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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, reporter in the WNYC Gothamist Newsroom, and I'm filling in for Brian today. Maybe you saw or heard my colleague Arun Venugopal's recent story about what he termed the moped crisis in Jackson Heights. The proliferation of mopeds on the streets has kicked the criticism of e-bikes into overdrive, and a lot of pedestrians probably see little a difference between an e-bike and a moped.

Maybe you also saw my piece in Gothamist about how the city plans to help delivery workers get fire-safe e-bike batteries and e-bike battery charging stations around the city. Those plans have been moving very slowly, which has resulted in some delivery workers replacing their e-bikes with bigger, heavier, faster, more dangerous mopeds. Legally, these two vehicles are very different. To dig in on those differences and what might help tame the streets is Melinda Hanson, co-founder of the Equitable Commute Project, which supports safe e-bike use, and she's also the founder of Brightside Consulting Firm. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show, Melinda. Really appreciate you being here.

Melinda Hanson: Thanks so much for having me.

Matt Katz: The reason why I was hoping to speak with you is because I've seen so much confusion about the various categories of what we call micro-mobility vehicles, and understanding the difference is a real first step to trying to figure out how to tackle what some people see as a real public safety threat from these things. Can we walk through the different kinds of e-bikes, mopeds, and scooters that fall into this category of micro-mobility? Can you give us a little refresher here?

Melinda Hanson: Yes, absolutely. There are very clear definitions for each of the modes. An e-bike is divided up into three different classes. An e-bike looks like a traditional bicycle, but you may see a little battery and motor actually on the bike frame. E-bikes don't have required licenses. They ride in bike lanes, and they have a max speed of 25 miles per hour.

Next up is mopeds, which traditionally look more like a Vespa or a small motorcycle. There's also three classes of these in New York City. A moped has a maximum speed of 40 mph.

A big difference, of course, is in the appearance of it. An e-bike looks like a bike, a moped looks like a Vespa. Mopeds do not belong in vehicle lanes, and they also require licensing and registration. The third major category here is scooters or kick scooters. Those are the ones that look like something your kid may ride, like a micro mini scooter but have a motor on it. Those also belong in the bike lane, and those have a max speed of 15 miles per hour according to New York City law.

Matt Katz: I mentioned this at the beginning, top of the show, and you see these less often, but what about those skateboard things that have one wheel on them? Are those considered e-scooters, I guess?

Melinda Hanson: That's like a whole other category of micro-mobility. I believe that a lot of those are technically illegal in the city. They're in a gray area, but it doesn't really stop people from using them.

Matt Katz: Mopeds Class A, B, and C those all require a regular driver's license and then registration.

Melinda Hanson: That's right, yes. Class A, I believe, requires a specialized motorcycle license. The other ones do require driver's licenses. The majority of folks that you see out using them, you don't see a license plate on them, and many of them do not realize that they do actually need a driver's license to operate.

Matt Katz: Listeners, where do you enter this conversation? As a pedestrian, a cyclist, an e-bike enthusiast, a delivery worker, a delivery app customer, or a police officer charged with enforcing these rules we have? What would you like to see done to improve the safety of the streets? Are there other cities that have figured out how to share their streets better? Call us or text us at 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692.

Melinda, you're an advocate for e-bikes and keeping riders of all vehicles and pedestrians safe on the streets and sidewalks. What's the biggest challenge on the micro-mobility front, setting aside cars for a moment, but the biggest challenge in terms of everybody being legal, abiding by the rules of the road, and keeping people safe?

Melinda Hanson: Yes, I think one of the challenges with this issue is that it came on the scene in full force during the pandemic. Of course, we had deliveries done by bike and e-bike before the pandemic, starting in about 2020, we started to see a lot more increase in other two-wheel vehicles. There's a lot more options that have come on the market at the same time, and the popularity has been growing really around the globe. The issue is that we didn't really have a plan or space for this, and it's been moving really, really quickly. For a long time, the city didn't even have a legal classification for e-bikes. That's a relatively new development.

The bike lanes, there was a big question for a while of where e-bikes actually belonged and that was an issue. Then we saw last year a new bill being passed to address with the micro-mobility battery fires, which requires a fire-safe UL certification for any e-bike that's sold in our city. That complicated things even further because there weren't really a lot of certified vehicles available on the market that met the needs of the most common users, which are delivery workers. We saw a lot of delivery workers starting to move toward mopeds, and I think that's been where a lot more of the tension and a lot more of the seemingly chaotic riding has come from.

Matt Katz: For context, there have been 25 deaths in New York City since 2022 due to e-bike batteries exploding. These are generally, from what we understand, uncertified batteries that are put together with different parts in the basements of e-bike shops or in factories in China. They are the ones that have caused these explosions that are really difficult for firefighters to put out.

That often happens when they're charging in residential buildings, which has led to so many tragedies due this, which is what, as you said, led the City Council to pass this bill to get safe batteries into the hands of Deliveristas and others by only allowing the sale of safe certified batteries but as you said, access to these batteries has been difficult. Tell me about what your organization has been trying to do to get safe batteries into the bikes of Deliveristas, delivery workers.

Melinda Hanson: The City Council took a really important, nation-leading first step in requiring the fire-safe certification for all these vehicles. Again, it's been a really fast-moving sector, and it's been hard to keep up from a policy perspective. The first step is, of course, banning anything that doesn't meet the certification. The higher-quality vehicles are, of course, more expensive, and a lot of the folks who are using these are living in the margins of our society. They don't have an additional $1,000 or $2,000 to put toward their work vehicle.

What the ECP, the Equitable Commute Project is doing, is through partnership with Uber and DoorDash and some other funders, we are providing a subsidy to delivery workers to help bring down the cost of the fire-safe certified e-bikes to make them cost-competitive with the mopeds, which tend to actually be cheaper than high-quality e-bikes. We think this is a really important part of the solution here, to not only stop the fires but also reduce the use of mopeds in our city.

Matt Katz: Because mopeds are more dangerous for the rider themselves and anybody they might crash into, right?

Melinda Hanson: That's right. They're heavier, they move faster, and you just tend to see worse behavior from moped riders than you do from some of the e-bike riders.

Matt Katz: Let's go to the phone line. We have many people calling in about this issue. Joan in Manhattan. Hi, Joan, thanks for calling.

Joan: Hi. Yes. I’ve actually ridden a bike for about 30 years. I'm an opera singer and a voice teacher who lived in Hamburg, Germany, and in Vienna, Austria, for many years. I was T-boned at a very high speed by a delivery guy at 66th and Broadway who ran a red light at the very moment in which we started off at our slow, little, normal speed going south on Broadway. He was stopped by the other pedestrians. I was starting off on my normal bike but didn't call 911, and since then I’ve had months of problems with a broken tibial plateau, a torn meniscus, a ruptured baker's cyst, and then a blood clot, in which I need to take Eliquis, which causes brain fog terribly for me.

I feel the whole thing was minimized just now in this conversation. I believe that the e-bikes that ride on the bike paths make life hazardous. I'm a bicyclist, so I am speaking from that standpoint. There are bumps and holes, and if you try to ride on a normal bike path now and the e-bikes are speeding by at at least 25, if not more, or going the wrong way, it is so dangerous. I will say that in Austria, for example, they enforce all rules, and we enforce no rules. I find New York is terrible in this, and this is just my opinion.

Matt Katz: Sure. First of all, I'm so sorry about the medical issues you're dealing with. That sounds harrowing, and I wish you the best. I'm curious, do you know if it was-- Because we're trying to understand the distinction, because that will help in terms of the enforcement. Do you know if it was an actual e-bike or a moped or what it was?

Joan: Yes, it was an e-bike. It was a bike. He just ran the red light trying to get through all the people when we had our green light proceeding south and north, where the pedestrians and I was going south, right around the time that concerts began at 7:00 PM on December 7th. He was a delivery guy for Domino's. I did nothing to prosecute or call 911 because I felt sorry for him, but I had no idea that it would be months of issues.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Joan. I wish you all the best in your recovery. Thanks for calling in. Melinda, this is an e-bike. This is supposedly the safer version of these micromobility vehicles. Obviously, they're moving faster than a normal bicycle, generally, or a pedestrian, and all kinds of vehicles violate the rules of the road. Is there a way to make even e-bike usage safer for everybody else around them on the streets?

Melinda Hanson: Yes, absolutely. First of all, I'm really sorry to hear about that, Joan, and certainly was not trying to minimize that there are issues right now with the way that people are riding all forms of mobility. I think precisely, as Joan said, there is an issue with the enforcement, but there's also a huge issue right now with the design and availability of bike lanes. The city in Manhattan, in particular, has moved forward with protected and connected bike lanes, but it's rare to find a stretch of a block or two without a car or a truck actually blocking a bike lane.

I do just want to emphasize that there are other factors here beyond just the desire of a delivery worker to drive crazy. There's other factors that they are contending with that are contributing certainly to it. That's not to minimize the need to get control over this, because certainly we have a lot more to do to do better design, to do a lot more education on this stuff, which I know the DOT has just released a big program to promote safer riding. Absolutely necessary. Hopefully, with the combination over time of design, education, and better enforcement, we'll see much less of that.

Matt Katz: Let's go back to the phone lines. Chris in the East Village. Hi, Chris. Appreciate you calling into the Brian Lehrer Show.

Chris: Hey, how are you doing? Thank you very much.

Matt Katz: Good.

Chris: My heart goes out to Joan. It really does. I'm calling I'm from the East Village. I live on East Second Street, between First and Second. I've been here since 1990. I'll tell you, those bike lanes, they went up and I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but they're a joke. Nobody pays attention to the direction. Bikes are riding wherever they want to ride in the road, going through red lights. They zoom by you. Even tourists, I know this is about e-bikes, but even tourists on Citi bikes will zoom right by you at the light, give you the finger if you say anything. This whole process has just turned into mayhem in my neighborhood.

I can only imagine what it's like in Midtown, where there's a lot more traffic. I'd never felt so endangered trying to cross Second Avenue or First Avenue as I do now. They're on the sidewalks, they're pulling up to restaurants, they're getting their deliveries. They are absolutely exercising no caution for pedestrians. If you say anything, you're going to get cursed out or even worse. I don't know what the answer is, but I think the bike lanes were not the answer in the beginning. They actually created havoc in our streets because nobody follows them, and the bikes that are on them are not licensed. There's no repercussions. I'm done complaining.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Chris. No, you're not. You'll keep complaining next time an e-bike or a bike or a moped cuts you off. I think you really [crosstalk] summed up how many people feel right now.

Chris: You give me the finger and then I'll be back.

Matt Katz: I understand.

Chris: It's so frustrating--

Matt Katz: Thank you, Chris. I think Chris summed up how many people feel right now walking around the city. We're going to talk a little bit more about it in a moment with Melinda. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio. Melinda, we are on, and this is Matt Katz. I'm filling in for Brian today on the Brian Lehrer Show. We're talking to Melinda Hanson of the Equitable Commute Project.

We're talking about e-bikes and mopeds and safe streets. Melinda, you heard those. I'm sure you hear this all the time. The complaints from Chris. The other factor here is that people are ordering a salad from a place 10 blocks away, and they are told on their apps that they're going to get it in 17 minutes. There are delivery workers, often new immigrants, who are trying to make ends meet and do as many deliveries as they can, and they have demands from the app companies to do as many deliveries as they can. There's an economic factor here that's fueling part of this. It's not just people ignoring the rules of the road, right?

Melinda Hanson: That's right. The vast majority of New Yorkers order on demand delivery, at least occasionally. It's not like most of these folks that are out there potentially driving with a mission to get somewhere are out there just for fun. They're out there working. As you said, they're out there making a living for their family. Many of them are immigrants. Some of them are new migrants. There is a huge education component here, and it's absolutely a problem.

I'm a mother of a toddler who rides her scooter on sidewalks, and I push her around in a stroller, and certainly, it is a problem on our streets. The thing is, is that transportation has become extremely chaotic in New York City. At the same time that we've seen these influx of micromobility vehicles, we've seen a ton more packages being delivered, a ton more delivery trucks blocking bike lanes and blocking the street and contributing to the chaos.

We've seen an increase in car ownership. It is in some ways not quite fair that all of the err is being directed toward the mopeds because there's a number of contributing factors here. Now, certainly, that's not to undermine the issue here. We have a lot of work to do, but the fact is that this is an affordable and environmentally sustainable and overall, in terms of the road system, safer way to fuel our economy and to support people to get around. It is an innovation that is worth investing in and worth figuring out.

Matt Katz: Let's go to Renee in Manhattan, who also had an issue like Joan did, I believe. Hi, Renee.

Renee: Hi. You may not be able to hear me too well.

Matt Katz: I think we'll give it a shot, Renee.

Renee: [inaudible 00:18:00]

Matt Katz: I guess, yes. It looks like we can't hear you too well, but I have a little summation of what you wanted to talk about. I'll bring that up with Melinda. Apparently, Renee was also hit by what she described as an e-bike, has injuries, and she says they need to be licensed and insured. Like we said before, mopeds have to be licensed. You have to have a license to operator a moped, you have to have your moped registered. That's not the case with e-bikes. There are proposals to have e-bikes licensed, lead bike riders licensed. Where does that stand, and what do you think about that proposal? I'm sure you've heard this argument before.

Melinda Hanson: I think that that comes from a desire to really get some control of this issue. I don't think that it's the right solution, personally. There's also an issue right now where we have mopeds and cars themselves who are supposed to be licensed and registered. We're having a massive issue right now with ghost license plates in cars, and of course, an issue with the licensing and registration of mopeds not happening.

I don't think that that is a silver bullet at all. I do think we need to see a combination of design improvements to improve the behavior of writers, of a massive education campaign to really push this better behavior, and some enforcement as well. Certainly, you pretty regularly see police officers ticketing bicyclists, both delivery workers and regular cyclists. It is something that's possible to do. Over time, again, I think we'll see much better behavior, but we need to work together as a city to do that.

Matt Katz: The NYPD is also confiscating mopeds that don't have registration, 42,000 since, I think, the Adams administration started in 2022. We have a bit of tape from Mayor Adams from Wednesday's press availability. He was asked about mopeds by WNYC's, Liz Kim, and he said this.

Mayor Adams: We need to really look into everything from licenses to if we want to outlaw, we have to look at everything possible to control this menace that has really engulfed our streets, and we need to have delivery platforms play a vital role also. They have an obligation.

Brian Lehrer: We have a caller, I think he's going to get to that same point. Francisco in Hell's Kitchen. Hi, Francisco.

Francisco: Yes. Hi. I live in Hell's Kitchen, which is in a way the epicenter of e-bike hell. One of the root causes of the problem with deliveristas and city bikes are also a problem. City bike riders have a problem with entitlement, but deliveristas, the apps hire them as independent contractors and are therefore unaccountable for accidents that occur. If that were to change, that particular dynamic would be dramatically changed because now the apps would be on the hook for when one of the drivers hit somebody. That's a key thing.

I know in California, I think that was tried and it failed. I don't know what the legal issues were. Here, I live in Hell's Kitchen, and I'm always on the lookout. You got to look both ways, four times. One of my daughters was hit in the Bronx and she ended up with a black eye and a bruised wrist. She didn't report it. She had to go to work. It's personal, but I also live it every day here in Hell's Kitchen.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for calling in, Francisco. Melinda, are you familiar with that concept of independent contractors rather than employees to make sure the apps have more responsibility here when there are crashes?

Melinda Hanson: Yes. It's a complicated issue and I know that there are a number of bills and debates happening right now. I certainly think that the apps could be playing a larger role in incentivizing the use of better higher quality vehicles. Again, incentivizing people to use e-bikes instead of mopeds, which is definitely part of the solution. I think we're also going to see a lot more use of different technologies like speed limiters, geofencing, things like that within the next few years. These technologies already exist that help to limit speeds in certain zones. It's not that far off before we see some technological support to manage speeds and riding behaviors of anyone on these modes.

Brian Lehrer: Raul in East Elmhurst has a few suggestions from what I understand. Hi, Raul.

Raul: Good morning. Thank you so much for this topic. Thank you for your guests, for all the good suggestions. I have a car and if I go over 25 miles an hour, I get a ticket at home. I have to register it, I have to insure it. I've learned, for the safety of others because I'm okay, I'm in my car, but for the safety of others, I need to go 25 miles or less. I'm an immigrant. All these immigrants have to get around. I believe there needs to be more policing because if I don't get a ticket at home, I'll just drive at 50 miles an hour. I've learned, okay, 25 miles an hour.

At times when you are crossing a simple street, you have to look to the left, you have to look to the right, you have to look to the left for cars, to the right. On the other side, the same thing. Your guest has really great suggestions. There has to be laws. People come to this country and if we go to Europe, if you hit someone, you have to be responsible for it. Thank you and please call everybody who's listening, call the mayor's office, please just call, call, call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Raul.

Raul: That's the way it's going to get changed. I appreciate it all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Raul. Appreciate it. I also appreciate the honking in the background, give a little sound effect to support our discussion here. Melinda, in terms of enforcement, if we're talking about e-bikes, you don't need a license, you don't need registration, but somebody's powering down, going 25 miles an hour down the wrong way through a red light in a bike lane. What can a police officer do? What is the role potentially of law enforcement there?

Melinda Hanson: Again, you pretty regularly see police enforcing red light running, other sort of behaviors in cyclists. It's something that's already practiced in our city. Something that other cities internationally have done that I think makes it easier to support enforcement on this is having enforcement officers on bicycles also, so that they can help ride around and regulate. I think the same way that we have police officers riding around in cars, they're sort of mixed with traffic. I think that that sends a signal, people know to follow the law.

The same thing could be possible within bike lanes. We've also seen in some cities less of a focus on the police enforcing this and instead moving toward departments of transportation enforcing so that you can take away some of the issues of police enforcement of this issue and focus on just encouraging the good behavior through financial incentives

Brian Lehrer: More bike cops or more enforcement via bike is an interesting solution.

Melinda Hanson: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: What other potential solutions haven't we gotten into, ideas that you may have in terms of making all of these entities work more safely together on the streets?

Melinda Hanson: The number one piece, of course, is again, the infrastructure. We need the connected and protected infrastructure. Anyone who's ridden a bike in this city, and I ride a bike sometimes with my daughter on the bike. If ever I feel unsafe, I hop up on a sidewalk. That's "bad behavior", but it's also the most rational, safe thing for me to do. I think we're seeing a lot of that. If we want to encourage more calm on the street, we need to invest in these protected bike lanes that are wide, that do provide safe spaces for people who choose two wheels to actually ride.

That's a big thing. Again, we're seeing a lot of progress in Manhattan, we need to extend that across to the other boroughs. Again, the education campaigns, I think we really need to meet people where they are especially with the delivery worker community that we've learned. There are informal networks of folks who can help spread information. The information about the fire risks of the cheap batteries has been spreading, but it's been spreading much more through these informal networks as opposed to through government communication campaigns.

I think we need to be much more creative in the way that we're looking at pushing education around this stuff. Because truly, as someone who's been working in this space and talking with a lot of delivery workers, a lot of folks just straight don't know. The behavior has become so commonplace. They regularly see people on mopeds without a license plate or their fellow workers running red lights. It seems like it's been normalized and we need to really turn the tide on that.

Brian Lehrer: Melinda, we're going to take one more call. Stewart in Brooklyn is calling in. Hi, Stewart.

Stewart: Hello. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Doing great, thanks.

Stewart: I have two points I want to bring up. I live in Brooklyn, I live in Mexico City. One of the things I've seen that works very well in Mexico in general, they call them topes, and those are speed bumps. If something like that, either grooving in the pavement or speed bumps in bike lanes by intersections is a thought to slow them down. I think education, Melinda, I hear you, but education, all that is only going to do so much. People are going to speed through intersections. As I see in Brooklyn, they're on the sidewalks going the wrong way to try and make their deliveries more efficient.

We need solutions. I'm a designer. I try to think of solutions and I think the topes or the speed bumps might help. Another idea, I'd love to see a round table with Grubhub, Seamless, everybody sitting at this table and having them as actual partners, see what maybe didn't work in California, or maybe it did work, but getting them as partners because policing, penalizing, all that, I don't think it's going to work. We're trying it in the subways, it's just don't have enough police and why penalize. I think we have to get partners and look at real solutions.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Stewart. Melinda, thoughts on those two ideas?

Melinda Hanson: Yes, absolutely. I think the enforcement side of things should be one of the last resorts. Again, this focus on the education, which I think to your point, the apps could really be helpful on other types of incentivization for safer riding behavior, which can be done of course through the apps. Your suggestion of the topes or the little speed bumps in bike lanes, I think is also a great one. We already have those actually on Prospect Park West. In the protected bike lane there, you have little speed bumps and I think that they're very effective. Eperimenting with more of that from the design perspective is absolutely a huge part of this solution.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to leave it there for now. Melinda Hanson of the Equitable Commute Project. Melinda, thanks for coming on and since I've been reporting on this issue for Gothamist, I'm sure we're going to speak again soon. Thanks a lot.

Melinda Hanson: Thanks so much.

 

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