A pedicab (sort of) makes use of the Broadway bike lane.
Photo: Brad Aaron

Last week's collision between a pedicab and a yellow taxi in Brooklyn was followed by a renewed, or at least better publicized, interest from Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council in enforcing long-awaited pedicab industry standards.

The rules, initiated by pedicab companies themselves, are intended to protect passengers, pedicab drivers and the general public through, among other measures, the issuance of operator licenses and requirements related to vehicle safety. The City Council adopted the regulations in 2007, but enforcement lagged after a protracted legal battle between the city and the industry over a now-abandoned cap on pedicab licenses. 

On Tuesday, the Post ran an editorial opposing one aspect of the laws, which bar "pest-i-cabs" (ha, get it?) from bike lanes.

"[T]he bike-lane prohibition seems a little odd," Post editors wrote. "Mayor Mike's recent green-themed streetscaping means that such lanes occupy nearly half of many blocks in Midtown -- surely there's enough room for pedicabs on them."

The New York City Pedicab Owners' Association agrees.

"The NYCPOA officially is in favor of removing the restriction on pedicabs operating in bike lanes and actually believes it is safer for pedicabs to operate in bike lanes when they are available," spokesman Chad Marlow told Streetsblog. Marlow added, however, that the trade group supports keeping pedicabs out of tunnels and off bridges, even when the bridge has a bike lane -- as the regs dictate.  

What do you think? Should bike lanes be open to pedal-powered commercial traffic, including pedicabs -- or, for that matter, cargocycles -- or should they be reserved for citizen cyclists? 

This week's Time Out New York offers advice on the best ways to navigate the city (all of them sans private automobile). In addition to tips on cheating the MTA out of a subway fare and knowing when the bus is better, TONY explains that pedicabs aren't just for tourists.

“I’ll get you anywhere in midtown in under ten minutes, or I’ll pay you,” says Gregg Zukowski, driver and owner of pedicab company Revolution Rickshaws. “For example, Grand Central to Penn Station takes me seven minutes.” What if there’s gridlock? “Then it might take eight,” he brags.

“It’s ‘transportainment,’” says New York Pedicab Association president Peter Meitzler. “It’s cheaper than a limo but just as much personal attention. I like to think of it as a pedal-powered limo service.”

Just don’t breathe too deeply -- think about all those fumes pedi passengers must inhale as they zip around idling cars. “I know, I know,” sighs Zukowski. “It’s a bitch. I’m trying to get those automobiles banned.”

Photo: ultrahi/Flickr

Attorneys representing the pedicab industry have succeeded in getting a temporary reprieve from restrictions adopted by the City Council earlier this year, including a cap on the allowed number of operators and a ban on electrically-assisted rigs, until their lawsuit against the city can be heard in court.

From a September 19 Public Advocacy Group press release:

Attorneys for the New York City Pedicab Owners’ Association (“NYCPOA”) and New York City’s Corporation Counsel agreed today to temporarily suspend implementation of Local Law 19-2007 (the “Pedicab Law”) and the Department of Consumer Affairs’ (“DCA”) pedicab regulations until a full hearing on the NYCPOA’s lawsuit against the DCA and City of New York can be heard by a New York County Supreme Court Justice.

Speaking on behalf of the NYCPOA, Chad Marlow of The Public Advocacy Group LLC, whose firm serves as NYCPOA’s General Counsel, said “we are very pleased that Corporation Counsel has agreed to a pause in the implementation of thePedicab Law and regulations until a court can properly determine DCA’s responsibilities under the law and whether it has failed to meet those responsibilities.”  NYCPOA President Peter Meitzler added, “the New York City pedicab industry has been thrown a lifeline, albeit a temporary one.  For now, I am grateful that the hundreds of New Yorkers who earn their livings in thepedicab industry will still have a business to run or a job to go to tomorrow.”

Marlow, who is president of the Public Advocacy Group, was recently named one of the "40 Under 40" -- a list of NYC's rising young political stars -- by City Hall News (scroll).

Photo: NYCArthur/Flickr

Pedicabs took to the streets yesterday to protest the City's new regulations on New York's greenest for-hire transportation industry. In a press release, The Green Transport Association says that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn "dealt pedicabs a crushing blow capping our number at 325 city-wide" -- a reported 35 percent reduction in the pedicab workforce:

Pedicabs are New York's only zero-emission livery service. There has never been a fatality on a pedicab in the industry's twelve unregulated years. Pedicabs pose no threat to the value of yellow cab medallions. We demand that the city council amend its regulation law to remove the cap and bans on pedicabs. Our leaders must encourage, not crush solutions to our fossil fuel dependency.

In the News:

• Pedicabs Roll Down Broadway, Picking Up Tourists And Pissing Off Cabbies (NYPress)
• Pedicab Owners Protest Pending Regulation (City Room)
• Pedicab Drivers Ride in Protest (AMNY)
• Pedicab News

Photos: NYCArthur/Flickr

The pedicab bill caps the number of cabs at 325 and also adds new safety and insurance requirements. The mayor vetoed the bill after meeting with pedicab drivers who were concerned about losing their jobs.

Anticipating a vote in the City Council this afternoon to override the mayor's veto of Intro 331-A, a bill to regulate pedicabs, a group of pedicab operators was demonstrating outside the American Museum of Natural History after Bloomberg's big Earth Day speech.

Handing out leaflets with the numbers of swing councilmembers like Daniel Garodnick, the pedicabbers came up to members of the press leaving the museum and asked for help with media coverage of their issue. Periodically the demonstrators chanted: "We're not in the way, we are the way!"

Members of the group said they fit perfectly with the sustainability plan the mayor had just outlined inside.

"I am zero emissions, that's what I do," said Jesse White, a pedicabber who was leading chants. "Intro 331-A will shut us down."

Photo: Sarah Goodyear 

It looks like she has the votes. The Speaker has managed to convince some of City Council's most progressive and pro-environment members to go along with her. On NY Turf's PediCouncil map shows David Yassky, Bill de Blasio, Daniel Garodnick and Diana Reyna all on-board with Quinn's veto override.

What is Quinn's leverage?

"May is budget month," says pedicab industry representative Chad Marlow of the Public Advocacy Group. "Going along with the Speaker's program ensures that 'member items' will be approved" --  the funding requests that Council members submit for special projects in their districts.

And why has Quinn decided to pick this fight with New York City's small but growing pedicab industry? "The interests of the taxi, hotel and theater industries have been given more weight than the interests of the pedicabs, environmental and transportation groups," says Marlow.

More info: 

• Pedal Power, a New York Sun editorial
• Quinn's Favor for a Friend, Daily News editorial.
• Intro. 331-A, the legislation.
  

Imagine if the long-distance bus industry were allowed to set a limit on the number of airline flights in and out of New York City, or if the beer industry were allowed to place a cap on the number of bottles of wine that could be sold in the city's restaurants and liquor stores. Something just as outrageous is afoot in the New York City Council, where the speaker, Christine Quinn, is, at the behest of the gasoline-powered taxicab lobby, backing legislation that would impose a limit on the number of pedal-powered pedicabs serving New Yorkers.

In the 1920s the city had as many as 21,000 taxi drivers. A 1937 law set a limit on the license that eventually settled at 11,787, and even adding a small number of licenses to accommodate the city's population growth has always been a huge political fight. The result is that taxis are scarce at rush hours, in the rain, on New Year's Eve, and in the boroughs outside Manhattan. In limiting pedicabs, the City Council would repeat the medallion mistake, ensuring scarcity and creating a new class of medallion holders with an interest that runs counter to that of consumers.

Mr. Avella said his colleagues are following Ms. Quinn's wishes because her support is essential when trying to introduce legislation or secure funding for projects in a member's district. "The power of the speaker is incredible when used in this type of situation," he said. "And that's a situation that really has to change. We talk about three men in a room in Albany. Well, the City Council is getting just as bad."

Of course political blackmail among elected officials is nothing new. What's noteworthy here is that, according to the Sun:

A lobbyist at Bolton-St. Johns, Inc, a group hired by the Committee for Taxi Safety to lobby the council, Emily Giske, is considered by many to be close to the speaker. She and Ms. Quinn lived, and may still live, in the same apartment building on West 24th Street, according to a recent address listing.

After Ms. Quinn, who is a lesbian, gave her first speech as speaker last year, Ms. Giske told a weekly newspaper of Lower Manhattan, Downtown Express: "As a lesbian and as a Democrat, I've never been more proud of anything in my life."

Regardless of any possible personal link between Quinn and Giske, pedicab industry founder and spokesman George Bliss suspects the speaker's motives are patently political.

"She wants to be mayor, she needs their money," Mr. Bliss said, referring to Ms. Quinn. "It is clear there is a quid pro quo between the speaker and the taxi lobby."

Could Quinn, a Democrat, be short-sighted enough to lobby against clean transportation for New York City at a time when the Republican she hopes to succeed is speaking -- if not always acting -- on reducing emissions? Not according to a Quinn spokeswoman, who claims that no one on the council "was urged or pressured to vote one way or another on the pedicab bill."

For his part, David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety ("Helping NYC's Safest Drivers"), says pedicab regulations would "keep the bicycle taxis from clogging midtown Manhattan." Pollack receives "daily complaints about reckless pedicab drivers," the article says.

A vote on the pedicab regs is set for April 23.

Photo: nycbone via Flickr 

onNYTurf reports:

What started as a very positive process to bring much desired regulation to the growing pedicab industry has been completely turned on its head, and this afternoon city council is scheduled to vote on a bill that has become so twisted that the bill's sponsor and a co-sponsor have taken their names off of it.

At the top of the list of bad policy in this bill is a citywide cap of 325 pedicabs, the right of the police to ban pedicabs from any street for 14 days at will, and all of Midtown for the seven weeks of the holiday period. This means that pedicabs may be banned from Midtown during Thanksgiving and Christmas, right when they are most useful. There are a number of other terrible additions that have been made to this bill.

A media advisory from Pedicabnews has the details on Intro. 331-A:

• Police may designate any streets as "congested" and ban pedicabs from those streets for two week intervals. There is no limit on the number of streets that can be treated this way or how many times the two-week ban can be renewed.

• Any Community Board can request that pedicabs be banned from their streets permanently. This request will be considered by NYC DOT and the NYPD.

• Police can bar pedicabs from midtown entirely, throughout the two months of the valuable Christmas season.

• Travel on bridges and bike lanes is banned, so there can be no inter-borough connection.

• Electric-assist motors are totally banned, including tiny 750 watt models, (a hair dryer is 1500 watts). Federal law regards them as so inconsequential that vehicles employing them are defined as bicycles.

• Multiple pedalers are banned.

• There will be a virtual ban on pedicabs in the outer boroughs. The "cap" of 325 bikes, (60% of the existing fleet of about 500, with resulting loss of jobs), will concentrate all bikes in the most lucrative venues like the theater district, with no pedicabs left to service the rest of Manhattan and the city.

These restrictions will marginalize pedicabs into a Times Square sideshow. Preventing them from eventual incorporation into the transportation system as an alternative to oversized, motor vehicles.

• A huge two million dollar insurance policy required, (Yellow cabs need $350,000), and $4,000 fines.
• Nothing is being done that would alleviate the alleged most serious problems -- like bunching around theaters. Instead, the harsh remedies of the police force will be applied, decimating the economic viability of the industry.
  

Photo by Olga Mazurkiewicz

AMNY reports:

The City Council is poised to put the brakes on New York's freewheeling pedicabs, prompting hundreds of their drivers to say the regulations would devastate a pollution-free way to get around town.

"They say we are causing traffic congestion," said pedicab driver Mega Martinez, 43, at a protest Tuesday. "How can that be? We are the only ones who can get around the traffic."

In addition to capping the number of pedicabs at 300, the City Council bill would completely ban those pedicabs that use electric-assist motors. While most of these motors use less power than a hair dryer, Comrie said the council considers them motor vehicles, subject to state laws.

A vote on the pedicab regulations is scheduled for Feb. 28.

Photos: Bill DiPaolo 

What we want is something that addresses the problem of bunching up. A cap doesn't address that. [The city] seems more interested in a symbolic solution than an actual one.

New York, New York - February 13, 2007: In an event organized by the New York City Pedicab Owners Association (NYCPOA), concerned pedicab owners, drivers and their supporters will meet on the steps of City Hall at noon to lift the veil off ongoing negotiations to reconcile the Mayor's and City Council's pedicab regulation bills. In particular, the noontime event will highlight how two imprudent "political deals" will needlessly stagnate the environmentally friendly pedicab industry, prevent pedicabs from utilizing the best available safety equipment and exclude the industry's most experienced drivers.

The first "political deal" involves severely restricting the number of pedicabs in operation - a decision whose genesis lies with theater and hotel complaints that groups of pedicabs were blocking traffic in front of their businesses. According to George Bliss, NYCPOA's President, "the pedicab industry wants to be a welcome member of the midtown business community. As such, the theaters' and hotels' concerns became our concerns and we sought to address them through the Council legislation."

But despite proposing numerous solutions, none were accepted. As NYCPOA's lobbyist Chad Marlow of The Public Advocacy Group LLC explained, "first we sought the solution the theaters, hotels and pedicabs all wanted: creating a series of stands where pedicabs could unobtrusively wait for their customers, but that solution was flatly rejected by the DOT. We then proposed a 'Rule of Five' that would have prohibited more than five pedicabs from grouping together while seeking passengers. The Community Board covering the Times Square-Theater District favored that proposal, but the Speaker's office turned it down. We even begrudgingly offered to limit the number of pedicabs in a Times Square zone, but the Mayor said no. We've had no problem coming up with on-target solutions, we just cannot find anyone willing to enact them."

Instead, the Mayor and Speaker are preparing to place a cap on the number of pedicabs. The number being considered, which is in the low 300s, would take 40% of all currently operating pedicabs off the streets. This would stagnate the pedicab industry, drive numerous owners and drivers out of work and create an artificial shortage of pedicabs that cannot meet demand, all while failing to address the theaters' and hotels' concerns.

The second "political deal" reached between the Mayor and Speaker would, without any reasonable justification, ban all pedal-assisted, electric-assist pedicabs. The pedal-assisted, electric-assist power sought by the NYCPOA among others has two elements. First, pedicabs would be allowed to supplement their human power with no more than 750 watts of electric power, which is half the power an average electric lawn mower uses. Second, to ensure electric-assist pedicabs are always operated as bicycles, sensors would prevent electric-assist power from being used unless the pedicab is also being pedaled.

Electric-assist is important because it improves safety. As Amir Chizic, owner of BicyTaxi NYC, explained, "right now my pedicabs operate with a 250 watt motor, which allows me to place a heavy fiberglass shell on them to provide additional protection for my passengers. If the City bans electric-assist, I will just remove the motors and take off the safety shells, but is that what the City wants?" Allowing electric-assist also enables older, more experienced pedicab drivers to remain in the profession. Doug Korman, 53, who has driven a pedicab for 10 years commented that "at my age, after 6 or more hours of driving, when I am pedaling 600-plus pounds of pedicab and passengers up a hill, yes, I need a tiny bit of extra help, and that's all electric-assist provides. If the City was taking a safety-first approach to pedicab legislation, it would be doing everything it could to keep drivers like me on the road because experienced pedicab drivers are the safest pedicab drivers."

As Bliss summarized, "this City needs more than just a pedicab regulation bill. It needs a good one, and that is not what is on the table right now."

 

Tuesday February 13, 2007
11:00am Pedicab Ride Leaves from 49 East Houston to City Hall
Free Pedicab Rides to the Rally Will be Offered to all Press
12:00noon-2:00pm Rally and Press Conference, City Hall Steps
Free Pedicab Rides from the Rally will be Offered to all Attendees

Photo: Finstr/Flickr