Council Member Gale Brewer has flipped on e-bike registration after supporting bike lanes and bicycling for years, signing onto the agenda after receiving "nasty" emails urging her to align with a group ostensibly concerned with street safety but actually against any efforts to reallocate streets from cars.
Brewer, once one of Manhattan's strongest advocates for protected bike lanes, announced her support for state legislation to require e-bike users to register their vehicles with the state DMV — a flip-flop she announced at a town hall hosted last month by the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance.
The EVSA and its members advocate for strict regulation of micro-mobility devices and oppose measures that aim to reduce the domination of cars on city streets — initiatives like congestion pricing, bike lanes and cargo bike deliveries.
Brewer previously voiced her opposition to Council Member Bob Holden's bill to require the city Department of Transportation register and license e-bikes. Last November, she thanked the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives "for evaluating proposed e-bike policy" and said she did "not believe a blanket e-bike registration rule will make streets safer."
That was then. Pressed by Streetsblog over the phone to explain her change of heart, Brewer suggested that her opposition to Holden's bill was not about the concept of e-bike registration, but simply if the registration would be administered under existing state DMV processes or through the creation of a new city office.
"What changed is that the state bills exist and more people are getting hit, I guess," she said. "I am not signing onto the Holden [City Council] bill, have you noticed that? And I am taking a lot of crap for that. I'm getting nasty emails all day long — nasty, nasty, nasty. I have 10 from yesterday alone."
Brewer, who once pushed for protected bike lanes and busways across Manhattan but recently stood with anti-bus lane NIMBYs on 96th Street, made a false claim in her comment: The percent of pedestrian injuries caused by electric or gas-powered micro mobility devices (e-bikes, e-scooters, and mopeds) has stayed pretty constant over the last three years, according to city crash data — as has the number of people injured by car and truck drivers, roughly 21 people per day.
EVSA's advocacy centers on elevating the voices of “victims and potential victims … of rogue e-vehicle riders” to seek e-bike registration as well as banning all e-bikes, even e-Citi Bikes, from city parks. But the group uses its platform and access to City Hall to fight any measures aimed at reducing any changes in the streetscape that affect car drivers.
Brewer also endorsed Intro 60, the blanket ban on e-bikes in parks at the EVSA town hall.
“I will sign on to that bill. That's not an issue,” Brewer told Streetsblog. “It's a tough one, because I don't know how you’re going to enforce it, but people are very concerned about it, so I'm happy to see if it's possible.” (The bill, introduced in early 2024 by anti-bike Council Member Queens Republican Vickie Paladino, has the support of 19 members of the 51-member City Council, mostly from conservative members, but also from Brewer and Manhattan Council Member Julie Menin.)
The former Manhattan borough president's new anti-bike positions follow a growing trend of lawmakers being persuaded by EVSA's fear-mongering in spite of data that shows e-bikes are generally safe tools that allow more people to make the switch from cars, critics said.
“Unfortunately Gale is listening to constituents who are motivated by fear, some of which is legitimate. But in many cases it’s simply fear of change,” said Ken Coughlin, a long-time Upper West Side community board member, cyclist and Citi Bike e-bike user.
“Because the streets and the culture of the streets have changed dramatically in the last few years, e-bikes and micro mobility devices are only going to grow in number, and that’s a good thing," Coughlin said. "This fear is in part driven by the EVSA, which has been doing its best to whip up hysteria about e-bikes, while it seems clear that its underlying agenda has been to preserve the status quo of streets for cars." (One EVSA founding member, Andrew Fine, takes great delight in claiming on social media that proven DOT safety measures don't work.)
The Parks Department currently allows e-bikes and stand-up e-scooters, but not mopeds, on park drives, greenways and any paths that already allow bikes as a part of a pilot program currently slated to run through the end of May 2025. State law already prohibits the use of e-bikes on the state-run Hudson River Greenway. The number of reported crashes in the Central Park Precinct has stayed pretty constant before and after the pilot, with 41 reported crashes involving bikes and micromobility from July 2022-June 2023, and 46 in the same period a year later, after the pilot began, according to data compiled by NYC Crash Mapper.
“Parks and greenways are critical parts of the City’s cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, and often the most comfortable and scenic routes," Parks spokesman Chris Clark told Streetsblog. "We are committed to ensuring our public spaces can safely accommodate the diverse ways that New Yorkers engage with them, including electric micro mobility devices like e-bikes and stand up e-scooters."
Brewer’s Manhattan colleague Menin also endorsed e-bike registration and banning e-bikes from parks in her comments at the town hall meeting, which was also attended by Holden, a conservative from Queens, as well as state Assembly members Jenifer Rajkumar, of Queens, and Alex Bores, of Manhattan.
Rajkumar, a candidate for city Comptroller and close ally of Mayor Adams, is the lead sponsor of the state e-bike registration bill.
“The work that you all have done, we've heard loud and clear in the City Council,” Menin told the crowd, endorsing e-bike registration on the city and state level: “We need a highly visible license plate on every bike with a motor of any kind — class one, two and three.”
Holden is a long supporter of the EVSA’s legislative priorities. At the event he was introduced as “the OG Council Member,” by one of the group’s “core four” leaders.
The EVSA's message
The EVSA’s message is that New York has become a hell-scape for pedestrians because of people on bikes — electric or otherwise.
“We're here to reclaim our streets and sidewalks from the terror of e-vehicle and moped violence,” said Janet Schroder, one of the group’s founding members. "There is nothing more important than our personal safety, and our quality of life, dare I say absolutely nothing."
The group maintains that it is not "anti-bike," but an almost 10-minute video presented at the town hall suggested otherwise.
There are clips of e-bike crashes around the city — including the brutal killing of Priscilla Loke by a hit-and-run e-Citi Bike rider. But the video quickly devolves into hysteria and jingoism, continuing the organization’s practice of shaming individuals — often children, families, and immigrant workers — for using micro-mobility, while simultaneously pushing back on the city’s street safety progress and opposing policies known to make streets safer, like congestion pricing.
In that way, the video reflects the group's public-facing agenda: Its posts on social media have expressed the views that parks are not a place for transport, that open streets are dangerous, that delivery workers getting around a blocked bike lane are in the wrong, and even that cargo bikes — a sustainable method of safe package delivery, is unsightly:
(Jay Hightman, the father of a bike messenger who was killed by a truck in 2019 while cycling in Manhattan, replied curtly to the tweet: “You would rather have trucks like the one that killed my daughter.")
The video also gives the misleading impression, not backed by data, that e-bikes and mopeds are fueling crime across the five boroughs. Worse, many of the video's clips feature people not even riding e-bikes, and some of the clips are from outside of New York City. There’s even a photo of a modified Citi Bike at the annual Red Hook Halloween party, Bike Kill, where people bring ridiculous bikes to ride in circles for fun on a car-free block — not in traffic.
Still, the video’s ominous music and dramatic editing set a clear tone for politicians wanting to burnish their safety bona-fides: New Yorkers should be afraid of two-wheeled vehicles. As the montage progressed, audible gasps could be heard around the room.
There are other ways of interpreting what's going on on the streets, as Streetsblog showed in its version of the EVSA video:
Statistics show, cars and car drivers account for around 95 percent of pedestrian injuries, according to NYPD data — and it has been that way for years:
But to Schroder, any talk of the real danger on the streets is merely a distraction from what she considers the real issue.
“I always say there’s more women, unfortunately, that die from heart disease than cancer, but we still try to cure cancer, stop with the diversion tactics,” Schroder said at the town hall.
Political power
The EVSA seems to have influence within the Adams administrations network of anti-street safety actors, some of whom are embroiled in City Hall's ongoing corruption scandals.
In September, at a closed door meeting with EVSA, Transportation Alternatives, the mayor and some of his top advisers, City Hall reportedly signaled that the administration wants to abandon Transportation Alternative’s "systems-first" approach in favor of EVSA’s reactionary bans, at least according to EVSA's telling.
Fine, who opposes congestion pricing and frequently criticizes city officials who support bike lanes, tweeted after the event that the mayor had voiced his “unconditional support” e-bike registration law.
At the town hall, Schroeder brought up the meeting again — noting the support of mayoral adviser and street-safety opponent Ingrid Lewis-Martin, whose house the FBI raided last month.
“At the end of the meeting, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, one of [Adams’s] deputy mayors, very important in his office, said, ‘EVSA has all these common sense solutions, TA you have given us no solutions,'" Schroeder bragged. [Editor's note: Lewis-Martin is chief adviser to Adams, not a deputy mayor.]
The powerful Lewis-Martin plays a crucial role in the Adams administration’s scuttling of important street redesign projects that would improve safety for all road users — such as on McGuinness Boulevard, where she helped thwart a proposed road diet.
A mayoral spokesperson told Streetsblog that the mayor supports the "intent" of Rajkumar and Holden's respective bills, but said it is up to the Council and Assembly to pass them.
"The mayor has been clear that e-bikes can pose safety threats to bikers, pedestrians, and New Yorkers at large, and people who misuse them should be accountable for their actions," City Hall spokeswoman Liz Garcia told Streetsblog. "We look forward to working with our partners at all levels of government to make e-bike usage safer for everyone."
E-bike legislation
Legislation to require e-bike registration is flawed for many reasons, experts say — not the least of which because it would do nothing to rein in illegal mopeds, which are far heavier and faster than electric bicycles and already require registration and insurance to operate legally in the city.
Cycling advocacy groups are pushing for more e-bike use to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
In San Francisco, activists have proposed an "e-bike incentive program," and the proposal already has almost 4,000 signatures. People for Bikes, a national organization that boasts 1.4 million grassroots supporters, has published multiple reports that aim to help cities incentivize more e-bike use around the country to "benefit bicyclists who may be discouraged from riding a traditional bicycle due to limited physical fitness, age, disability or convenience."
Electric bikes are popular in New York — just ask Citi Bike, where 50 percent of the company's millions of trips are on the white e-bikes.
In addition, registration would undermine efforts to make the city a better place for the majority of commuters who don’t use cars to get around, including the largely immigrant delivery industry workforce, according to advocates.
“Increasing access to e-micro mobility is critical to ensuring a zero-emission future and enhanced safety for residents and workers, including the thousands of app delivery workers who rely on e-bikes and put their life on the line every day to serve customers,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director of Worker’s Justice Project. “E-bike registration and insurance laws will only add to the personal costs and disproportionate ticketing that low-wage, predominantly immigrant delivery workers have to endure as independent contractors."
