Pols to cops: ‘e’ good to bike delivery guys
City Council members are demanding that the NYPD put the brakes on confiscating food-delivery workers’ illegal electric bikes — but cops are refusing to back down.
In an Oct. 18 letter to then-NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill and city Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, the council’s public-safety chair, Donovan Richards, and 14 other council members urged the pair to cut the workers some slack.
They argued that a police crackdown on the electric bikes is causing “extreme hardship” for the workers.
“These enforcement policies, in the form of exorbitant fines and confiscations of workers’ privatelyowned e-bikes, exacerbate the economic exclusion that many of these workers already face, even as demand for delivery services are at an all-time high,” the letter reads.
They asked for a moratorium on the ticketing and confiscation of e-bikes, a reduction or expungement of past fines and additional DOT bike-safety training for fooddelivery workers.
But O’Neill responded on Nov. 22 that e-bike enforcement is part of a 2014 initiative by Mayor de Blasio to “increase accountability for people driving dangerously on New York Streets.”
Pedal-assist e-bikes, which get a boost in speed only when the rider pedals, are legal in the city — but the speedier throttle-control e-bikes favored by food-delivery workers are not.
“The safety of everyone using the streets of New York is among the highest priorities of the Police Department,” O’Neill wrote in his response to Richards’ letter.
“Our focus has been, and will continue to be, addressing those individuals who operate vehicles and bicycles recklessly and dangerously.”
Trottenberg wrote in her own response Nov. 1 that her agency would review the issue if and when state law changes.
Richards told The Post on Sunday, “I appreciate NYPD and DOT’s efforts to address reckless and dangerous behavior on our streets ... But the collision trends do not support the level of e-bike enforcement we are seeing in our neighborhoods.”
He said e-bikes were involved in only 0.07 percent of 2018 collisions on city streets.
Concern over the Big Apple e-bike crackdown comes as a proposed state law to lift restrictions on e-bikes and e-scooters remains at a standstill in Albany.
State lawmakers approved the move in June, but the bill came to a screeching halt when it reached Gov. Cuomo’s desk.