Tallahassee Passed On E-Bike Rules. Sunny Isles Beach Didn't Wait.

"You wouldn't give a 12-year-old a car, so why would you give them an e-bike that can go up to 28 mph?"

That's Melissa Porro, public information officer for the Sunny Isles Beach Police Department, explaining why the city spent the summer building a rule the state of Florida refused to write. If you've ridden down Collins Avenue in the last two weeks and noticed police paying closer attention to who's on what, this is why. Enforcement started August 16, and the story of how this law came to exist says more about how Sunny Isles Beach actually governs itself than the fine print of the ordinance does.

The State Backed Away, So the City Moved

In late June, Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed Senate Bill 382, a statewide e-bike safety measure that had passed the Florida Legislature unanimously. The bill would have capped e-bike speeds at 10 mph within 50 feet of a pedestrian and required riders to give an audible signal before passing on shared paths. DeSantis's veto letter didn't dispute that e-bike crashes were a real problem. His objection was to the enforcement mechanism: a 10 mph proximity rule, he argued, would be nearly impossible for a rider to self-judge and would eventually require speed-detection and surveillance equipment to enforce at all.

The practical effect of that veto was to hand the entire question back to cities and counties. Whatever rules exist now, exist because a local commission wrote them, not because Tallahassee did.

Sunny Isles Beach had already been down this road once this year. Back in March, the City Commission approved an ordinance restricting motorized scooter use, setting an age minimum and fine structure for a device the city had watched multiply on its sidewalks. When the same safety concerns showed up around e-bikes just a few months later, the city didn't wait for a second veto cycle in Tallahassee. On July 21, the Commission approved a companion e-bike ordinance, and after a short public education period, officers started issuing citations on August 16.

What The City Wrote Instead Of A Speed Limit

Here's the detail that's easy to miss if you only read the fine amounts: Sunny Isles Beach didn't try to replicate the speed-based rule the governor had just vetoed. It built something an officer can verify on sight instead.

Under the new ordinance, e-bike riders must be at least 16 years old and carry a government-issued photo ID while riding. E-bikes are banned from sidewalks entirely, full stop, no proximity math required. The city defines an e-bike as a bicycle or tricycle with fully operable pedals, a seat, a motor under 750 watts, and a top speed of 28 mph. A first violation costs $250. A second costs $500.

Compare that to what SB 382 would have required statewide: a 10 mph ceiling triggered only when a rider passes within 50 feet of a pedestrian, a standard the governor's own veto letter called too subjective for a rider to self-police in real time. Sunny Isles Beach's version skips that judgment call. An officer doesn't need a radar gun to check a birth year, an ID, or whether a wheel is on the sidewalk.

Read across that table and the pattern is hard to miss. The city has now built the same enforcement architecture twice in one year, for two different devices, leaning on the kind of plain, checkable rule that the governor's own veto letter said a speed limit could never be.

Where This Actually Shows Up

None of this is abstract if you're the one riding. Collins Avenue, also signed as A1A, is the spine of Sunny Isles Beach, the beach on one side and the Intracoastal Waterway on the other, and it's the route most people default to on a bike because it's the route that goes everywhere. It's also now off limits to e-bikes on its sidewalks under the new rule.

The city's own alternative is the Off-Collins Bicycle Route, laid out specifically to give cyclists a path away from Collins Avenue traffic. If you've been riding the sidewalk out of habit because it felt safer than the road, that habit is now a $250 problem, and the city has already built the detour it wants you to use instead.

The boardwalk at Samson Oceanfront Park, at 17425 Collins Avenue, is a different kind of gray area worth knowing about if your household includes a teenager who rides to the beach. The ordinance's language targets sidewalks and public rights of way generally. If your family's e-bike use is mostly the short hop from a condo to the sand, the safest read of the new rule is to treat any paved path shared with pedestrians the same way you'd treat a sidewalk, and to save actual road riding for streets with a marked lane or the Off-Collins route.

The Part Worth Watching Next

Two ordinances in about four months, both built on the same age-plus-ID model, is not a coincidence. It's a template the city has now used twice and can reasonably be expected to reach for again if a new category of device, think mopeds or the next micromobility trend, starts showing up on Sunny Isles Beach streets the way scooters and e-bikes did. The state's 2026 veto didn't close that door. It left it open specifically for cities to walk through, and Sunny Isles Beach has now walked through it twice.

If you're a parent who bought your teenager an e-bike as a way to get to the beach or a friend's house without needing a ride, the practical takeaway is simple: the educational grace period is over, the ID needs to be on them, and the sidewalk in front of your own building is now the wrong choice, no matter how it felt during the spring. The city has already told you, twice this year, exactly what it will regulate next if the problem doesn't go away on its own.

For the full ordinance language, the city's E-Bike Regulations page has the current rules, and the Off-Collins Bicycle Route page lays out the alternative the city built for exactly this moment.

Sunny Isles Beach keeps writing its own rules faster than the state does, and staying ahead of what changes here, on the streets as much as in the buildings, is part of what it means to actually know this city. If that's the kind of local read you want in your inbox, Eduardo Cofresi and the Cofresi Group can keep you posted. Receive Exclusive Listings.