Mayor Adams's much anticipated new department to rein in the chaos of the city's commercial delivery industry will launch as a team of just 45 unarmed agents within the Department of Transportation — who won't even be on the job for another three years, city officials said on Monday.
Adams administration official announced plans for a “Department of Sustainable Delivery" in early 2024 with the goal of regulating the app companies who fill the streets with delivery workers. But the $6.5 million secured in the city’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget falls well short of that, and the City Council has so far refused to give the mayor any additional regulator power.
It is unclear exactly how the 45-person team will enforce traffic laws for the estimated 80,000 delivery workers and hold the app companies themselves accountable to new regulations.
And on top of it all, the first “class” of “peace officers,” won't even be active until 2028. Delivery workers expressed disappointments in the mayor's continued focus on enforcement of individual cycling behavior, rather than the top-down regulation he and other political leaders have promised. The plan at present "will only intensify an already discriminatory and punitive response to an essentially structural problem," the Worker’s Justice Project said in a statement.
The initial announcement of funding for the long-awaited department came last Tuesday after the Mayor and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams reached a handshake deal on the city’s $116-billion budget. Hizzoner touted the budget deal as another in a line of recent decisions focused on e-bike enforcement. Speaker Adams, meanwhile, has refused to take up City Hall's broader vision for an actual delivery regulatory agency.
Road safety advocates want to see city leaders shift their focus from enforcement to regulation.
“I don't know why it takes three years to hire and train people to do enforcement, but regardless, that shouldn't be the priority anyway,” said Eric McClure, the executive director of StreetsPAC. “The Department of Sustainable Delivery should be prioritizing making conditions safer and improving safety for everybody, including delivery workers.”
The DOT peace officers will have broad enforcement authority against anyone using an e-bike, e-scooter or moped, and will also give tickets to car drivers for things like illegal parking in bike lanes, an agency spokesperson clarified.
The administration’s stated goal is to increase accountability for the large app-companies runs right through the City Council, whose members haven't shown any eagerness to play along.
“Today, I’m also renewing my calls, yet again, to our partners in the City Council to pass our long-proposed legislation that will strengthen delivery worker safety and bolster the work of this newly created department," the mayor said in a statement on Monday. "It's time to protect delivery workers and all New Yorkers, once and for all."
Enforcement first amid regulatory vacuum
The Department of Sustainable Delivery concept failed to pick up support in the City Council over nine months of negotiation. In April, Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched their enforcement war on cyclists.
First, the NYPD instituted a new policy of issuing criminal summonses to e-bike riders who break traffic laws, instead of the usual traffic tickets that cops still give to motor vehicle drivers.
Critics called the policy an attack on the largely immigrant workforce since it forces delivery workers, many of whom aren't citizens, to show up in court for a bike violation when fears of Trump’s deportation machine are at their highest.
Then, Adams announced the city would enact a 15 mile per hour speed limit for e-bikes (even as he continued to confuse e-bikes with mopeds in his public comments).
The mayor said the two policies were about safety, but delivery workers and advocates argue they represent a pattern of finger pointing at workers versus getting to the root of the disorder on the streets.
"Street safety cannot be achieved through surveillance and punishment. It requires a fundamental shift in corporate priorities to align with the city’s collective safety goals and to empower workers to meet those goals without risking their livelihoods," the Worker's Justice Project statement said.
"New rules around e-bike speed limits will only be just and effective if delivery workers are protected from corporate retaliation for complying with these laws and free from the pervasive fear of losing their jobs as a result of such compliance."
The two sides of City Hall
The mayor and speaker's teams have been fighting over the proposed department since a 28-page draft bill was quietly released earlier this year by the mayor’s office.
“Nobody has acquitted themselves well in this process, whether it be City Hall or the Council,” said McClure. “The fact that the mayor announced the [Department] of Sustainable Delivery in January of 2024 and basically nothing's happened to this point, that’s a huge failure on both ends of City Hall.”
A Council spokesperson told Streetsblog that Speaker Adams "cannot comment" on legislation that hasn’t been introduced, meaning the 28-page proposal.
"The safety of sidewalks and streets remains a top priority for Speaker Adams and the Council. While we cannot comment on legislation that has not been introduced, we remain in discussions with advocates and constructive members of the mayoral administration to advance solutions on e-bike safety, sustainable delivery, and street safety,” the spokesperson said.
Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side) has been at the forefront of delivery app regulation, passing bills to mitigate e-bike battery fires. But Brewer was completely unaware that there would be any funding for the new department in the budget before the handshake deal, she said.
“We didn’t know anything about it, that it was going to be in the budget. It was a little off the rails,” said Brewer. “I don’t know any details at all. I always check with the deliveristas because I want them to be okay. I am not supportive of criminal penalties."
Added Brewer, "I don’t know what these peace officers are going to do. I don’t know if they can do peace officers without some vote by the City Council, this all needs to be looked at.”
The veteran legislator said the Council wants to break the mayor's proposal into smaller bills to pass as a package and to advance its own legislation that overlaps with the goals of the Department of Sustainable Delivery.
Council members introduced at least 15 bills in 2024 that would enact some sort of regulation on the app delivery industry.
Brewer is the prime sponsor of one of such bill, Intro. 20, which would require the app companies ensure workers take a safety course and provide workers with bicycle safety equipment like lights, helmets, brakes and bells.
Intro. 20 could get a vote as soon as next Monday, and that other bills would be moving along in the process shortly, Brewer said.
