New York's Crackdown on E-bikes Is Unfair Enforcement, Critics Say

New York Times

24-05-2025

On Wednesday morning, Ivan Boston's day began at the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Downtown Brooklyn. Last month, police officers had stopped him for running a red light on his electric bicycle, and Mr. Boston, a construction worker, assumed that the D.M.V. was where traffic tickets were paid.
But the pink slip of paper in his hand was no traffic ticket. It was a criminal summons. In bold, black letters it read, 'To avoid a warrant for your arrest, you must go to court.'
When Mr. Boston noticed, a task he had considered a minor annoyance instead turned into a half-day ordeal. He hurried to court at the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building, across from City Hall.
'This is ridiculous,' said Mr. Boston, 56, whose unplanned day off cost him $200. 'But I don't want to get a warrant.'
Lawyers who spend much of their careers fighting summonses in criminal court find the situation just as baffling.
'These are just not charges that lawyers and judges inside the summons part of the court are used to seeing,' said Gideon Oliver, a lawyer who regularly practices in summons court.
New York City has begun a crackdown on e-bikes and scooters riders. It follows actions by city officials from Paris to Honolulu to Hoboken, N.J., who are responding to residents angry about zippy vehicles with silent electric motors zooming down sidewalks and streets, often startling people, and occasionally hitting pedestrians.
For years, some New Yorkers have complained about such behavior, which 'gives people the impression of chaos and disorder,' Jessica Tisch, the city's police commissioner, said at an April news conference at which she announced the enforcement action. 'It erodes our sense of public safety, and New Yorkers have had enough.'
That day, officers began staking out intersections across the city around the clock, watching for riders who ignored red lights and stop signs, rode against traffic or on sidewalks, rode under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or were reckless in other ways.
There is an irony embedded in the enforcement push. Cyclists who blow through red lights without endangering anyone else can now be forced to appear in court. Drivers who commit the same violation cannot. Instead, drivers face the same traffic ticket they always have, a moving violation with a fine payable by mail.
'It's a really bad escalation, targeting some of the less dangerous vehicles on the city's streets,' said Eric McClure, executive director of StreetsPAC, which lobbies to expand street infrastructure for vehicles other than cars.
This week, a month after the crackdown began, the first cyclists to be swept up in it appeared in court.
'You must abide by traffic rules, OK?' Judge Michelle Weber of Manhattan Criminal Court said on Monday to a food delivery worker who had admitted running a red light.
The enforcement campaign comes as the vehicles Americans choose to use increasingly reflect a new kind of culture war. For years, advocacy groups, including Transportation Alternatives, notched a series of policy wins that gradually empowered cyclists in New York, including a ban on cars in Central Park and the construction of hundreds of miles of bike lanes.
In recent years, political conservatives, suburban residents and drivers have fought back. Sean Duffy, the new U.S. transportation secretary, has described a new bike lane on the Queensboro Bridge as 'war on the working class.'
'I do think it's a problem when we're making massive investment in bike lanes at the expense of vehicles,' Mr. Duffy said at the 2025 World Economy Summit, as the website Streetsblog reported.
Each side preaches safety. The risks of scooters and e-bikes gained prominence in 2021, when Lisa Banes, an actor, was struck and killed on the Upper West Side by a scooter rider who fled the scene.
More crashes ensued. Sanja Pohl and her husband, Scott, were walking on 34th Street near Macy's last June when a man on a scooter lost control of the vehicle and crashed into them. Ms. Pohl's nose was broken, and she said she now gets debilitating migraines.
Her husband was unconscious for five days and had no memory when he came to, she said. He was unable to return to his job at the United Nations for six months, and nearly a year later, he is only able to work part time.
Ms. Pohl, 44, dreads leaving her apartment because of all the electric vehicles on the streets.
'I've never experienced fear like this,' she said.
The relatively recent arrival of scooters and e-bikes has captured most of the attention, but cars are still responsible for most mayhem on the city's streets.
Of the 121 pedestrians killed in traffic last year, 120 were struck by a car while one person died after being hit by an electric bike, according to city transportation department data compiled by Transportation Alternatives.
'Overwhelmingly, the people killed on the street are mowed down by drivers,' said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, which advocates for better mass transit. 'If that's not our priority, then we have our priorities wrong.'
People who want fewer cars on city's streets worry that the crackdown on cyclists may convince some New Yorkers who are considering riding more often to continue driving cars instead.
'It creates a real dampening effect on the uptake of biking, which we know really can improve safety,' Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, said.
Many e-bike riders and their advocates said they were caught by surprise by the increase in enforcement. The confusion continued on New York's streets and in its courtrooms this week, as officers, e-bike riders and lawyers all tried to understand just what the new rules require.
'It's still a traffic violation, which is not conduct the Legislature has defined as a crime,' said Steve Vaccaro, a New York lawyer who has primarily represented cyclists since 2006. 'But it's going to criminal court. So we don't know exactly what happens.'
Anger Everywhere
On Saturday, April 10, David Rodriguez went to see a boxing match in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay section. Afterward, Mr. Rodriguez rode his pedal bike home. Ignoring a red light at one point, he soon heard a police car's siren.
Weeks later, he was still angry about it.
'They were real aggressive, as if I had committed an actual crime,' Mr. Rodriguez, a 34-year-old construction worker said. 'I didn't know they could pull you over for riding a bike. I wasn't even in a car.'
Janet Schroeder, a founder of the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, is one of the city's loudest voices calling for stronger safety rules for electric bikes and scooters. But the new policy of imposing harsher penalties on e-bikes than on cars goes against her organization's mission of treating all vehicles equally, she said.
'If it's not the same as what they do for cars, it's ridiculous,' she said.
There have long been different standards under the law for different types of vehicles, which sometimes calls for varying approaches to enforcement, a police spokesperson said. Cars must have license plates, and drivers must carry drivers' licenses and insurance. Most scooters and e-bikes do not have similar requirements.
'Since e-bikes do not require a license, drivers of e-bikes can simply ignore their traffic summons with no repercussions whatsoever, making any enforcement futile,' the police spokesperson said. However, the new requirement that cyclists appear in court, or face an arrest warrant if they fail to, creates 'a strong incentive to show up in court.'
Some advocates for delivery workers say that the increased scrutiny of cyclists weighs especially heavily on an already vulnerable group. Many people who ride electric bikes in New York are undocumented migrants working for restaurants and food delivery apps, said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of Los Deliveristas Unidos, which represents delivery workers. The crackdown on electric bikes and scooters comes in the midst of the Trump administration's aggressive enforcement of immigration law.
'This is a direct attack on immigrant workers,' Ms. Guallpa said. 'The intent is to criminalize workers and to create a situation where our communities could be targets for deportation.'
The police deny this. People who receive summonses will not be fingerprinted, so their identities will not be logged into a national criminal database, and federal immigration agents are barred from arresting people on state courthouse property.
The police spokesperson said the department did not ask about a person's immigration status or cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on civil immigration matters.
Speedy Trials
Sal Cohen is among the immigrants who received a pink court summons connected to the increased enforcement effort. Originally from Turkey, and in the United States on a conditional green card, Mr. Cohen had not heard about the push when he rolled through a red light at the intersection of Grand Street and Union Avenue in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood on his way home from the gym this month.
A squad car pulled up alongside him and he was issued a summons.
A week and a half later, Mr. Cohen, 28, stood in line outside Courtroom No. 3, on the 16th floor of the municipal building, worried that ICE agents might appear.
'I'm here legally, but you never know,' he said. 'I'm nervous.'
A court officer called his case. Mr. Cohen walked to the rail, and spoke into a skinny microphone. Judge Paul Grosvenor asked if he would accept an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, which would wipe the offense off his record if had no interactions with the police for a set period of time, in his case, the next 30 days.
'Yes, your honor,' Mr. Cohen said.
'The application is granted,' Judge Grosvenor said. 'Dismissed.'
Mr. Boston's case was called next. The judge, facing him, held up the summons and squinted. The officer responsible for the stop had provided scant details about the interaction, and had simply noted the offenses he claimed Mr. Boston had committed: reckless driving and disobeying a red light.
The judge frowned.
'I'm going to dismiss as legally insufficient,' he said.
After two subway rides and three and a half hours of waiting, Mr. Boston's court appearance had lasted 46 seconds. As he left, a few minutes after noon, he felt just as confused as he had when he arrived.
'It's a moving violation, which should go to the D.M.V.,' he said. 'Why am I even in this court?'