The heaviest electric bikes should be treated like mopeds under state law, Gov. Hochul proposed on Tuesday, but her effort to slow down a class of e-bicycles that can hit 25 miles per hour was seen as useless by advocates on multiple sides of the issue.
As part of a State of the State address that was otherwise light on street safety proposals, Gov. Hochul said that she wants "ultra-heavy Class 3" electric bikes to be subject to the same rules as mopeds, which require operators to have a license and registration and to stay out of bike lanes.
Currently, electric bikes are not classified by weight, but by speed — and none of them requires a driver's license or a Department of Motor Vehicle registration. Here is how e-bikes have been classified since they were legalized in 2020:
- Class 1: Pedal-assist bikes. Max speed of 20 miles per hour. Electric Citi Bikes are in this category.
- Class 2: A throttle-controlled e-bike with a maximum speed of 20 miles per hour.
- Class 3: These are the same as Class 2, except they can go to 25 miles per hour — and they are legal only in New York City.
The bikes were legalized in part because delivery workers widely used them, and their illegality made them subject to random arrest and seizure by the NYPD. The pandemic put into stark relief how many New Yorkers relied on eletric-bike-using deliveristas, so having an entire workforce under scrutiny by cops was untenable.
But when the bikes were legalized, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo allowed the fastest bikes — on which delivery workers rely to make efficient deliveries and stay in the good graces of the food apps — to avoid DMV regulations. In Europe, Class 3 bikes can go up to 28 miles per hour and require additional licensing in many countries.
Hochul's State of the State says she will specifically reclassify Class 3 e-bikes "weighing 100 pounds or more" (emphasis added) as mopeds, which triggers the driver’s license and registration requirement.
"This change will keep the heaviest and most dangerous e-bikes out of bike lanes, improving safety for pedestrians and other cyclists," the governor's briefing book said.
But very few class 3 electric bikes reach 100 pounds. A popular Aventon Aventure.2 weighs about 76 pounds — and was soundly thrashed in a 2023 review in Gear Lab as "too heavy." An expensive Gazelle Eclipse weighs 64 pounds.
Plus, some advocates pointed out that cops on the beat might be unable to tell the difference between a Class-2 e-bike (which does not require a plate) and a Class-3 e-bike (which would under Gov. Hochul's proposal).
How would you fare?
As such, advocates on both sides of the e-bike registration issue didn't see Hochul's initiative as mattering all that much.
"The governor's proposals only target working cyclists and not billion-dollar app companies," said Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives. "These proposals will lead to more paperwork, fees, and police interactions for immigrant delivery workers, whereas comprehensive solutions can make our streets safe.”
And Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project, also pointed out that the laudable safety goals "need to include a meaningful contribution from the app delivery companies [which] put enormous pressure on underpaid, vulnerable workers to complete deliveries in unrealistic timeframes, often retaliating against and deactivating workers who push back on those expectations."
She feared that regulations on class 3 bikes would penalize workers from both sides: "from the government for noncompliance with the law and from the app companies for noncompliance with company expectations. That is unjust. ... Workers [will be] caught in the middle."
She added that a new regulatory regime "would lay all the legal, bureaucratic, and financial responsibility for operating these vehicles on individual workers, who already have to pay all their own operating costs and receive no benefits from their employers. They will now face a licensing process that will exclude many due to language barriers and lack of familiarity with navigating the appropriate bureaucracies."
She added that current national politics put immigrant workers in the cross-hairs.
"By making individual workers responsible for the working conditions set by multibillion-dollar corporations, this reclassification scheme will give the Trump administration another tool with which to criminalize immigrant workers of color," she added. "That will not make our city safer."
Meanwhile, the head of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, which favors strict regulation of all classes of electric bikes while opposing street safety measures that affect car drivers, also said Hochul deserves no credit.
"E-bikes typically weigh 50 to 70 pounds," said Janet Schroeder, the group's leader. "So very few people are able to tell the difference between e-bike classes, now they have to guess the weight?" (Her group has been calling for licensing all electric bikes.)
Left unsaid in the debate is that electric bikes are, statistically, not a safety threat. Between 2020 and 2023, car and truck drivers injured 26,273 pedestrians while e-bike and e-scooter riders injured 700, or 2.4 percent of the injuries on our roadways, according to a report by Comptroller Brad Lander.
Speed Limits in Bike Lanes
Hochul also called for a state law to allow New York City to set lower speed limits in bike lanes.
In 2024, the state gave the city the right to lower its speed limit on most roadways to 20 miles per hour, but activists weren't sure why the city would need to lower it below that for bikes, given that electric Citi Bikes don't top 18 miles per hour.
"The speed limit idea seems overdone and micro-manage-y," said Jon Orcutt, a former Bloomberg administration DOT official who now advocates for Bike New York. "The city already has the authority to go to 20 miles per hour, and enforcement is really slack. So what would it accomplish other than the governor having a new e-bike complaint bullet point?"
But the governor said the change would "help the city improve safety for road users and pedestrians while keeping decision-making at the local level best able to regulate New York City’s vibrant and complex streetscape."
DOT spokesperson Will Livingston said the agency will review the governor’s proposals, but added that "DOT is always happy to have additional tools to enhance safety on city streets.”
Quiz answers: 1. Class 2; 2. Class 3; 3. Class 2; 4. Class 3; 5. Class 3; 6. Class 2
