New York City is launching a new division of the Department of Transportation, the Department of Sustainable Delivery. The City’s new $116 billion budget will see the installation of 45 new peace officers who will crack down on delivery workers riding e-bikes and mopeds in unsafe ways.
The Department of Transportation explained that the officers will be “trained to issue moving violations and enforce commercial cycling laws against businesses.” According to the release by New York City’s Department of Transportation, the peace officers will be unarmed and deployed in 2028.
No matter which of New York City’s five boroughs you are in, the city’s energy is palpable. The streets and sidewalks feature a cacophony of noises and are constantly bustling with commuters rushing to work, taxis fighting for space, and, most recently, delivery workers speeding by on various forms of transportation, including E-Bikes and mopeds.
The city’s sidewalks and streets have become unsafe for all New Yorkers, with Business Insider reports that the fatality rate for app-based delivery drivers using non-car transport is five times as high as construction workers in New York.
Several cities around the U.S. are also grappling with issues related to E-bikes and E-scooters. West Hollywood, CA, Winston-Salem, NC, and Columbia, SC, have all instituted major regulations and restrictions on E-scooters within city limits.
“The newly created Department of Sustainable Delivery is yet another step that we’re taking to support delivery workers, keep pedestrians safe, and hold delivery app companies accountable for placing unrealistic expectations on their workers that put New Yorkers in harm’s way,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said.
The Department of Transportation’s new initiative to combat dangerous e-bike and moped driving aligns with Mayor Adams’ push for “long-proposed” legislation. If passed into law, the legislation would establish “safe delivery times,” “penalize app companies that break the law,” and “allow the city to revoke delivery apps’ licenses over continued bad behavior.”
Many delivery companies are pushing back against the new initiative. Freddi Goldstein, a spokesperson at Uber Eats, stated, “Rather than work with the companies to better support delivery workers, the mayor’s strategy is to lean on more police enforcement of an already vulnerable population.” Much of the demographic of New York City delivery workers is immigrants.
The Workers’ Justice Project, which advocates for immigrant workers’ rights, commended the Mayor’s efforts in promoting street safety. The organization wrote “App companies like [Uber Eats and DoorDash] have created the conditions for unsafe e-bike use through algorithmic domination of workers, cut-throat competition and precarity, punitive deactivation practices that push workers to take unsafe risks to keep their jobs, and a total lack of investment in worker training, safe vehicles, or charging infrastructure.”
