Illegal Electric Bikes Will Get NYC Restaurants Slapped With Fines

UPPER WEST SIDE — Restaurants will soon get slapped with bigger fines for making deliveries with electric bicycles that some New Yorkers call a scourge to pedestrians. Starting in January, the NYPD will make businesses pay tickets issued to delivery workers caught using self-propelled "e-bikes," city officials announced Thursday.

The move is aimed at getting the bikes, which are legal to own but illegal to ride in New York City, off the streets entirely by attacking the source of the problem, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

"We have to go after the businesses," de Blasio said at a news conference in Verdi Square on the Upper West Side. "They are profiting by violating the law. It's that simple."

Penalizing businesses was previously complicated, de Blasio said, so cops ticketed individual riders, confiscating their bikes and hitting them with a fine of up to $500. Under a new NYPD directive effective at the start of next year, police will note which business delivery cyclists are working for and mail them a summons carrying a $100 fine for the first offense and $200 for each subsequent offense.

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Business owners won't be able to get their confiscated bikes back until they pay all their fines, de Blasio said.

The new enforcement scheme won't apply to independent contractors for delivery services like Uber Eats or Postmates, who don't work for any particular restaurant. Those workers will continue to get fined directly, de Blasio said.

Police so far this year have seized 923 e-bikes, an 170 percent jump from the same time last year, the city said. That has tracked with a recent spike in 311 complaints about them, NYPD Chief of Patrol Terence A. Monahan said, though officials did not provide specific numbers to illustrate that.

The city started cracking down on the bikes and reviewing its policy after persistent complaints from Matthew Shefler, an Upper West Side resident and business owner who said he's had several "near-misses" with speeding e-bikes. They travel much faster than standard bicycles and often ride against traffic and run red lights, Shefler said.

"Stepping off the curb is tough enough in New York without these things flying around," Shefler said.

In New York, e-bikes are regulated by a complex jumble of somewhat contradictory laws. They're legal to sell and own under federal law, as long as they can't go faster than 20 MPH on their own. That means the city can't go after workers who keep fleets of bikes in their restaurants, or the shops that sell them, officials said.

State law classifies self-propelled e-bikes as "motorized scooters," which can't be legally registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles and are explicitly banned by city law. But so-called pedal-assisted bikes, which give an extra push without replacing the need to pedal, are legal with a permit, de Blasio said.

E-bikes are used heavily by workers for restaurants that deliver meals, an industry that's expected to be worth $76 billion by 2022 thanks to the popularity of online delivery services such as Seamless and GrubHub, CNBC reported in July.

Those delivery riders generally work for tips and can use e-bikes to complete more deliveries faster. Nearly 46 percent of people working in the restaurant industry nationwide last year were people of color, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

De Blasio acknowledged the need to balance workers' livelihood with public safety, but he said the latter ultimately wins out. Older delivery workers who demonstrate a need for one could use a pedal-assisted bike, he said. And any business owners who try to pass fines on to their workers could face action from the Department of Consumer Affairs.

"We didn't want a situation where the business thought, 'the poor schmuck delivery guy will have to pay for it,' or the business fines will not mount a lot," de Blasio said. "We want to show the businesses they're going to pay for everything."

(Lead image: A cyclist rides an e-bike on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Photo by Noah Manskar)