
Sen. Josh Miller, D-Cranston, said constituents have expressed interest in operating party bikes in Providence in the past, but gave up after being thwarted by the DMV.
He plans on introducing a Senate version.
Rhode Island appears to be one of the few states where party bikes are forbidden.
DMV Administrator Walter "Bud" Craddock says his agency has no problem allowing quadricycles to operate on Rhode Island streets, according to committee testimony, as long as the legislature amends the law and sets out some rules,
The rules, included in the bill passed by the House Thursday, would let party bikes operate without having to register with the DMV as long as they don't carry more than 16 people, including the driver. That driver has to have a chauffeurs' license and the owner has to have $1 million in insurance coverage.
Most party bikes have a battery-powered electric motor to help climb hills or pitch in when riders — for whatever reason — stop pedaling. The House bill says the motor has to shut off at 20 mph and a party bike can't use any street with a speed limit of more than 30 mph.
And the bill would make each city and town pass a resolution allowing party bikes to be used there "subject to approval by the local police chief."
None of those rules generated much debate, but the bill's ban on selling alcohol to party bikers did.
"I think you should be able to use alcohol on these quite frankly. It is part of the party experience," West Warwick Republican Rep. Patricia Morgan said at a January committee hearing on the quadricycle bill. "Because everywhere I have seen it in use people have been drinking on them. They have fun and they are not the ones operating it. It is safe. They are just pedaling."
Cranston Democratic Rep. Arthur Handy, sponsor of the bill, said that wouldn't fly in New England, with its fondness for strict liquor laws and aversion to public revelry.
"I think there is a sort of a... drinking in public in the Northeast, in New England, we kind of have a thing about it," Handy said, noting that he is from the South.
Whether Bring Your Own Booze would be allowed on the party bikes is unclear.
Miller said prohibitions on open containers of alcohol might stop it even if the party bike law itself did not.
Rep. Samuel Azzinaro, D-Westerly, who worked with Riley on the party bike bill, noted that even in New England, liquor laws have been slowly liberalizing.
"You used to not be able to drink on the beach," he said. "Now they can give you a drink to go."
The party bike bill passed the House last year and died in the Senate.
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Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has taken no position on party bikes. If the law bill passes he would "work with the City Council, licensing and police departments to understand the impact and feasibility of allowing quadricycles throughout the city," spokeswoman Theresa Agonia wrote in an email.
If the DMV hadn't blocked it, Riley and said he had planned to use the party bike on routes around Misquamicut, Weekapaug and by Taylor Swift's house in Watch Hill.
But that's just the beginning. If they are legalized, he said they could buy more for Narragansett and Newport.
"If we can't have alcohol, that's fine," Stebenne said. "We have three businesses in Misquamicut, all family-friendly businesses. We are not party people like that."
panderson@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7384
On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: New RI law could legalize non-alcoholic party bikes called quadricycle
