Council Backs Off E-Bike Registration Amid Jersey’s Messy Restriction Rollout

On second thought…

The City Council will not call on state legislators to pass an e-bike licensing bill akin to the one now in effect in New Jersey, where the messy rollout is causing issues for Garden State cyclists and advocates say the registration regime, which focuses on low speed e-bikes, has unclear safety benefits.

Last week, Council Speaker Julie Menin (D-Upper East Side), appeared to support a Council resolution to call on Albany to adopt e-bike licensing through the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side) was set to introduce said resolution, but now she says she’s scrapped it in advance of a broad Sept. 30 hearing that will take up more than a dozen pending bills.

“Let’s just see what happens at the hearing first,” Brewer told Streetsblog.

The hearing will be one of the Council’s periodic e-bike reckonings. In this case, a joint panel of members of the Transportation, Consumer and Worker Protection, and Public Safety committees will convene to hash out legislative proposals and probe officials about enforcement of existing laws.

The decision by Menin to not include a Council bill to call for state-level e-bike registration is a notable shift from the Speaker and Brewer, who both represent parts of the city where some residents are very vocal about electric two-wheeled devices and have been advocating for registration for years.

Mayor Mamdani also recently said that he does not support a registration and licensing for e-bikes, which under state law are currently legal in three classes, none of which exceeds 25 miles per hour.

Mamdani, for now, is focusing his attention away from blanket e-bike registration towards continued enforcement and point-of-sale warnings about e-motos, the motorcycle-like electric vehicles that are already illegal, like illegal scooters, and have been involved in several high-profile crashes.

Confusion across the Hudson

New Jersey passed its blanket e-bike registration bill, the strictest in the nation, in January after a string of crashes where e-bike riders were hit by car drivers and died, it is not clear from news reports whether the bikes were street legal or not. The state’s bike advocacy, street safety, and immigration groups all opposed the bill. Bike shops have seen steep declines in sales and rentals this summer since the law went into effect.

“We have two stores in New Jersey right now, they are both on the verge of closing down,” said Larry Pizzi, the CEO of Pedego Electric Bikes.

A slow down in the sale of electric bikes may seem trivial, but to Pizzi, its a big problem not just for business but for those who benefit from the mobility and freedom a bike, electric or otherwise, can provide.

“I view bikes in general like a social equity tool. People that can’t afford a car, people that can’t get a drivers license. This is real mobility. You take that away from communities, it’s just devastating,” he said.

And the rollout of the Garden State’s regulations has been messy and confusing, advocates say.

“The Motor Vehicle Commission basically didn’t have any plan for this until about two weeks ahead of the go live date. There’s an estimated 300,000 e-bikes in the state that need to be registered,” said Andrew Wilson, the president of Bike Hoboken, where e-bikes are a popular choice for commuters, parents and delivery workers. The Mile Square City is a Vision Zero success, with no traffic deaths since 2017.

As of Aug. 11, the Motor Vehicle Commission said it had registered just over 11,000 e-bikes. The New Jersey Bike Walk Coalition has been collecting stories from e-bike users through an online portal. One commenter made an appointment to register an e-bike at an MVC location in Jersey City on July 18, a day before the grace period ended. But the location ran out of stickers for the bikes, so she had to leave with her bike still unregistered, she wrote.

“They ran out of stickers. I told the lady enforcement starts tomorrow, what happens if I get stopped? She said she couldn’t help me,” the post reads.

And there’s many more such stories. “There are some real face-palm moments form the state,” said Wilson.

The Motor Vehicle Commission resolved the sticker issue, a spokesperson said, and now has all locations fully stocked. “E-bike registration is available by appointment at MVC locations across New Jersey. Currently, there are more than 35,000 open appointments, and nearly all locations handling e-bike registration have next-day availability,” said Commission spokesperson William Connolly.

Beyond the confusing rollout, the Jersey law only covers currently legal e-bikes, which are already regulated by the three-class system (in New Jersey, Class 3 e-bikes were previously regulated as mopeds). But the Jersey law does not address illegal e-motos, which are faster, heavier and more dangerous than e-bikes.

Instead, the law effectively gets rid of the three classes of e-bikes by categorizing all e-bikes, even low-speed pedal assist e-bikes, like mopeds, a move that now requires riders to have a driver’s license or obtain an e-bike license; get the bike registered; display the registration number with stickers on the bike’s fork; and have insurance.

Wilson says the law has created friction in ways that should’ve been foreseeable. For example, parents who use a Class 2 e-bike designed for carrying children, like the high-end Aventon Abound, are now in violation of the law.

“Even though that has child seats on the back, it is illegal to carry passengers on the back of a Class 2. Parents are now breaking the law by bringing their kids to school on their bike,” said Wilson. “Class 2 and Class 3 now require motorcycle helmets. It just shows that the people who wrote this have no clue what they’re talking about.”

In Jersey City, e-bikes are also a popular way to get around. One advocate wants city residents to be incentivized to chose low-speed e-bikes, rather than purchasing faster illegal e-motos. Any “bike” with a motor larger than 750 watts or can reach speeds of over 28 miles per hour is an “e-moto.”

“If we treat them the same, there is no incentive to buy the safer e-bike. [E-bike registration] actually harms safety because it groups safe e-bikes in with the dangerous devices,” said Tyler Newcomb, the president of Bike JC.

After two high-profile crashes, New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a consumer alert earlier this month warning e-bike shoppers about the proliferation of actually illegal e-motos online being marketed as e-bikes. And Mayor Mamdani’s lawyers issued 42 cease and desists to online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Facebook Marketplace, warning the e-commerce giants to come into compliance with the city’s regulations. Newcomb wants New Jersey to follow New York in focusing legislative power and enforcement resources on the e-motos that are already illegal.

“Most transportation advocates can agree that something needs to be done about high speed dangerous and illegal e-motos,” he said. “It’s important to nail down the difference between an e-bike and an e-moto, because the things people are worried about buy and large aren’t e-bikes. The really dangerous high powered devices are already illegal, the focus needs to be on that.”

Riding the fence

Menin has been at the epicenter of the e-bike debate since 2024, when she appeared at a meeting of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, a group of Upper Manhattanites who want e-bike registration at the city level, and endorsed both registration and banning e-bikes from parks.

Later that year, then Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez came out strongly against the city-level e-bike registration bill, telling Council Members at a contentious hearing that it would cost the city $19 million to basically create a DMV within DOT. Soon after, politicians like Brewer and Menin began stressing that any e-bike registration would have to be at the state level. Both have flip-flopped in their public declarations of support regarding registering e-bikes.

The Dec. 2024 hearing was contentious, with members of the anti-e-bike E-Vehicle Safety Alliance booing and yelling over other advocates and officials who didn’t support registration.

“The biggest problem is people don’t talk to each other,” said Paul Mondesire, a micromobility industry veteran who is now advocating for a more comprehensive approach to cycling safety. “They’d rather yell at each other, and then tell elected officials to do something. The officials will then write a law, and law enforcement is charged with enforcing that law, but they don’t want to do that job.”

At an Aug. 3 press conference, Menin appeared to support state level e-bike registration and even brought up New Jersey as an example of potential action.

Those statements sparked confusion as to whether Menin would support a call to the state for a blanket registration law. But it is now clear she will not support such a resolution, according to Council staff. The Council will consider a resolution from Brewer which calls on the state to pass Senate bill 7587, which seeks to require license and registration for commercial e-bikes, like the ones used by the city’s over 80,000 delivery workers.

On Thursday, Council Transportation Chair Shaun Abreu (D-Morningside Heights) introduced four new bills that will be part of the upcoming hearing. The uptown council member wants to stop false advertising of e-motos as e-bikes, require the city to use dynamometers to test the power and speed of a bike during enforcement operations, and for Citi Bike to chronicle crashes. Streetsblog is keeping a running list of the bills being considered.

Still nothing is completely off the table, the Sept. 30 hearing is meant to be a starting point to hear from stakeholders and weigh all options.

“The Council will consider a range of legislative options to improve e-bike and e-scooter safety at the September 30 hearing before determining the best path forward based on testimony and public input,” spokesman Henry Robbins told Streetsblog.

The hearing will take place on Sept. 30 at City Hall, specific time and location have yet to be announced.