About farce.
Lyft on Thursday initially declined to commit to reduce the top speed of its electric Citi Bikes to comply with Mayor Adams’s proposed 15 mph e-bike speed limit — pledging instead to slap speedometers on the bikes and leave it up to riders to decide whether to comply.
Until Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro stepped in — and ordered the company to comply in a letter that called the popular rental bikes “an emergency threat to life and property.”
“If this policy goes into effect, Citi Bike will deploy a speedometer on our e-bikes so riders have the information they need to comply with the new rule,” Citi Bike General Manager Patrick Knoth initially said in a statement.
But Knoth walked that back after Mastro’s letter, reported by Gothamist, which demanded that the company make it impossible for members to reach speeds above 15 mph. In a second statement, Knoth buckled to Mastro’s demand: “We’ve received direction from City Hall and DOT to cap Citi Bike pedal-assist speeds at 15 mph,” he said. “We’re working to meet that mandate and best serve our riders.”
Lyft “voluntarily” lowered its e-bike top speed to 18 mph last year after negotiations with City Hall, but state law permits pedal-assist bikes to travel as fast as 20 mph. As such, a company spokeswoman initially called Adams’s proposed speed limit “confusing.”
E-bikes account 70 percent of Citi Bike rides, Lyft said, and rides on the electric bikes are significantly more expensive than rides on their non-electric counterparts. As such, the reduction in the utility of electric Citi Bikes could cut into Lyft’s business model — though a Lyft spokeswoman confirmed that the company was not consulted about the speed limit before Adams made it official on Wednesday.
Along with (mostly) throttle-powered e-bikes used by delivery workers, Citi Bike’s white e-bikes account for the bulk of electric bikes in the city. The expansion of the bike-share system’s electrified fleet has been accompanied by an explosive growth in Citi Bike usage more generally, according to Lyft’s figures.
Mastro’s letter argued that the “lack of action” from Lyft regarding its e-bikes was “hindering the city’s ability to advance bike lane and micromobility infrastructure and safety across the city.” Previously, the Adams administration has blamed the Council and anti-bike residents for its failure to build bike lanes.
The speed limit for cars on city streets is 25 mph. Chelsea Aguiar, a Citi Bike member, told Streetsblog she feels safer on an e-bike because she can keep up with auto traffic. A cyclist in the city for over a decade, she said “more bike lanes” would do more to improve safety than the mayor’s proposed speed limit.
“I just think the faster bikes are actually safer,” Aguiar said. “If you know how to ride a bike, if you have a quicker bike, you’re going to be able to maneuver in and out of traffic faster. You’re going to be able to respond to things around you faster.”
Aguiar called the mayor’s proposal “horseshit.”
“You want to make it safer for those guys? Get them off of sidewalks, get them moving in the right lanes of traffic,” she said of e-bike delivery workers. “I think that 3 miles per hour [reduction proposal] comes from somebody who doesn’t ride a bike in the city. Sorry, Mayor Adams.”
Meanwhile, the bike and pedestrian advocacy group Transportation Alternatives called Adams’s proposal “half-baked and ill-conceived.” The group called on Adams to implement “a 20 mph speed limit for all vehicles.”
“If you’re driving a two-ton SUV at 40 mph, you get a traffic ticket, but if you’re riding an e-bike at 16 mph, you are summoned to criminal court,” said Ben Furnas, the group’s executive director — a reference to the city’s new policy of issuing criminal summonses for e-bike traffic infractions.
“The city has unambiguous authority to reduce speed limits for every vehicle on the road to 20 mph. For e-bikes, this speed could and should be mandated and regulated at the point of sale, not sporadically punished by criminal summons.”
City Hall wants the new e-bike speed limit in effect by the end of July, WNYC reported.
“Fifteen? Am I gonna lose my mind over it? Absolutely not. I think there are a lot more important things to focus on than maximizing my pleasure on an e-bike,” said Citi Biker Jamison Hill. “But it does seem really unnecessary, and if it’s not supported by any data, then I don’t know why he’s spending time on it. It just kinda seems like — as a lot of things with his administration — puzzling and out of the blue.”
Hill called Citi Bike a “huge source of happiness” for him.
“The better long-term solution is to upgrade our infrastructure for e-bikes, because people deserve to feel safe walking on the sidewalk, and I think that people only use bikes on the sidewalk when there’s no alternative that’s safe for them,” he said.
“Invest in more infrastructure. Invest in more dedicated bike lanes. That’s the longer term solution that’s gonna work, or else eventually we look down the line and in a decade, speeds are capped at two miles an hour.”
