NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – As electric bikes skyrocket in popularity, calls are growing for the city to address safety concerns that come along with the vehicles.
The bikes are a new reality on city streets and different groups are confronting the safety concerns in different ways.
Jay Adolf, a member of the Manhattan Community Board 7 Transportation Committee, wants to ban e-bikes from bike lanes on the Upper West Side, fearful of more pedestrian crashes. E-bike fatalities in the city grew 233% from 2019 to 2020, according to the New York Post.
“I am particularly concerned, which is the genesis of this resolution, with what’s going on with electrically powered bicycles, which are in fact, a different animal,” Adolf said.
He said bike lanes, and the laws governing them, came about in a different time, when regular bikes weren’t competing with faster e-bikes.
“I view this as a safety emergency, that all of the sudden we are inundated with these machines,” Adolf said.
Another member of the committee, Sara Lind, said pedestrians bear some responsibility too.
“A bike lane is a part of the road, so just as on a street with no bike lane, you wouldn’t go out and stand in the middle of a lane of traffic while you’re waiting for the light to cross, or you wouldn’t just walk out onto the street, you shouldn’t just walk into a bike lane either,” Lind said.
She worries making e-bike riders mix with regular traffic could be deadly.
Committee member Ken Coughlin noted that the vast majority of injuries on the streets come from cars and trucks, not cyclists.
“How is it safer for cyclists, who happen to be using a pedal-assist bike, to make them compete with trucks and cars?” Coughlin said.
Banning e-bikes from bike lanes is a non-starter for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“It does not make sense to ban them in bike lanes, because they certainly shouldn’t be out in the flow of traffic,” the mayor said.
De Blasio said he has concerns about the varying speeds mixing together in bike lanes, but he said that it can be addressed with better education and enforcement.
Emblematic of this citywide debate, the Community Board 6 Transportation Committee on the East Side is looking to take the opposite approach. It voted to explore widening bike lanes to accommodate the new traffic and allow the faster e-bikes to pass conventional bikes.