Two Council members have pulled their support for a bill that would require e-bike licensing at the city level in the midst of a lengthy public hearing where supporters of e-bike registration painted a picture of a chaotic New York that is in stark contrast with the data presented by the Department of Transportation.
Intro 606, introduced by Council Member Bob Holden (D-Queens), would require e-bikes to be registered by the DOT — and it had the support of 31 Council members when the hearing began. But before the hours-long hearing was over, two sponsors — Council members Yusef Salaam (D-Manhattan) and Chi Ossé (D-Brooklyn) — pulled their support.
Ossé said his decision stemmed from the likelihood that police enforcement would be increased if the bill passed — a subject of recent Streetsblog coverage.
"The hearing demonstrated concerns about the bill to be right: Beyond its sweeping consequences for green transit and healthy urbanism, Intro 606 could spell disaster for immigrant communities," Ossé said in a statement. "The administration told me directly that the NYPD would be responsible for enforcement of Intro 606, which violates my condition for being a co-sponsor."
Salaam hasn't said why he pulled his support. The Council member is a one of the "Exonerated Five" – wrongfully convicted in the Central Park jogger rape case in a botched and racially biased police investigation. Civil rights groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union have warned that Intro 606 would give the police department the same type of power to stop bike riders suspected of riding unlicensed e-bikes.
The Council also heard another bill, Intro 1131, introduced earlier this month by Committee Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers, which would establish a task force to study the impact of e-bikes on the city and come up with solutions. Brooks-Powers's bill earned support from the administration, the public, and the other Council members.
Bad data alert
DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said the agency does not support Intro 606 because, in part, it would make life harder for the already-struggling "deliveristas," it would cost the city millions to implement, and the department had found no evidence that licensing would contribute to safer streets. Throughout the hearing Rodriguez assured Council Members that DOT supports the "intent" of the bill — whose supporters say it would make streets safer — but not the bill itself.
Holden constantly barraged Rodriquez for not having handy certain data points, like the intersections where e-bikers run the most red lights, which is not something DOT tracks. At the same time, Holden's own data did not match official records.
Holden said that between 2020 and 2023, e-bikes were involved in 2,254 collisions, causing 2,172 injuries and 22 deaths. But that is not accurate.
Holden did not site a source for his data, but according to the DOT, which tracks crashes causing injury and fatalities by mode in its yearly "Bicycle Crash Data Reports," between that over the same period, five pedestrian fatalities were caused by e-bikes. That represents 1.6 percent of the 449 total pedestrian deaths in those four years.
The injury data is not as granular, and the DOT didn't include e-bikes, e-scooters and mopeds as a separate category in their reports until 2021, but between 2021-2023 there were 1,569 pedestrian injuries involving all bikes (traditional and electric), mopeds, stand-up scooters, and other e-mobility devices. That's just 6 percent of the 25,902 pedestrian injuries recorded over those three years.
Holden's bill is built on the idea that putting license plates on electric bikes will make their riders accountable, but like DOT, Brooks-Powers questioned the bill's efficacy in increasing accountability, noting that even when e-bike riders stay on the scene, they aren't charged, plate or no plate.
The public hearing
The crowd on Wednesday had to be warned by Brooks-Powers multiple times that outbursts would get them kicked out. But that didn't stop members of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance from loudly boo-ing Rodriguez when he identified car drivers as causing virtually all the traffic injuries and deaths.
"Reckless driving by motor vehicle drivers remains — by far — the biggest threat to pedestrian safety," said Rodriguez through the boos. "So far this year, 105 pedestrians were killed by cars or larger vehicles compared to six killed in crashes with e-bikes, mopeds, and stand-up e-scooters combined."
Throughout the hearing, the group’s members remained active, offering a thumbs down to express discontent and jazz hands to express praise, trying to stay within the Council’s rules of decorum. They took issue with Rodriquez making a short Spanish statement as part of his testimony, with any mention of bike lanes, delivery workers, the racial bias evident in enforcement, safe battery charging stations, and any time the DOT mentioned pedestrians killed by car drivers.
More than 400 people signed up to testify at the hearing, and the majority of the in-person testimony came from EVSA members. Some were victims of crashes, but most were what the group calls "potential victims" who passionately claimed that "unlicensed predatory electric assist vehicles" are "killing our city."
EVSA specifically took issue with mention of racial bias in policing, something civil rights experts and worker's justice groups worry will increase if Intro 606 is passed.
At a press conference before Wednesday's hearing, a member of the public asked Holden and Paladino about Streetsblog's prior coverage of the bill, which highlighted expert opinions that the bill would lead to more encounters with police and cited the city's history of disproportionate ticketing of pedestrians of color for allegedly crossing against a traffic signal — known to some as "jaywalking."
"Is a traffic light racist?" said Holden in response. "Is a stop sign racist? A one way street is racist? This is the absurdity of Transportation Alternatives and their counterpart Streetsblog, they're not based in reality." [Streetsblog has no relation to Transportation Alternatives.]
Even though the bill's supporters in the Council don't want to acknowledge it, those who work directly with the city's immigrant delivery workforce reiterated that the bill would harm their communities.
"Delivery workers already perform one of the most dangerous jobs in the city – they should not be further placed in harm’s way by a bill that will undoubtedly result in the criminalization of their work and lives," said Gabriel Montero, the communications director of the Worker's Justice Project.
As of Wednesday night, the bill still has 29 co-sponsors, among them several pro-cycling Democrats.
