The city yesterday slapped pedicabs swarming Central Park with tough new rules.
The Parks Department’s strict regulations — which have the industry fuming — include requiring pedicabs to operate in the right lane of traffic, thereby banning them from the bike lanes they sometimes occupy.
Pedicabs will also be forbidden from displaying advertisements at times when other traffic is not allowed in the park.
Vehicles are allowed in Central Park — the only Manhattan park that allows driving — primarily during rush hours on weekdays, but pedicabs can enter at any time.
Also under the new rules, pedicabs will be prohibited from areas where taxis and carriages make pick-ups.
“There have never been rules for pedicabs before,” Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe told The Post.
“There’s been a huge proliferation of pedicabs in Central Park, and only in Central Park.”
Over the past few years the average number of bike cabs operating each weekend has jumped from a handful to more than 200, Benepe said.
The new rules will go into effect in late November, after a public hearing Oct. 21 at the Chelsea Recreation Center.
Chad Marlow, an attorney for the New York City Pedicab Owners Association, accused the city of burdening an industry that brings in tourism revenue.
“It’s somewhat hypocritical for the city as a whole to be promoting pedicabs to tourists — and the mayor himself calling them a unique part of the fabric of this city — and then at the same time, the Parks Department turns around and basically bans us at their whim,” Marlow said.
He indicated he would not sue over the new rules because “government officials are given the right by the courts to do very smart or very dumb things.”
Marlow said pedicabs are safe to operate in bike lanes and took exception to the advertising restriction, calling it “a completely nonsensical rule” that operators wouldn’t be allowed to display ads during weekends when the park is car-free.
“Literally it’s obscene,” he said. “If you try to make a little extra money [from ads], you’re welcome to it, but you can’t set foot in our parks? That’s ridiculous. There’s no rationale other than to single out pedicabs.”