Why e-bikes are killing New Yorkers

It’s a measure of how incompetent and unambitious New York’s government has become that the mayor and city council are helpless in dealing with a crisis that didn’t exist three years ago: mass-casualty e-bike battery fires. The problem is not hard to solve – but it’s impossible to solve any problem when City Hall has become a hand wringing talking shop.

Tuesday morning, an e-bike battery exploded in a Chinatown repair shop. The ensuing fire killed four people who lived above the store, and injured two others – elderly people who had nothing to do with the facility. The latest victims bring the death toll from e-mobility “device” fires this year to 13 – and to 23 since 2021. E-bike blazes – caused when the massive amount of energy stored in substandard batteries spontaneously ignites — are the leading cause of fire death in New York City. 

How many people died in e-bike fires in the city’s 367-year municipal existence through 2020? None.

When New York State and City legalized e-bikes in 2020, under the Cuomo and de Blasio administrations, they did not think it through. They bought bike advocates’ line: e-bikes, powered by batteries, would make life easier for older delivery cyclists, and would encourage New Yorkers to cycle to work.

Instead, e-bikes – as used on New York streets, not in bicycle fantasyland – have been a disaster.

The ubiquity of 25 mph e-bikes, plus pandemic lockdowns, enabled the delivery-app industry – UberEats, GrubHub, and the like – to spread like wildfire, from a few thousand workers  at individual restaurants a decade ago to 60,000, mostly immigrant men toiling  as “independent contractors” today. 

Delivery apps companies  force “contractors” to purchase and maintain e-bikes in order to have any chance of making a living wage. A new city law mandating an $18 hourly wage will mean even more pressure to schedule more deliveries per hour.

So we have an entirely new industry that depends on poor people living in cramped apartments to purchase, recharge, store, and maintain hazardous materials – cheap but powerful no-name batteries – in an unregulated environment. Fly-by-night businesses like the one that burned in Chinatown have also popped up to serve delivery workers with their bike maintenance needs.

Don’t be mistaken — This isn’t about supporting independent small businesses. This is global tech, disavowing responsibility for the deadly materials it requires low-wage workers to handle. 

It’s an industry that also disavows responsibility for workplace deaths and injuries. Last year, 18 delivery workers died delivering food, mostly in crashes. This makes e-bike delivery the city’s most dangerous occupation, more dangerous than construction. But the industry offers survivors no workers’ compensation.

What has the city government done in response to this crisis? Last year, Mayor Adams promised taxpayer dollars to build charging and repair stations. Why New Yorkers should subsidize an environmentally unfriendly low-wage fast-food business was a mystery.

But as with many of the mayor’s initiatives, from housing migrants in Gracie Mansion to improving Midtown quality of life, the mayor hasn’t gotten around to doing anything. The city council has passed laws in this arena — but they won’t take effect for another two months, and will likely be useless, anyway.

One law will prohibit the sale of substandard batteries – impossible to enforce. The rest of the package is “educating the public” and “submit[ting] … reports.” Now, the council is considering a buyback program for no-name batteries. This is total nonsense —  multi-million-dollar taxpayer giveaway to global tech.

What’s needed?

Ban the storage, recharging, and maintenance of e-bike and e-scooter batteries used for commercial purposes in residential and mixed-use buildings. If the app-delivery business needs e-bikes, it can find safe, industrial sites for its e-bikes, as Citi Bike has. Workers can pick bikes up and drop them off at designated outdoor spots with FDNY permits, leased from the city by the apps.

Require commercial e-bikes to register with the city and display proof of insurance – insurance against fire damage to property, insurance against worker injury or death, and insurance against pedestrian crash injury.

No mass-scale industry, let alone the most dangerous industry in the city, is allowed to operate without insurance covering hazardous equipment, imperiled workers, and the victimized public. Why should this one?

If you think this makes the e-bike delivery business uneconomical, you’re right. Delivering cheap food to stingy millennials who don’t know how to use their stoves isn’t an economical business. More people should have to pay for this luxury with their lives. 

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.