Their "biggest complaint"? NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch's criminal crackdown on cyclists.
Two West Side community boards this week overwhelmingly voted to oppose the NYPD's new criminal summons policy against bike riders, arguing that the Draconian strategy won't make streets safer.
The full board vote at Upper West Side Community Board 7 was 29 to 2, while at Hells Kitchen's Community Board 4, it was 35 to 4. The CB7 vote follows the board's Transportation Committee resolution calling on Mayor Adams and his top cop to put an immediate stop to the new policy of giving criminal summonses, not traffic tickets, to cyclists who break traffic laws.
"The resolution acknowledges that [e-bikers riding recklessly] is an issue, but there are other ways to address this problem. This resolution is simply saying, 'This is not the way,'" CB7 board member Ken Coughlin explained to his fellow panelists. "It’s simply unjust. The Upper West Side has a history of standing against injustice, going back to the Civil Rights movement. So I’d ask us to, with a unified voice, stand against this injustice."
Hells Kitchen residents felt the same, sharing concern that criminal summonses go too far, especially because of the potential consequences for the largely immigrant workforce.
"We know that ICE agents are looking for any opportunity to detain and deport our immigrant workers. I am just not willing to take that chance, of the kind of cruelty that this administration is capable of [going towards] people that are here trying to make a better life. There are other ways to get at this problem," said Jesse Greenwald, a CB4 member and co-chair of the Transportation Committee.
The Upper West Side has been the center of the e-bike debate in New York City since the vehicles started appearing on the street as the food delivery industry exploded and Citi Bike began expanding it's extremely popular electric bike fleet.
The neighborhood, along with the Upper East Side, is home to many of the members of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, an organization that pushes for e-bike registration and accountability and has been the main driver of anti-e-bike sentiment at community boards and public hearings.
For some, the CB7 vote was like déjà-vu all over again ... except in reverse. The meeting was held inside the very same Upper West Side Church where angry residents and politicians once disparaged e-bikes as the biggest safety issue facing the city. The EVSA's hours-long meeting in September 2024 served as the blueprint for community outrage against e-bikes, which in someways is how we got here. Yet the EVSA has also come out against the criminalization.
Commissioner Tisch has maintained that the criminal summons policy was enacted because of a surge in complaints, but the NYPD has failed to provide Streetsblog with any proof of this.
The two boards follow CB6 in Midtown Manhattan, which passed a similar resolution last week. The three boards uniting against the criminalization should send a message to the administration that nobody, not even those most concerned about "e-bike chaos," thinks that criminalizing immigrant workers is the right solution.
At both boards some members wanted to see e-bikes licensed, but still don't think criminalization is a good option.
"I get hit, or almost hit, at least once a day. This is a serious problem that puts lives at risk. We need a deterrent, but I think there is an argument that criminal summonses are not the right deterrent," said one CB7 board member.
At one point, board member Jay Adolf at CB7 tried, and failed, to add an amendment to the resolution that would call for the criminalization policy to halt only if Albany passes a bill requiring e-bikes to be licensed and/or registered by the DMV. That's the EVSA position, but cycling advocates argue it would not create the accountability the group seeks. After all, cars are licensed and registered, but the carnage continues.
So far this year, car drivers have injured more than 18,000 people, including more than 1,500 cyclists and more than 3,600 pedestrians, according to city stats.
