Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 24
Luz Maria Mercado fought for the creation of her Jackson Heights neighborhood’s 26-block open street along 34th Avenue. Her early elation over the 2020 initiative in Queens has since given way to fear over the safety of her teenage sons when they use the thoroughfare, which is shared with a steady stream of e-bikes and mopeds.
Shekar Krishnan, the local City Council member, convened the town hall late last month to discuss what he called the “moped crisis,” but the concern stretches well beyond the Queens neighborhood. According to the city Department of Transportation there were 6,287 injuries involving motorized two-wheelers citywide last year, a 368% increase since 2017. Fatalities have been on the rise as well, including 100 in 2023, up from 64 in 2020, with riders paying the heaviest toll.
The Adams administration has fought back, recently destroying confiscated two-wheelers using construction equipment, but so far there has been more hand wringing over the vehicles than lasting solutions, with an estimated 65,000 e-bikes on city streets, a proliferation officials say has been fueled in part by the large number of migrants doing delivery work.
And there are other recent issues – beyond the well chronicled and separate concern of fires caused by e-bike batteries. The problem of unregulated mopeds and their operators was thrust into view after two police officers were shot while investigating robberies in East Elmhurst on June 3.
The NYPD has confiscated 13,000 two-wheelers and ATVs this year, according to the Adams administration. That follows the seizure of more than 18,000 such vehicles in 2023, which the city said was a record for one year and a 128% increase over 2022.
According to DOT figures, the vast majority of those injured or killed are those operating the vehicles, rather than pedestrians. Since 2022, the agency said, there have been six pedestrian fatalities involving two-wheelers, out of 275 total pedestrian fatalities. Adams said that the city would be better off engaging with the app-based delivery companies that employ delivery workers, rather than punishing them.
Meanwhile, in Jackson Heights, the major concern of residents has been just how to cross the street safely.
Residents and elected officials there have different ideas about the right way forward, and how best to strike a balance between protecting the livelihoods of workers with the safety of pedestrians. Broadly speaking, the solutions on the table have fallen into three categories: education, enforcement and engineering or design.
Source: Gothamist
