“Half-baked and ill-conceived”: Statement from Transportation Alternatives Opposing the Adams Administration’s New 15 mph Speed Limit for E-Bikes

The mayor has articulated no plan on how a 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes would work.

Under this rule, a 50-pound e-bike would be subject to a lower speed limit than a 5,000-pound car on the same street.

A 20 mph speed limit for all vehicles would save lives, protect New York families, and be unambiguously within the City’s authority.

There are more than ten times as many pedestrians seriously injured citywide by cars and trucks as in crashes involving people on bikes. Last year, car and truck drivers killed 113 pedestrians; one pedestrian was killed by an e-bike.

There are currently no regulations on app delivery companies to prevent companies profiting from and incentivizing high-speed delivery.

NEW YORK, NY — City Hall announced a new policy to mandate a 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes and e-scooters. 

Statement from Ben Furnas, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives: 

“A 15 mph speed limit on e-bikes and no other vehicles is half-baked and ill-conceived. Bikes and cars sharing the same road would be subject to different speed limits and consequences — and those consequences would be inverse to the potential for harm. 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. City Hall has identified no legal precedent for having different speed limits on different lanes of a road or different vehicle classifications.

“This is a bizarre escalation of the administration’s misguided war on biking. Already, the NYPD is giving out thousands of criminal summonses for routine traffic violations to people on bikes, and this new announcement will ask police officers, who have far more important work to do protecting our city, to waste their time sending New Yorkers to criminal court for biking 16 mph. These criminal summonses could clog the court system while subjecting people to the risk of jail or deportation — just for choosing to ride a bike. 

“Ironclad research from the U.S. Department of Transportation points to 20 mph as a universally safe speed in places where vehicles are in close proximity to pedestrians, and finds that the risk of injury increases in direct proportion to vehicle speed and vehicle weight. Under Sammy’s Law, 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.

“There are real solutions to these issues that would work on the ground, and New Yorkers can’t afford to wait. The Adams Administration should widely implement Sammy’s Law, which would lower the speed to 20 mph on city streets. Sammy’s Law works and it’s popular — 68% of New York City voters support lowering their neighborhood streets’ speed limit to 20 mph. City Hall and the City Council must finally move forward on app regulation today to address the root of the problem — it’s past time to regulate same-day delivery app companies that profit from pushing delivery workers to complete unsafe routes in impossible times.”

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