Yesterday, the City Council held a massive, 10-hour, three-committee hearing on e-bikes, e-scooters, and illegal high-speed devices. Let’s be clear about a critical distinction: low-speed and pedal-assist e-bikes are legal, regulated, and speed-limited, enabling thousands of New Yorkers to move around our city with ease. They’re entirely different from the serious issue on our streets and in our bike lanes — high-speed devices that are already illegal to ride, but are still available to buy.
Retailers have been exploiting New Yorkers, tricking consumers into thinking that their products are safe and legal. Only two months ago, just a block from yesterday’s Council hearing, a 17-year-old boy was killed while riding an illegal high-speed device. He was failed by his City, and he’s not the only one — every year, New Yorkers are killed while riding these dangerous devices, often believing they’re safe e-bikes when they’re anything but.
If you want to address the real problems, you have to:
1) cut off the flow of illegal high-speed devices at the point of sale,
2) regulate delivery app companies, and
3) phase out the fastest currently legal e-bikes.
That’s why we support:
- Senator Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymember Diana Moreno’s state legislation to end the sale and deceptive marketing of illegal high-speed devices.
- Council Member Lynn Schulman’s Intro 950, to establish a regulatory framework with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, so that if a delivery app company breaks our laws and exploits their workers, DCWP can simply revoke that business’s license to operate in our city.
- Council Member Crystal Hudson’s Intro 244, to end the sale of e-bikes that exceed 20 mph.
- Council Member Shaun Abreu’s Intro 985, which would establish a trade-in program so that New Yorkers can easily transition away from devices that are too fast to be safe, trading them in for e-bikes that are safe and legal, with a top speed of 20 mph.
