The Phantom Menin: Speaker Vows Action Against E-Bikes Amid Unrelated Debate Over Carriage Horses

It’s the Trojan horse, literally!

City Council Speaker Julie Menin is throwing e-bikes under the horse-drawn carriage, using the debate over a proposed ban on equine tourism in Central Park as a stalking horse to regulate e-bikes.

It came during Wednesday’s hearing over the carriage ban bill, where powerful Transit Worker’s Union Local 100 President John Chiarello, spoke in opposition of the bill by redirecting anger about the treatment of animals into a completely separate fight over e-bikes.

“Let’s talk about the food delivery services that run right past this building that nearly ran me down that maimed and killed people every single day. Electric bikes, Amazon boxes that are propelled by electric means that don’t have a license on them, nobody’s talking about that,” he said, filling a Trojan horse with e-bike opponents armed, as Virgil had said, to the teeth.

Menin gladly accepted the gift horse, first saying that the Council was going to take up the alleged e-bike issue. Then, during an appearance on “Good Day New York” on Thursday, Menin mentioned New Jersey’s restrictive e-bike licensing law and said that the Council will introduce “a ton of bills” to “regulate the use of e-bikes, not only in the park, but on the streets.”

“I am definitely open to a registration mechanism,” she said, mentioning a 2024 bill to require e-bike registration that she supported before becoming speaker.

“I do support some kind of registration, insurance, and really making sure that third-party apps take responsibility,” she said. 

Supporters call the e-bike registration bill “Priscilla’s Law” to honor Priscilla Loke, who was struck and killed by the rider of an electric Citi Bike in Chinatown in late 2023. But the bill, originally introduced by then-Council Member Bob Holden (D-Queens) would not address the causes of, or accountability for, Loke’s death — her killer remained on the scene (and was questioned by police before being released) and his bike was already registered and trackable.

The Council held a hearing on the bill in 2024, with then-Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez testifying in opposition. After the hearing, two Council Members dropped their support, and the bill languished under then-Speaker Adrienne Adams.

At the hearing, DOT reiterated that e-bike registration has no proven street safety benefit, and would likely make roadways less safe for cyclists because they would lose the well-documented “safety in numbers” affect. Instead, experts say that the best way to stop traffic crashes is through better street design and education. Protected bike lanes have shown to reduce deaths and serious injuries for pedestrians by around 30 percent, according to the DOT.

E-bike registration also ignores the proliferation of e-motos and fast e-scooters, which are already illegal to use on city streets, even though they are as easy to buy online as placing an Amazon Prime order.

Still, Holden praised Menin’s e-bike registration commitment on social media. In his post, he mentioned the death of Theresa Valenti on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn, where the Queens resident was hit and killed by two men sharing an illegal e-moto. Holden’s registration bill would not change anything about the legality of the bike that was used to kill Valenti; it’s already illegal.

“So many people don’t realize how many of the bikes that are on the street are just straight up illegal and just shouldn’t have been bought,” said Upper West Side native Austin Celestin, an urban planner and member of Community Board 7, where conversations about e-bikes and bike lanes in often get heated. “They’re going rogue and they’re going rampant and they are far and away the most dangerous people.”

The bike before the horse

Wednesday’s hours-long hearing was convened to address a recent tragedy that had nothing to do with electric bikes. Romanch Mahajan, a teenager visiting New York with his family, was killed in a fall from a horse carriage when the horse bolted after his driver broke an industry rule by stepping away to take a picture.

Mahajan’s tragic death played out on the Central Park Drive, where the carriages share space with bikes, runners, walkers, and pedi-cabs. But the push for a horse carriage ban has, for decades, been an animal rights concern, not a transportation safety one; horses have passed out and died and activists say Midtown is no place for the grazing animals. 

But Mahajan’s death opened the door to a discussion of safety in the park, which allowed opponents to shove through new demands for e-bike bans or registration.

“Once that casualty happened and there was a human aspect to it, I knew that people were going to be like, ‘What about e-bikes?’ That’s been the discourse in Central Park for three, four years now,” said Celestin.

Ken Coughlin, another Upper West Sider and CB7 member, who was instrumental in advocating for a car-free Central Park drive, does not support the horse carriage ban, but he’s frustrated that the debate is being used by the Speaker to push for new regulations against legal e-bikes.

“It’s kind of crazy,” said Ken Coughlin. “It’s like saying, ‘Don’t beat us up, beat up somebody else.'”

The real future of Central Park

Thanks in part to Coughlin’s advocacy, Central Park is free from cars and is in the midst of being redesigned to better reflect its current uses. The main drive is popular for runners, road cyclists, scooter tours, and just about any non-car transportation. For delivery workers, who cross the city on e-bikes delivering food and groceries to New Yorkers’ front doors, the drive’s car-free lanes are the only safe protected bike infrastructure on the Upper East Side, and the only way to get crosstown without going around the park.

“Part of the reason e-bikes are using the park is there is no good, safe alternative to get around the park. You don’t have a bike lane on Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, or Lexington Avenue. You can’t get through the park, and there’s no crosstown lane above the park,” said Celestin. “If you have that infrastructure around the park, then you would take those people using the park as a cut through, as transportation, they would have less reason to do so.”

The popularity of the park drive, Coughlin admits, has caused some growing pains, but it is not something that e-bike registration would fix.

“I think there needs to be controls on the speeds of not just e-bikes, but any micro-mobility device going through the park, especially the scooters,” said Coughlin. “Licensing is going to do absolutely no good. I mean, it already does no good with cars. All it’s going to do is discourage people from adopting a mode of transportation that we should be encouraging them to adopt.”

Holden’s e-bike registration bill was re-introduced by Council Member Inna Vernikov (R-Sheepshead Bay) and currently has just 12 sponsors. Speaker Menin stopped short of directly supporting the bill when asked about it by Streetsblog at a press conference on Thursday.

It is unclear if she was walking back her earlier comments on “Good Day New York” or just waiting to see if other pols accept the equine gift as she has.