As transportation commissioner, I often hear from New Yorkers regarding their concerns about e-bikes. We have all seen it: riders who run red lights and fail to yield to pedestrians. This dangerous behavior puts both riders and pedestrians at risk, and it is a nuisance for everyone on our streets.
While e-bikes can reduce the city’s carbon footprint and advance its sustainability goals, challenges remain. Traffic enforcement is an important step to address the problem, but we need to get at the root cause of why reckless e-bike riding happens in the first place: the greed of big tech companies.
Since the pandemic, New York City has experienced a surge in the use of commercial e-bikes used for app-based food delivery. While e-bikes have made deliveries faster and allowed restaurants to serve customers longer distances from their storefronts, a lack of regulation has resulted in dangerous working conditions for delivery workers and added chaos on our streets.
So, you have to ask the simple question: who is the biggest winner in all of this? Sure, consumers are getting their food faster, but the delivery app companies are benefitting the most. The tremendous success of delivery apps has bolstered profits for these tech giants, and it has come at a cost for everyone else.
That is because the app-based food delivery boom has created a precarious, often perilous reality for delivery workers and pedestrians on our streets. This vulnerable, largely immigrant workforce faces intense pressure to make deliveries as quickly as possible, often at the cost of safety — their own and others.
The delivery apps pressure workers to make unreasonably fast deliveries or risk losing work. Making speedy deliveries, often dozens of blocks away from restaurants, means workers have to choose between stopping at red lights or making deliveries on time. This dangerous choice is exploitative and forces workers to risk their safety, and everyone on our street, just to earn a living.
These apps’ business models prioritize speed over safety, because delivery workers are not their “employees,” they are contractors. This distinction created by the app companies leaves them claiming they have no obligation to protect workers. It has allowed them to evade responsibility for worker conduct and ensuring that each worker has adequate safety equipment, training, and certified e-bikes and batteries to prevent deadly fires.
The reasons for the resulting fear are also plain to any pedestrian on our streets: while drivers of cars still cause the vast majority of fatal crashes and injuries, reckless e-bike riding has increased the incidence of crashes involving bikes overall, along with increased wrong-way riding and red-light running.
To create a fairer and safer system which would protect workers and the public, the Adams administration has a comprehensive plan to address the Wild West the apps created on our streets.
Late last year, the administration sent legislation to the City Council to create a Department of Sustainable Delivery (DSD) to regulate the app companies, including powers to issue fines and even suspend app companies’ ability to operate in our city. The legislation would:
- Establish and enforce realistic, safe delivery time standards.
- Require app companies to submit data on all delivery trips, including delivery deadlines and crashes.
- Mandate that app companies have delivery workers complete a safety training course and abide by traffic laws.
- Ensure that app companies provide delivery workers with legal e-bikes, certified batteries, and appropriate safety equipment.
As this legislation has languished in the Council, Mayor Adams took action. While the mayor cannot unilaterally create a new city agency, he launched a Department of Sustainable Delivery housed within the city Department of Transportation. This action is a first step, but one that would be bolstered if the Council passed our legislation to give DSD a more comprehensive ability to regulate app companies.
New York can lead the nation in building a safer, more sustainable delivery ecosystem — one where workers are protected, our residents are safe, and corporate profits no longer come at the cost of human lives. The City Council has an opportunity to send a clear message that the era of unregulated, profit-first delivery is over.
Tomorrow is the one and only day the Council is meeting this month, and we need them to act with greater urgency and pass our DSD legislation. New Yorkers want action, and we are here as a willing partner with the city council to address reckless e-bike riding at the root cause.
Rodriguez is New York City’s transportation commissioner.
