A deliverista at work on an e-bike in Greenwich Village on July 22, 2024.
Photograph by Ben Brachfeld
Final week, town’s Parks Division introduced that it will allow e-bikes and e-scooters on roadways and paths all through the greater than 30,000 acres of land it controls throughout the 5 boroughs.
Parks Commissioner Iris Rodriguez-Rosa mentioned that “allowing the same e-bikes and e-scooters that are allowed in city bike lanes on our park drives and greenways would make our city safer and more accommodating for pedestrians, cyclists, and e-mobility users alike.”
Neither the choice nor the reasoning, nevertheless, makes a lot sense, contemplating that in recent times, the Parks Division has moved to ban vehicular visitors on many streets operating by means of its parks—comparable to Central Park’s East and West Drives and lengthy stretches of Forest Park Drive in Queens—to guard pedestrians and bicyclists touring alongside or close to those self same roadways.
Furthermore, town has been making an attempt to higher management e-bike and e-scooter visitors for years for the reason that gadgets have been legalized in 2020. The NYPD’s newest TrafficStat report notes that e-bike collisions are up over 11% from final yr, growing from 290 incidents to 323. In some situations, operators of e-scooters and e-bikes — which have most authorized speeds of 20 and 25 mph, respectively — have critically injured or killed individuals with whom they collided.
For instance, a 39-year-old Queens man on a stand-up scooter was killed after a horrific motorcar collision on June 26. On Might 17, a 58-year-old Bronx resident was killed when an e-scooter driver crashed into him as he tried to cross a one-way residential road on Staten Island.
Mayor Eric Adams has moved to enact a brand new pace restrict for e-bikes and e-scooters, and the NYPD is stepping up enforcement by means of its newly created High quality of Life Unit. Even so, extra measures are wanted to carry e-bike and e-scooter operators accountable — comparable to registration and insurance coverage mandates — and defend New Yorkers.
Within the absence of such elevated accountability measures, it’s preposterous for town to allow e-bikes and e-scooters inside public parks, placing parkgoers liable to collision, damage and loss of life.
The town is correct to cut back automotive visitors within the parks as a result of reckless drivers behind the wheel of autos weighing a ton pose a deadly menace to guests. However a reckless e-bike or e-scooter operator additionally poses a deadly menace to the older man strolling within the park, a baby driving their bicycle, or a younger mother out together with her child in a stroller.
On the subject of public security, town can’t go each methods. E-bikes and e-scooters don’t have any place within the parks with out main regulatory reform that designates areas of operation, limits speeds and retains all operators and park guests secure.
