Pols, city aim to boost e-bike battery safety
Mayor Adams’ administration on Wednesday backed a City Council bill aimed at fighting the scourge of e-bike fires by requiring delivery apps to cover the costs of safe, certified e-bikes or other electric-powered devices for their workers.
The support from the mayor’s office, expressed by an official at a Council hearing, put additional momentum behind the legislative push.
“The administration supports this legislation,” Margaret Forgione, the first deputy commissioner of the Transportation Department, said in testimony to the Council. She added that the Adams administration is also interested in working with the Council to create an e-bike trade-in program funded by apps as part of the plan.
The legislation’s primary sponsor, Oswald Feliz of the Bronx, said he hopes the legislation will pass in the next two months.
“The votes are absolutely there,” Feliz said by phone after the hearing. “But we’re still finalizing the technical parts of the bill.”
The bill is one in a flurry of proposals officials have drawn up in recent months as they seek to combat an alarming rise of fast-moving e-bike blazes, which can ignite when the device’s highly flammable lithium-ion batteries overheat.
Last year there were 268 fires, 150 injuries and 18 deaths linked to lithium-ion batteries in the city, according to the Fire Department.
One raging e-bike inferno at a repair shop in Chinatown killed four people in June. In November, three people perished when an e-bike blaze ripped through a brownstone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The city lifted its e-bike ban in 2018. The move greased COVID-era delivery transport across the five boroughs, and workers flying down bike lanes have become a common sight across the five boroughs.
But the devices have also generated serious fire safety challenges. In response, the Council last year passed laws banning the sale of uncertified lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes and introducing a first-of-its-kind program allowing New Yorkers to trade in their old e-bikes for new devices that meet safety standards.
Feliz’s new bill could further solidify the city’s efforts by removing costs for delivery workers who are still relying on sketchy e-bikes but would prefer to use safe e-bikes.
It is unclear how the major delivery apps — including UberEats and DoorDash — would respond to the bill if it becomes law, but they pushed back Wednesday against the proposal. They took the city to court to fight a minimum wage increase.
Hayley Prim, senior policy manager at Uber, testified Wednesday that the city should ramp up enforcement on e-bike sellers rather than forcing the apps to pay for devices. “We encourage the Council to table these bills,” Prim said.
DoorDash warned that the bill’s passage could lead it to terminate e-bike deliveries, harming workers.
Kassandra Perez-Desir, DoorDash’s head of government relations in New York, argued in testimony that the bill was “ineffective and impractical.”
Under the legislation, delivery apps that fail to arrange for certified e-bikes and e-scooters would be subject to civil penalties.
Feliz said the safety threat posed by uncertified e-bikes requires the new rules. He said he was hopeful that apps would ultimately support the plan.
“This is a crisis. The time to resolve this crisis is now,” he said. “Everyone must do their part.”