The NYPD is out to lunch on a new law designed to put the brakes on speedy electric bikes commonly used by restaurants to deliver food at breakneck speeds, lawmakers said Thursday.
Elected officials are blasting the NYPD for failing to come up with a strategy to enforce a law approved by the City Council earlier this year that seeks to redouble the ban on already illegal electric bikes and stiffens penalties on delivery people and the restaurants they work for.
“I’m very discouraged to know that there’s no plan to implement the law at this point,” said Bronx council member James Vacca, chairman of the council’s transportation committee. “We have a new law ready to go, but they’re not ready to go. And it’s unacceptable to me. They knew this law was coming for months.”
The new law, which was supposed to take effect Nov. 11, permits cops to impound the bikes operated on city streets and issue increased summonses to riders and their employers in the interest of pedestrian safety.
The NYPD had six months to devise a plan on enforcement and were also supposed to be getting the word out to restaurants and food deliverers at the precinct level about the coming ban, along with the help of the NYC Department of Transportation.
But the date of enactment has come and gone, and local pols are furious that the law is being flouted by police, as well as the restaurants who apparently never got the memo.
“This education was to take place from the date of the law’s passage on May 15, 2013, through the date of enactment on November 11, 2013,” councilmember Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side, wrote in a letter penned to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
Brewer’s neighborhood is one that’s plagued by the speedy bikes, which are often driven the wrong way down one-way streets and on sidewalks as delivery people efficiently try to satisfy hungry New Yorkers.
“What education has taken place, including training for DOT inspectors and NYPD officers?” Brewer’s letter read.
Apparently, not much.
“I haven’t even read the law,” said a high ranking police official at one Manhattan precinct. “I don’t know if there’s going to be a grace period, but, I haven’t made a decision [about enforcement].”
The source said he and his fellow cops are “in the process of getting the word out to the restaurants,” but eatery ownerss and managers told The Post they had no knowledge of the law, which is currently on the books.
“I hadn’t heard they were illegal and if the owner had heard I would have been notified,” said Dina Lamanna, manager of the Hampton Chutney Co. on Amsterdam Avenue.
Pat Praditpoj, manager of Thai restaurant Land, on the Upper West Side said she heard the ban was a rumor and wasn’t sure if she should send her delivery people out on the electric bikes.
“I heard that they were illegal through word of mouth but I wasn’t sure if it was true,” she told The Post. “I would want my food delivered with a regular bike because we want our food to arrive safely.”
Upper West Side resident Olga Bidney said she hopes cops start enforcing the law soon.
“For me as a mom with a kid in a stroller sometimes I feel unsafe because they don’t follow rules,” she said. “It should be enforced soon. The sooner the better.”