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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today on the show, we'll have a little August 1st fantasy call-in. If you lived in France right now, you might be starting a whole month of summer vacation. What would you do with that time, if you had it? Paris shuts down in August, in a way that New York, and basically all of the United States, does not. Some other countries too, not just France, are less tingy with summer weeks off. What would you do if you had that?

If you come from, or have lived in any country that does vacation differently, or more, this time of year, tell us what you did do with your dog days of August over there, that's coming up later in the show. Speaking of France, maybe you've been hearing about the coup in the former French colony of Niger, against their democratically elected president, but the population and neighboring countries seem to be divided about how to respond.

Some European and nearby African nations are threatening military intervention to restore democracy. Others are saying, "Don't you dare," a headline in the Financial Times says, Protestors Surround French Embassy Chanting Pro-Russian Slogans. If that's confusing to you, we'll talk about the Niger crisis, including how it's a new front, in a way, in the competition between the US and Russia, the West and Russia, for global influence.

A headline on Politico says, Biden administration unwilling to call Niger coup a coup. We'll talk about that, but here's a headline you might be surprised to learn comes from the website's Streetsblog, which describes itself as covering the battle against car dependency. They usually support all kinds of non-car modes of transportation. The headline is Horrific Crash on Manhattan Bridge Bike Path Underscores Moped Crisis.

Seeing Streetsblog refer to a moped crisis might be a sign that the current chaos on streets around here is complicating how even advocates are thinking about non-car vehicles that travel on two wheels and are motorized. An article on our local news website, Gothamist, also suggests a divide in the cycling community. The Gothamist headline reads, Cyclists Say E-bikes and Scooters are Making New York City Bridges More Dangerous, with Laughable Enforcement.

That's a headline on Gothamist, but cyclists versus e-bikes, is that where we're headed now? Joining us to discuss and take your calls are a Streetsblog reporter and the WNYC Gothamist reporter who wrote that story. It's Charles Lane, from our newsroom, and Julianne Cuba, from Streetsblog. Hi, Charles, thanks for coming on the show, and Julianne, welcome to WNYC.

Charles Lane: Good morning.

Julianne Cuba: Good morning. Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Charles, can you first describe this specific horrific crash on the Manhattan Bridge? What exactly happened, and when?

Charles Lane: We don't have a lot of clarity about what exactly happened, what we do know is that the FDNY said that there was a collision on the bike path on the Manhattan Bridge last week, late at night. FDNY said that it was four electric scooters. However, we quickly found out later that there were at least maybe one cyclist involved, and possibly e-bikes, and it may have been more than four.

The other detail that emerged quickly from this was just how bloody and gruesome the accident was, or how bloody the crash was. There was a trail of wreckage that stretched for 20 or 30 feet, which gave the witnesses who arrived shortly after the impression that it was a very high-speed crash. Some of the details of the injuries, the two main witnesses who arrived after the crash happened to have worked in hospitals.

There were ER nurses and an ICU nurse. They were quite descriptive in describing the injuries. They said one person, we believe either the moped driver who caused the crash, or e-scooter, however he defined it, likely would've died, had it not been for one person applying a tourniquet to a leg injury.

Brian Lehrer: I see listeners are starting to call in on this already, as they do whenever we approach a topic involving street safety and different kinds of vehicles and pedestrians. Let me give out the number to everybody else. In fact, listeners, help us report this story. Are you a cyclist getting increasingly alienated from e-bike riders? Are you a pedestrian dealing more, in recent years, with e-bike, moped, and scooter hazards, as you experience them in addition to those, obviously, from cars?

How about any of you who are delivery workers, or anyone else who rides motorized two-wheelers, how do you use them? What's fair regulation and enforcement, in your view, or anything else on this? Stories, comments, questions, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text, 212-433-9692. You can tweet at Brian Lehrer. Julianne, this is your full-time beat. Can you do a little two-wheelers 101 for everybody? Remind our listeners what's the difference, actually, between an e-bike, a scooter, and a moped, if they don't already know.

Julianne Cuba: Sure. It's pretty complicated, and we have found that even cops often don't exactly know the difference nor how to categorize them when they're writing up police reports of crashes. E-bikes, which come in three different levels, 1, 2, 3 based on how fast they go, are pedal-assisted, and they were legalized in 2020. They go no more than 25 miles per hour, and they are allowed in the bike lane. Then you have mopeds, which require riders to have a license, be registered with the DMV, have a VIN number.

Those could either be gas-powered or electric, but they go faster. They could go 30, 40 miles per hour. Then you have everything between. You have standing scooters, you have-- I don't even know what they're called, but things where people stand on, just stand straight up, and it just zooms by. There's everything.

Brian Lehrer: There are scooters that you sit on, also, that look like mopeds, or look like little motorcycles. How fast can they go? Do you happen to know?

Julianne Cuba: I think they also cannot go faster than 20 miles per hour, I think, is the limit for those.

Brian Lehrer: The Streetsblog article wasn't by you, was by one of your colleagues, but it had the headline that I read before, that referred to a moped crisis. What's the moped crisis, and according to whom?

Julianne Cuba: I think it's pretty complicated, actually, and nuanced. The crisis is the fact that delivery workers that I have spoken with are turning from e-bikes, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which have been in the news recently as starting fires, deadly fires, are now turning to gas-powered mopeds. They've been telling me that they're doing so because gas is cheaper.

Also, the gas-powered moped itself is cheaper than the electric bike, and they have no place to charge their batteries, especially when they're out for 10, 12 hours a day at a time. It's easier just to fill up a tank of gas, or moped, than it's an e-bike. Where the issue is coming into play, is that they go much faster, they're heavier, they're technically not allowed in the bike lanes. These delivery workers are being resourceful.

They're using what they can in order to bring people food, who are relying on their labor, and they are taking up space in these narrow bike lanes. I'm not dismissing the danger of it, nor people's fears, who ride bikes acoustically, but the solution, we can't really enforce their way out of this. I think advocates that I have talked to, and some politicians, believe we need to make space for these other types of devices. Kicking them off the road, prohibiting them, ticketing, or seizing them, is not the solution here. We need to make space for them.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you're jumping a little ahead of where I was going to get to a little later, but let's go there, because it's really the central question. Let me stay with you for another minute here, Julianne, before we bring Charles back in and go to some callers. What would be a solution, if there is one, that accomplishes multiple goals, that holds companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats more responsible for safety than the Deliveristas, and respects the Deliveristas's need to make a decent living?

That still gets real about reducing the danger to pedestrians and regular bicyclists from e-bike scooters and mopeds, not just cars?

Julianne Cuba: I think the companies need to be held accountable. That's what, pretty much, you hear across the spectrum. Whether you have anti-e-bike people, or pro-e-bike, everyone says that the companies, DoorDash, Grubhub, et cetera, need to be held accountable, and provide--

Brian Lehrer: What does held accountable mean? Let's assume everybody accepts that premise. You were saying, before, that advocates believe there's no way to enforce your way out of this danger, but what does holding DoorDash, Uber Eats, and the other apps responsible, as opposed to the delivery drivers themselves, mean, if not enforcing the rules of the road with tickets, confiscations, and things like that?

Julianne Cuba: Sure. They're considered independent contractors. Most of these delivery workers, or gig workers, they purchase their vehicles on their own, whether it's an e-bike or moped. They're not provided by the companies, which is one solution that advocates and others have quoted as--

Brian Lehrer: In other words, don't make the delivery people buy their own vehicles, have DoorDash, Seamless, whoever it is, provide them as part of the gig.

Julianne Cuba: Correct. A safe vehicle, yes, because they're going out buying whatever's cheapest, and that's not necessarily what's legal, or what's safest for them, the pedestrians, cyclists, anyone. A lot of people would like to see these companies provide their workers with the vehicles that they require to do their jobs. Also providing minimum wage. That's taking us on a little bit of a tangent, but the delivery minimum wage lawsuit is now attempting to stop the city from paying these workers a minimum wage.

Currently, they make about $7, on average, before tips.

Brian Lehrer: The assumption there is if the wages were better, they would drive less dangerously.

Julianne Cuba: I don't think that that's the assumption. I think that, one, they wouldn't necessarily be required to travel as far or meet the demands of their work now, in order to make a sufficient living wage. Potentially, they would not need to travel as fast and far in order to take home enough money. If they were given safe electric bikes, they would not go out and buy gas-powered mopeds because they're cheaper.

If they had places to charge their electric bikes, they wouldn't need to charge them in their homes, creating danger for them, their families, everyone else that lives there.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The battery hazards. Charles, let me turn back to you. Again, the head headline from the article that you wrote on Gothamist, suggesting a divide in the cycling community, and the headline reading, "Cyclists say e-bikes and scooters are making New York City bridges more dangerous, with laughable enforcement." Who called what kinds of enforcement laughable?

Charles Lane: One of the people involved in the accident, her husband-- She was a cyclist, an avid cyclist. I was able to speak with him, and he was able to get some testimony about what happened. When I gave him the statistics about what NYPD was actually enforcing, which was zero speeding tickets against mopeds, he was just shocked. He said that if you stand on the Manhattan Bridge for half an hour, you would see multiple dozens of speeding mopeds, or what NYPD calls these, scooters, going past.

I think I've heard from a lot of cyclists who say they see cops on a regular basis, sitting at the base of a bridge and watching mopeds, which aren't supposed to use the bike lane, using the bike lane, and the cops do nothing. However, I think NYPD is in a conflicted position, in that I don't think there's a lot of, as we just assert, willingness on lawmakers to go after these, what they call, ticket stings. They don't consider that really a meaningful solution to the problem.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the texts coming in and there are so many, I can barely keep up with them going by, but I'm going to land on this one for a minute. Let's see. Listener writes, "Cyclists, e-bikes, and any other vehicles allowed in bike lane should have a permit or a license." Well, I don't know if that means licensing everybody who owns a bicycle, but that's what one rider says. Another rider says, "I am constantly making sure my children are not hit by gas-powered delivery workers driving on the sidewalks in my neighborhood."

Someone else writes, "I ride an e-cargo bike and--" Let's see. Lost that one. Getting it back. "I ride an e-cargo bike with my two kids to camp every day, and every day, I see delivery workers breaking the law on gas-powered and electric scooters. There is absolutely a need to enforce the law. These riders should not be in bike lanes, and absolutely not on sidewalks. The solution is to make these sorts of vehicles, not e-bikes, or pedal assisted bikes, only ride in the streets and behave as motor vehicles."

All right. Those are a few pretty representative texts that are coming in. Let me go to a caller. It's interesting that this person is calling in, because I think I was just reading about her in some of the news coverage after this crash on the Manhattan Bridge. It's Janet, on the Upper West Side, and I think it's going to be Janet Schroeder, founder of the group New York City E-Vehicle Safety Alliance. Janet, you're on WNYC. Am I guessing it's the right person?

Janet Schroeder: Yes, and thank you for having me. New York City E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, we're a grassroots group of victims and potential victims, as we all are, of these e-vehicle crashes. We have people in our group that ride bicycles, e-vehicles, and of course, many, many pedestrians. We are 300 strong. We had a town hall last week, where we talked about the fact that safety is the most important thing. It's more important than money, it's more important than economic impact.

If we don't have our lives, and we don't have safety, we have nothing else. I agree with some of the people texting in, that what we need is registration, licensing, and inspection for these vehicles. The young lady from Streetsblog talked about how they can go 25 miles per hour. That's maybe where they're supposed to go. They go 35, 45, and 50. The e-bikes, they can be reconfigured. The answer is not wider bike lanes. That is not going to solve the problem. The answer is accountability, and we don't have any.

What we're asking for, because safety is first, is the reclassification of all e-bikes types 1, 2, and 3, to class B mopeds. This will require license, insurance, registration, actual license plates, and also, we need the batteries to be original equipment from the manufacturers. We've read about these fires. We mentioned them. There've been over 130, 14 deaths, and 76 serious injuries. We have a real problem here. We're also allowing these e-vehicles in the park, our one sanctuary.

There's a pilot program to get away from the whizzing, the 30, 45 miles per hour e-bikes and e-vehicles coming by us. That's supposed to be where we go and relax. There's a pilot program that we want to abolish. The bottom line is, we're not against anybody. We want safety for all. We have e-bike victims in our group, cyclist victims in our group. It's time that we work together. We are asking for accountability, because there's a lack of it.

There's not accountability from the city, the riders themselves, city bike, the delivery platform, and we need NYPD to be on board, because our lives are at risk. One last story, I was walking the other day, or actually, yesterday, and I saw a group of four-year-olds, all holding hands, trying to get across Central Park West. They were all part of a summer camp program. Bikes were whizzing by them, not stopping, and I said to the counselors, "What do you do about this?"

They said, "It is so scary." They said, "We need our own safety guards. We need our own crossing guards. We are so afraid to cross the street." My last point, this is really affecting older people in our community, kids, everybody. What about people that are visually impaired, trying to cross the street? We had somebody speak at our town hall, that when they press the button that allows visually impaired to cross the street, no e-vehicle stops, ever.

They can no longer feel safe at all in crossing the street. We need legislation. It's common sense. We don't really understand why anybody wouldn't be for holding accountable all of these things I mentioned from the riders [unintelligible 00:20:42]--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Janet, let me follow up on a couple of points, since you're an activist-

Janet Schroeder: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: -in this realm. You heard what our guest, Julianne Cuba, the reporter from Streetsblog, was describing as the position of advocates on this, who might be advocating for different causes than you are. One thing is this position that the advocates articulate that there's no way to enforce your way out of these issues that you're raising, and that alternatives to just police cracking down vehicle by vehicle is to hold the companies that are distributing them--

Or that are not distributing, that should be distributing them, the advocates say, as opposed to making the delivery workers buy their own, and pay the delivery workers a decent wage, so they don't have to rush as much to make something livable per hour. Those kinds of things, rather than just have the cops ticket or arrest individuals, who are really the product of a system.

Janet Schroeder: That's a lot. I'll answer as quickly as I can, enforcement is possible. It absolutely is. That is around getting license plates on-- These are actually motor vehicles. They have a motor and a throttle. Requiring them to be licensed and requiring them to have viewable license plates will allow red light cameras to catch them, which is part of enforcement. We don't want police-- We know they can't chase down speeding e-bikes that are going the wrong way on sidewalks.

We didn't even talk about how bad the sidewalk problem is. What we can do is, we can get help from, for example, the parking ticket cops, the ones that come around and do that. They can start enforcing by ticketing these bikes, these motorized mopeds that are unlicensed, and e bikes that are unlicensed can be ticketed by them. We need help. It's not just the police. We need help from the ticket riders as well, the people that ticket our cars. As far as enforcement, I don't agree.

We have answers. NYC-evsa@outlook.com is the email. I think I met Julia the other day. She came to our town hall. We have ideas for enforcement. We need to work with the NYPD. We have to change behavior. Without enforcement, I have to say, nobody's going to change their behavior. They're going to keep doing what they're getting away with doing. [unintelligible 00:23:23] the riders as well. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: What about all of the above? Could you potentially form a coalition with the delivery workers advocates in calling for some of the things that you're calling for, but also emphasize DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Seamless. They should be providing these fleets. They should have charging stations, so people don't go to gasoline-powered vehicles throughout everywhere, that the city could do that as well. Some of these more systemic-- [crosstalk]

Janet Schroeder: I do believe with delivery platforms being held accountable, slightly in a different way, I actually think they should employ the deliveristas. That's what our group-- Actually, instead of 1099ing them, W2 them, have insurance for them, and have safety protocols that they have to adhere to. They need to all have who they work for, for accountability. I know some of the bikes, they Grubhub, but on their [unintelligible 00:24:24] somewhere, it can happen that they work for that, also offers more accountability.

There's a lot of things, but do I agree, or do we agree, as a group, that delivery platforms are not being held accountable? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we think delivery workers are actually being treated horribly by the delivery platforms. Maybe we're in agreement on that. They are actually going as fast as they can, to make more tips. That's not good. They're not being employed. That is something that we do absolutely recommend, and maybe that's something, one thing, that we are in agreement with.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. One more follow-up for you, Janet. Were you suggesting before that even pedal-assisted bike owners would need to be licensed?

Janet Schroeder: Yes. We are talking about anything that has a motor of any kind. Here's the thing, it's a good question. We get it a lot. We have [unintelligible 00:25:19]--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] You're talk about senior citizens, you have a lot of senior citizens in New York, who've transitioned from just manual bikes to pedal assist bikes to help them with the hills, or whatever. But they're basically still consumer vehicles, not part of businesses.

Janet Schroeder: Exactly. Our group is-- We have a very high contingency of seniors in our group. We have many e-bike riders in our group, we have many cyclists. This is a question we have been getting. I understand what the concern is. These pedal-assist bikes do end up flying by the cyclist. The cyclists in our group have flat-out said, "They're flying by us as well. They're not just going five miles an hour."

They are going through red lights, and they are still-- All kinds of bikes, all kinds of e-vehicles, are not following the laws. We're not saying everybody on them are not, but enough of them are not that we can't differentiate and say, "Well, you don't have to, and you do--" Yes, we are including all.

Brian Lehrer: Structural solution like that. Janet, thank you very much for calling in.

Janet Schroeder: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We're lucky that you called in, since you're a player in this realm. We continue with our journalist guests, Julianne Cuba, from Streetsblog, and Charles Lane, from WNYC and Gothamist. We're going to get their response to that call, coming up after a break. Stay with us as we continue to talk about the horrific crash on the Manhattan Bridge the other day, and the larger chaos on city streets. By the way, it's not just city streets.

When we were planning this segment yesterday, somebody was saying, "You know, I lived down on the Jersey shore, it's there, it's everywhere, it's in the suburbs. This is not just the New York City problem." We'll take some more of your calls, and we'll continue to talk to our reporters about possible solutions. Stay with us.

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Speaker 3: Why is there no enforcement? We know it's [unintelligible 00:27:20] the law is very obvious. Why is it so easy to get them in New York City? We know they shouldn't be sold.

Speaker 4: I'm a biker. We're bikers. We like doing it. We believe in it. I'm pretty sure we're going to have to question that now.

Brian Lehrer: Couple of people interviewed by WNYC News after the Manhattan Bridge crash the other day, as we talk with our reporter who covered it, Charles Lane, and Julianne Cuba from Streetsblog, which covers all things transportation in New York City and around the country. There's a Streetsblog network with reporters in various cities. Julianne covers New York. Julianne, let me go right back to you.

You heard that exchange that I had with the safety advocate, as she describes herself, Janet Schroeder, who was calling in before. Do you think there is common ground, potentially, based on your reporting, between the delivery workers' advocates and the safe streets advocates?

Julianne Cuba: I appreciate what she was saying, that the companies need to be held accountable. However, doubling down on the fact that enforcement ticket things are the way to go here is just not the solution. We saw that in 2013, when Bloomberg first made bikes illegal in the city, through 2020, when they proliferated throughout the city. That did not stop people from riding them. It did mean that delivery workers, [unintelligible 00:29:00], or anyone else on an e-bike was getting the ticket.

They were bearing the burden of that ticket, the delivery companies themselves were not paying for those. It was only hurting them. It did not prevent anyone from continuing to ride them. It wasn't until the pandemic, in 2020, March, when former Mayor de Blasio actually put a moratorium, basically, on the ticketing against E-bikes, because so many people were relying on them to bring them food while they were quarantining at home. Later that year, they eventually became legalized. History tells us that no enforcement is not the way out of this.

Brian Lehrer: Well, if it was enforcement against the companies, if, let's say, Grubhub, or whoever it is, had to own the fleet, employ the delivery workers with W-2s rather than 1099s, as the caller put it, that they were staff workers for Grubhub and Seamless, and they actually had to employ these people instead of making them independent contractors, the delivery workers, and then the tickets would therefore go to the companies. Would you feel the same way?

Julianne Cuba: I think that this is beyond my knowledge and expertise. I think a big issue that I've talked with some politicians about is that many of these workers are immigrants, do not have citizenship, and cannot be employed.

Brian Lehrer: That's an impediment to that solution.

Julianne Cuba: Correct. I do think, though, that regardless of their status, these companies should be paying for the tickets that they receive, but they're not.

Brian Lehrer: I'm assuming that people at Streetsblog, and the people you cover, would not say there's no way to enforce our way out of the hazards of cars. Right? Would you be pro-enforcement? Would you say we can enforce a way, as we also tried to just reduce the number of cars on city streets period, but that there's no way to enforce our way out of hazards from actual cars and trucks?

Julianne Cuba: No, I would agree with you. I think a big part of the advocacy of Safe Streets is creating better design and enforcement by design, which actually forces people to drive slower, more safely. I've written countless stories of people involved in fatal crashes, and the drivers didn't have a license because they had so many tickets. It's not the way to prevent these tragedies, by relying only on enforcement, and not creating the infrastructure needed to make things safer in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go to another caller. Thinking out of the particular crash that spurred this conversation on the streets of New York, about the streets of New York, the one on the Manhattan Bridge, there is this idea now, that's getting a little more publicity, that some of the bridges, in particular, are particularly hazardous to pedestrians, and manual bike riders, and the bridges need to be redesigned, or who's allowed to go over them, where, and when, needs to be changed.

Keith, in Brooklyn, I think, is calling in, with a personal experience. Keith, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling.

Keith: Hey, Brian, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. I love what you do. I'm actually driving on Third Avenue in Brooklyn now, so excuse the noise. I'm on the bike path that we love, the new bike path, the Brooklyn Bridge, several hundred times a year, and you observed the police on the Brooklyn side. They're there every time you come on and off the bridge. I believe they're anti-terror police, and they're completely lackadaisical, not paying attention to physically anything, often, they're on their phones.

My point is, it would be so easy for them, even not to ticket, but just to wave off these crazy, unsafe, 40-mile-an-hour scooters and e-bikes from going on to the bridge structure. Look, there's a public safety reason to do that because of the tragedy that we saw on the Manhattan Bridge, but there's also an anti-terror component, because if someone, a bad actor is going to go on to the [inaudible 00:34:25] to do something that they shouldn't, they're not going to be on a Schwinn.

I think, look, it has to be multipronged. We need better design. We need better infrastructure, but this idea that enforcement doesn't have a role to play, it's ludicrous. What's the point of having laws? What's the point of having police, if they're not there to protect and serve, and they're already there? That's the point that I wanted to make.

Brian Lehrer: Keith, just as a Brooklyn Bridge rider, is that the only bridge you take? Can you compare at all? Do you ever go over the Manhattan Bridge, where this crash happened, or the Queensboro Bridge? This is another one that could cite it as particularly bad.

Keith: I do go over the Manhattan Bridge less so now that we have this beautiful dedicated lane on Brooklyn.

Brian Lehrer: On the Brooklyn.

Keith: For example, I'm a commuter, but I'm also an enthusiast. I go up into New Jersey on the weekends and used to not be able to really pass the Brooklyn Bridge on the weekend because there were so many tourists, the pedestrians and the cyclists were mixed, and it wasn't really safe. I don't do the Queensboro. The George Washington Bridge doesn't get as many pedestrians, but it seems to have a pretty good flow. There's some blind corners up there.

Brian Lehrer: Keith, I think your line is breaking up. I'm going to leave it there. Thanks for all the input. Charles Lane, from WNYC and Gothamist, who reported on the Manhattan Bridge crash. Let me read another text that came in on this issue of the bridges, and the difference between some of the bridges. Listener writes, "Would be good if you clarify the situation on the Manhattan Bridge. It is too narrow, bike lanes next to each other, one coming and one going.

In some places, both lanes bulge out or narrow at the same time. The lanes are not straight and consistent. The viability of two narrow lanes going in two directions next to each other is specific to only a few situations, and is very dangerous." That's the thing here too, right? Is the bridges in particular, and certain bridges in particular?

Charles Lane: Yes, I think there's a lot of palpable fear among cyclists going over the bridges, particularly Manhattan Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge, because they are so close together. The fear that you heard from Janet, I think it scares a lot of people off from riding bikes. One of the important contexts that you touched on briefly is that the vast, vast majority of traffic collisions is between cars. 95%, 96% of the collisions are caused by cars. I think that gets lost.

I think there are some cyclists who appreciate that and say that widening the bike lanes is a much better solution than going after traffic enforcement, but the ones that I spoke with, they are equally conflicted about this idea of cracking down and ticketing, because it's a financially vulnerable population, and you're not going to get a lot of change in behavior through straight-up ticketing.

Brian Lehrer: On the enforcement that does exist, you have some stats, which really blew my mind, in your Gothamist article. You wrote, "So far, this year, NYPD data shows that issued 6,000 tickets to bicyclists and 1,000 tickets for e-bikes. Meanwhile, it has issued 367 violations, only, to e-scooters, including 194 for running red lights, and 15 for unauthorized use on the sidewalk. The NYPD wrote did not respond to questions about the data."

Unpacking that flurry of numbers for our listeners, it seems to suggest that enforcement is upside down from what it needs to be. Six times as many tickets to riders of manual bikes as e-bikes, and even fewer for violations with scooters. How does anyone explain it?

Charles Lane: One thing to keep in mind is, we don't know exactly how many cyclists are out there, and how many e-scooters, or mopeds, are out there. I think that's one of the big unknowns. The census that I have seen, of these bikes, they are automated. In other words, there's like a rope across the bike path, they're just counting everything that goes across, there's no distinction between what's a cyclist and what's a moped, or what would Department of Transportation calls the scooters, the razor things that stand up.

I think there's just a fabulous amount of lack of information out there. We just don't know what NYPD is enforcing. What NYPD calls a scooter is what DOT and the state DMV calls a moped, but then NYPD has this entirely other category, that there's just no transparency on, we have no idea what this other category is. It's not an ATV, but it could be some sort of hybrid between the-- I think they're called aero bikes. It's something in between. It's basically a pedal-assist e-bike that goes very, very fast.

They do have some combustible engine e-bikes that are pedal assist, that would look to a cop to be what doesn't need to be registered or licensed, but in fact, according to the DMV definition, would need to be registered, and have a licensed driver.

Brian Lehrer: Julianne from Streetsblog, last word in this segment. Where's the action at the legislative level? I saw one article that cited State Senator Liz Krueger, from Manhattan, listening to the pedestrian safety advocates, like Janet, from the Upper West Side, who called in before, and saying she, Senator Krueger, might bring some fresh ideas to Albany. I imagine there's a city council debate, or potential debate, going on. If you know, what's the legislative action on this?

Julianne Cuba: Sure. On the state level, I know that Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, of the Upper West Side, is introducing legislation that would require commercial e-bike users to have a license and take a test, similar to what you would take before getting your driver's license. I don't know the details of what Senator Krueger is thinking. I know she said she is against the private program that the city announced a few months ago, to allow e-bikes to city parks, and they previously were not.

On the council level, a lot of the focus right now is on these lithium-ion batteries and the dangers that they are bringing, whether it's creating a trade-in program for workers to trade in faulty, tampered-with lithium-ion batteries for a safe one, certified one, or prohibiting the sale of these noncertified batteries. That's pretty much where the focus is, on the city level. The state, I think, is taking a little bit broader approach to addressing the mopeds.

Brian Lehrer: Julianne Cuba, from Streetsblog, Charles Lane, from WNYC and Gothamist, thank you both so much for coming on, sharing your reporting, and taking calls.

Charles Lane: Thank you.

Julianne Cuba: Thank you