Pedicabs

This week's Time Out New York offers advice on the best ways to navigate the city (all of them sans private automobile). In addition to tips on cheating the MTA out of a subway fare and knowing when the bus is better, TONY explains that pedicabs aren't just for tourists.

Attorneys representing the pedicab industry have succeeded in getting a temporary reprieve from restrictions adopted by the City Council earlier this year, including a cap on the allowed number of operators and a ban on electrically-assisted rigs, until their lawsuit against the city can be heard in court.

Pedicabs took to the streets yesterday to protest the City's new regulations on New York's greenest for-hire transportation industry. In a press release, The Green Transport Association says that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn "dealt pedicabs a crushing blow capping our number at 325 city-wide" -- a reported 35 percent reduction in the pedicab workforce:

NY1 is reporting that the City Council has voted to override Mayor Bloomberg's veto of its pedicab bill.

Anticipating a vote in the City Council this afternoon to override the mayor's veto of Intro 331-A, a bill to regulate pedicabs, a group of pedicab operators was demonstrating outside the American Museum of Natural History after Bloomberg's big Earth Day speech.

On Monday, April 23, the day after Earth Day and the Mayor's Long-Term Sustainability speech, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn plans to hold a decisive vote on Intro. 331-A, a law limiting and restricting pedicabs. Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the bill but rather than going back and trying to improve the legislation by, say, simply increasing the cap on the number of pedicab licenses, Quinn has been twisting Council members arms to override the Mayor's veto.

This NY Sun editorial weighs in on the proposed pedicab restrictions:

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is reportedly pressuring -- some might say coercing -- council members into backing her effort to override of Mayor Bloomberg's veto of stringent pedicab restrictions. Tony Avella of Queens talked to the Sun about Quinn's anti-pedicab campaign among council members.

onNYTurf reports: