You don't say!
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch did not inform her counterpart at the Department of Transportation that police would begin issuing criminal summonses to cyclists for a wide range of low-level traffic infractions — a willful lack of communication that government watchdogs called "concerning."
Streetsblog found out about the lack of communication between the two Vision Zero partners as part of its coverage of the new policy, which began on April 28 and was only revealed during the question-and-answer session of an otherwise unrelated City Council hearing.
NYPD told Streetsblog on Tuesday that Tisch did not tell DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez that she intended to issue criminal summonses for such offenses as passing through a red light or stop sign, recklessness, biking under the influence of alcohol or drugs or cycling the wrong way down a street.
The policy has already resulted in more than 900 criminal summonses in its first two weeks, the NYPD added. In all of 2024, only 553 such summonses were written. Many of those criminal tickets were written to delivery workers, a workforce that is comprised largely of immigrants, some of whom are undocumented.
Rodriguez has long championed the rights of immigrants, the importance of delivery workers, and the joy of cycling, all three of which are now targets of Tisch's enforcement scheme. Ironically, on the day that NYPD confirmed her "don't tell/don't tell" policy with Rodriguez, the DOT put out its latest "Bike Month" press release, "NYC DOT Encourages New Yorkers to Commute on Two Wheels for ‘Bike to Work' Day This Friday."
Government watchdogs found it incomprehensible that Tisch would unveil such a major traffic enforcement shift without informing the agency responsible for managing traffic.
"The entire administration should be working in a coordinated way on these things," said Ben Furnas, a former de Blasio administration official who is now head of Transportation Alternatives, which is collecting petition signatures to stop the new policy. "The city government must be focused on encouraging people to bike, for them to be treated fairly on the street and that NYPD enforcement is proportionate the dangers represented by each mode.
"If they're not coordinating, that's concerning," Furnas added. "Criminal summonses are beyond the pale."
The reference to dangers is crucial, given that the NYPD's own statistics show that e-bike riders are now bearing a disproportionate share of police enforcement.
In 2024, 37 pedestrians were injured in the entire year in 179 reported e-bike collisions, the NYPD said. In that year, 9,610 pedestrians were injured overall, so e-bike riders caused just 0.4 percent of pedestrian injuries.
That pattern continued in the first three months of this year, with one pedestrian injured by an e-bike rider, according to the NYPD. Over the same period, 2,271 were injured overall, so e-bike riders caused less than 0.04 percent of the reported pedestrian injuries.
Nonetheless, Tisch instituted her policy to crack down on reckless cyclists, about whom she said she receives many complaints from the public.
To another former city official, Tisch's silence speaks volumes about the dysfunction inside City Hall.
"You're talking about a city administration where the DOT was about to cut a ribbon on a project [the Queensboro Bridge pedestrian expansion] that was in the works for six years and City Hall said it never heard about it," said Jon Orcutt, the advocacy director for Bike New York and a former DOT official under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg. "There is not a lot of coordination inside this City Hall."
Orcutt said that a lack of coordination on something as important as a massive change in enforcement is particularly bad if the goal is, indeed, to make roadways safer.
"If we're going to have any sense of order on our streets, you have to tell people what you're doing," he said. "It can't be furtive and only be disclosed because journalists discover it. The point is deterrence. So go out there and say, 'This is what we're doing. If you run a light, we are to ticket you.' Otherwise you're just running up ticket numbers."
Like Furnas, Orcutt also said that enforcement needs to be proportionate to the dangers on the road, and the NYPD's own statistics make the case that its road safety enforcement effort should almost entirely be focused on car and truck drivers.
"To me, the only number that matters is pedestrian injuries and fatalities going down, not tickets going up," he said.
Former DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman said he was stunned that Tisch, whom he called a talented public servant, did not give any advance warning to Rodriguez.
"When I was commissioner, the NYPD and I definitely would have talked about this," he told Streetsblog.
The reason, he said, is simply so that the agencies are on the same page on public safety, which includes proportionate, well-thought-out enforcement.
"A car that runs a red light doesn't get a criminal violation, so why would a bike? Am I missing something?" he said. "Are there people on two-wheeled vehicles who are disregarding signals that are intended to protect them and everyone else? Of course there are, but the notion that criminal summonses is the appropriate response — and that they did it without consulting with DOT — doesn't make sense to me."
The current leadership of the DOT declined to comment for this story.
Streetsblog has been covering NYPD Commissioner Tisch's decision to turn traditional traffic tickets into criminal summonses like no one else in town. Here's a full list of our coverage over the past two weeks, in case you have missed something or need a reminder that when there's a big story on the livable streets beat, turn to Streetsblog:
- May 2: "Policy Change: NYPD Will Write Criminal Summonses, Not Traffic Tickets, for Cyclists."
- May 5: "NYPD’s Red Light Criminalization Marks ‘Obscene’ Escalation: Advocates."
- May 6: "As NYPD’s Criminal Crackdown on Cyclists Expands, It Grows More Absurd: Victims."
- May 7: "Komanoff: Tsk, Tsk, Tisch — Criminal Summonses for Cyclists Will Backfire."
- May 9: "NYPD’s Push To Criminalize Cycling Spells Trouble For Immigrant Workers."
- May 12: "Cyclist Launches Class Action Suit For Bogus NYPD Red Light Tickets."
- May 14: "NYPD Admits Bike Crackdown Based on ‘Community’ Vibes, Not Data."
- May 15: "Tisch Rap: NYPD Criminal E-bike Summonses Surge 4,000 Percent."
