NY: Cycling advocates take to NYC streets to fight NYPD e-bike crackdown

New York City cyclists fighting back against the NYPD’s new crackdown against e-bike riders are taking their outrage to the streets, claiming cops are over-policing two-wheeled travelers.

More than 300 e-bike and pedal bike riders participated in a Critical Mass group ride on Friday from Manhattan’s Union Square to City Hall, where they rallied against new police policies they say are tougher on cyclists than drivers who commit the same infractions.

“Biking is not a crime,” said Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a bicycling and safe street advocacy group. “It is backwards policy to hand out criminal summonses for traffic offenses that a driver of a two-ton vehicle would only receive a traffic ticket for.”

Critical Mass has held loosely organized giant group bike rides starting at Union Square for more than two decades.

Cops trying to rein in unlawful e-bike riders who speed, ride on sidewalks or blow red lights switched tactics beginning April 28. Instead of handing out traffic violations, cops began issuing criminal court summonses accusing them of reckless driving.

NYPD officers were also posted on heavily traveled bike lanes like Second Ave. on Manhattan’s East Side and Flatbush Ave. in Downtown Brooklyn, looking for offending e-bikers.

Bicycle advocates said they were not given fair warning about the new policy, which they complain unfairly targets immigrants simply trying to earn a living as “deliveristas.”

“This is a direct attack on immigrant workers, particularly deliveristas. Criminal summonses can lead to jail time—or worse, trigger deportation proceedings,” advocacy groups Los Deliveristas Unidos and the Workers Justice Project said in a joint statement. “For the more than 65,000 app-based delivery workers and countless other working cyclists who rely on e-bikes due to limited or unreliable public transportation in their neighborhoods, this policy is nothing less than a criminalization of poverty and immigrant labor.”

Delivery workers outside the Chick-fil-A and Shake Shack on Flatbush Ave. across from the Barclays Center agreed.

“Right now it’s difficult to deliver because sometimes we see the (light changing) and we hit it and police give a ticket,” said one delivery worker who wished not to be named. “It’s too horrible.”

The worker said the key to success in app-based delivery services is getting the food to the customer as quickly as possible. The new crackdown is hampering that success.

“We have a fixed time [to bring the food],” he said. “If we are late, it will hamper our account. That’s why we are doing things in a hurry. Otherwise, if we go slow and the customer gives us a bad review, that will hamper our account.”

“Criminal court is not fair,” added delivery worker Shimul as he picked up a DoorDash order from Chick-fil-A

Since the new NYPD initiative began, cops have handed out 916 criminal court summonses against wayward e-bikers by mid-May — nearly double the amount that was given out all last year, the NYPD said.

Speaking before the City Council committees on Public Safety and Finance on Thursday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that “more than 200 illegal mopeds and recklessly operated e-bikes” have been seized by the department’s new Quality of Life Division in the past six weeks.

She defended the new criminal court summons approach

“Every person is obligated to follow the basic rules of the road. When it comes to traffic safety, compliance is not optional,” she said as she addressed the Council. “We will not tolerate e-bikes driving recklessly, running red lights, ignoring stop signs, driving on the sidewalk, and riding against traffic. Residents have consistently raised fears about serious injury or worse – and this enforcement initiative is in direct response to their concerns.”

But Tisch said the new initiative is not a “war on e-bikes.”

“This enforcement initiative is designed to keep these vehicles as a viable and sustainable transportation option,” she said. “There is a desperate need for legislative reform to keep pace with the reality on the streets.”

“The NYPD is responsible for keeping people safe consistent with the law and we will continue to do so,” she added.

Despite the uptick, the 5,100 summonses given out to e-bike riders so far this year amounts to just 2% of the 251,000 summonses given to all motorists, Tisch noted.

Pedestrians walking along Flatbush Ave. near Seventh Ave. in Brooklyn agreed with Tisch’s assessment of the problem.

Eighty-year-old Crown Heights resident Lloyd Harrison is constantly worried about being struck by an e-bike, he said.

“The sidewalks are dangerous enough. When you add all the mobile devices that are on the street, walking has become very hazardous, not just to the elderly like me but to everybody,” he said. “If you’re walking along, you don’t hear them a lot of times until they are right there on you.”

Yet he could understand why some e-bike riders choose the sidewalk over the street.

“They don’t want to be out in the traffic and I do understand that,” he said. “Safety-wise, they probably feel like it’s better for them on the sidewalk.”

Retired Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Joyce Slevin, 66, also worries about e-bikes zipping across her path.

“At every corner I worry if someone is gonna go through the red light,” she said. “E-bikes, they don’t necessarily think that they have to stop at the red light.”

“I don’t want any crackdown to be too hard,” added Slevin, who also used to work in immigration law. “I don’t want them to have too many fines or them to be harassed … If they could somehow in a gentle way tell them to please stop at the red light that would make me happy.’

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