For four years, big tech companies have exploited New York City’s immigrant workforce, while food delivery apps have turned a blind eye to the fact that the people who work for them as “independent contractors” rely on substandard and potentially deadly e-bikes to do their jobs.
Now the city hall is reward this irresponsible corporate behavior by subsidizing it, by spending taxpayers’ money to do what employers should be doing: providing workers with safe equipment.
New York City has become a more dangerous and disorderly place since 2020, in part because of the exponential proliferation of commercial e-bikes.
That year, as the pandemic created increased demand for food deliveries from homebound New Yorkers, the state and city legalized these two-wheeled motorized vehicles.
But the state and city have done nothing to ensure workplace safety – or public security.
On workplace safety: The city estimates that “tens of thousands” of delivery people use commercial e-bikes to deliver food to Gotham residents.
Many work for apps like UberEats and Grubhub.
But as independent contractors, they provide their own equipment.
Many buy cheap, uncertified electric bikes with batteries made in China and store this equipment in apartment buildings.
In terms of public safety: E-bikes are more akin to motorcycles than traditional pedal bikes, as they can reach (and exceed) the vehicle speed limit of 25 mph.
But unlike motorcycle riders, e-bike riders are not required to have a license, registration or insurance.
The result: a disaster.
In less than five years, e-bike battery fires have killed 29 New Yorkers, many of them living in cramped apartments.
Many of the victims didn’t even own electric delivery bikes, but were the unlucky neighbors of people and businesses who did.
And between 2021 and 2023, cyclists killed seven pedestrians.
Before the legalization of e-bikes, fatal accidents between cyclists and pedestrians were rare; it took more than a decade to record seven deaths.
E-bike riders are also dying in large numbers: last year’s 30 cyclist deaths were the highest figure in a generation, reversing steady progress.
The heaviest toll – 23 deaths – was paid by electric bike users.
Higher speed means less room for error.
The city has at least — albeit belatedly — banned dangerous and uncertified batteries. can being at work: Only one person has died in an e-bike fire this year.
But New York desperately needs more rules to govern the e-bike food delivery industry, including requirements for operator licenses and proof of insurance to protect both operators and pedestrian victims.
Apps and restaurants must also provide their delivery drivers with all necessary equipment, maintaining and storing company-owned bikes in an industrial facility with fire protection measures.
There is precedent for such rules: local law already requires apps to provide their delivery people Bags for delivery, and the city determines the minimum wage.
But instead of cracking down, Mayor Adams, encouraged by Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers, bailed out the industry.
Last week, the mayor announced the “first municipal take-back pilot program in the United States to remove dangerous e-bikes and scooters from our streets.”
If you can prove you’re a regular food delivery driver, you can bring your e-bike or flammable battery to the city and receive in exchange, in the city’s wording, a “certified e-bike and two compatible UL-certified batteries.”
Like many things Adams does, this program is both too much and not enough.
The city estimates that $2 million will buy new equipment for 400 delivery drivers.
That’s $5,000 each, although you can get a street legal e-bike for $2,000.
Provide safe equipment for all The delivery people would cost tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars, which raises the question: how do you select just 400 recipients?
As Ari Kesler of My Battery Recyclers points out, calling the program a “good start,” there are “several thousand bikes.”
And that program won’t start until next year.
If you want to deal with a fire emergency, you can’t wait that long. And if it’s not an immediate danger to public safety, then why do it?
In addition, the city also wants to allow businesses to “install public charging and battery exchange stations on the sidewalks in front of their buildings,” the mayor said, in order to discourage “risky charging sites” on the ground floor and in basements “which block exits.”
This industry therefore needs both public subsidies And public property to operate safely.
An industry that requires so much direct assistance from the city to operate to minimum public safety standards perhaps should not exist.
There should be no free or cheap lunches served at taxpayers’ expense.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
New York Post
