Democratic Mayoral candidate and self-professed "car guy" Andrew Cuomo has embraced a street safety plan being pushed by Council Republicans that would cut down on electric bike while creating a $20-million bureaucracy that experts say will not even make roadways safer — and hours later appeared to call bike lanes "crazy."
In a factually suspect press release issued on Monday, the former governor offered what he called a "comprehensive plan to regulate e-bikes," citing "the dangers they pose."
Nothing in the proposal is new, but the key plank in Cuomo's reheated rhetoric is a bid to require the city Department of Transportation to create a new licensing program and issue license plates that would be required on "all e-bikes and e-scooters."
"There’s virtually no rules and no regulations regarding e-bike use in New York City and too many New Yorkers are getting hurt, and even killed,” Cuomo said in a factual inaccurate statement. “Enough is enough and we need to pass sensible laws that protect both pedestrians and riders alike and crack down on financial incentives that encourage this reckless behavior in the first place.”
The Cuomo plan included other reforms that are already in the works, including supporting changes in the way delivery apps pay workers so that they are not incentivized to speed or bike recklessly and holding food delivery platforms liable for damages caused by their workers.
Later in the day, Cuomo was at a campaign event when he had the following exchange with an unidentified man (the exchange begins at 0:28):
Man: Do us a big favor and get rid of the goddamned bike lanes.
Cuomo: I know. How crazy it is.
The Cuomo campaign did not respond to a request for clarification. Not did it address a Streetsblog question about whether electric Citi Bikes would be part of the Cuomo registration regime.
In the end, it was the mandatory registration for currently legal e-bikes and e-scooters that drew the most ire from advocates and pushback from safety experts.
“The ex-governor is totally wrong that ‘there are no rules and no regulations regarding e-bike use’ in the city. We have plenty of them. But they aren’t enforced — for e-bikes, for cars, trucks, taxis — for anyone," said Jon Orcutt, a former DOT official who now advocates for Bike NY. "Maybe he can try again and tell us how he would actually lower street crashes. A new bike bureaucracy isn’t it.”
Danny Pearlstein of Riders Alliance also slammed the notion of a new registration regime, given that car and truck drivers, who already cause more than 90 percent of the crashes and injuries, are registered, to little effect on safety.
"The city isn't enforcing the law against illegal mopeds now," he said. "There's no reason to believe registration will deliver anything new."
Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who is competing with Cuomo for the Democratic mayoral nomination also slammed the proposal.
"Andrew Cuomo is embracing a policy that will increase unwarranted police stops and create a bureaucratic nightmare," he told Streetsblog in a statement. "Improving street safety will come from better infrastructure and regulating corporate delivery apps, not criminalizing workers."
Fellow candidate, City Comptroller Brad Lander, blamed Cuomo for the alleged chaos caused by e-bikes.
“As governor, he signed the 2020 legislation to legalize e-bikes into state law without a thought for how to regulate the industry or stem the supply of substandard, dangerous equipment into our city," Lander said. "Now he swoops in with an equally ham-fisted proposal that puts his failure to govern on the backs of delivery workers.”
The Cuomo registration proposal is a direct lift from Council Member Bob Holden's Intro 606, which was introduced last year and was the subject of a raucous, hours-long a hearing in December. The bill has strong support in the Council — mixed among Democrats (minus two after the hearing), but unanimous among the Council's five Republican members. (There's a state version, as well.)
After initial publication of this story, Holden praised Cuomo on X.com.
Setting aside that Intro 606 may be illegal, experts have long said that it would make streets less safe by reducing the use of e-bikes, which are currently reducing reliance on far-more-dangerous cars. It would also make delivery workers, many of whom are undocumented, the target of new police stings that could have ramifications beyond the issuance of a ticket.
And there is the sheer fact that cars already have state-issued license plates, which have done little if anything to improve street safety. For instance, Cuomo's press release claimed that in 2023, e-bikes were involved in "over 7,200 reported injuries, including nearly 500 pedestrian injuries."
This is not accurate. According to city data, riders of electric bikes and electric scooters may indeed have been "involved" in that many injuries in crashes — but the riders of the bikes and scooters are the victims in those crashes. In fact, 706 were injured by the riders of e-bikes, e-scooters and "motorbikes," which is how the NYPD sometimes codes e-bikes.
And the number of pedestrians injured that year by the riders of e-bikes, e-scooters and the like is not the 500 that Cuomo claims, but 328.
Meanwhile, car and truck drivers were "involved in" 34,749 crashes, injuring 48,108 people, including 6,991 pedestrians.
In other words, if you add up the injuries to pedestrians caused by car and truck drivers vs. micromobility users, the ratio is 21 to 1.
