Friday’s Headlines: Make Delivery Work Edition
Should delivery apps provide their workers with a place to rest, use the bathroom, store equipment and charge their e-bike batteries?
That’s the premise of Council Member Harvey Epstein’s new bill, introduced on Thursday.
“The delivery apps aren’t doing things to ensure there’s bike storage and rest areas,” said Epstein, who has been navigating a two-year battle over an ad hoc rest area and hub for African delivery workers on E. 11th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. “We are introducing a bill today to create that system and that structure. Instead of relying on the restaurants and just public streets in New York, the delivery companies have a real responsibility to make this work.”
Workers store hundreds of bikes on the block while resting and making use of a local community center, Cafewal, but some residents have complained about their presence, and NYPD has repeatedly blitzed the area to issue violations and confiscate bikes.
In other news:
- The Times ran a moving obituary for Douglas Adams, the cyclist killed in a Central Park collision with an unleashed dog last month, and his wife, who died just weeks before Adams’s tragic crash.
- New York Cycle Club’s Roll it Forward! giving program is now accepting applications from local non-profits whose work helps to grow and diversify the cycling community. Apply by the Nov. 30 deadline.
- The city’s community board district managers are unionizing. (The Chief Leader)
- Open Plans has a piece about low-traffic neighborhoods in Vital City.
- The Times spent the night with a crew of New York City roller skaters.
- New York transit officials hope Congressional Democrats scrap the GOP’s transit defunding surface transportation reauthorization bill. (amNY)
- TWU International President John Samuelsen is sending lecturing letters to TWU Local 100 leaders about how to negotiate their next contract. (The Chief Leader)
- Learn how four Times employees get to work from New Jersey.
- A white Rolls Royce and its “tail of five to eight black Escalades,” all illegally parked, have been mucking up traffic on one Upper West Side block. (West Side Rag)
