Bill to legalize e-scooters in NYC headed to City Council

The micromobility revolution is heading for New York City

Brace yourselves, New Yorkers: E-scooters may soon be on city streets.

City Council members Ydanis Rodriguez and Rafael Espinal will introduce several bills this week with the goal of legalizing both electric scooters, such as those operated by Bird and Lime, and electric bicycles. The two legislators plan to hold a press conference before the Council's stated meeting on Wednesday to make the micromobility bid official. The bills have been in the works since this summer, when Espinal and Rodriguez first signaled their interest in bringing scooters to the city.

Even as e-scooters have surged in popularity in other U.S. cities, they remain illegal in New York City. The law, passed by the City Council in 2004, bans all forms of motorized scooters and imposes a $500 fine on those caught using them. (That hasn't stopped some folks from taking Bird scooters out in the city.)

The legislative package to be introduced this week will include four bills. According to the New York Times, one would legalize e-scooters, and another would call for a pilot program to test them out in a specific part of the city—likely in north Brooklyn, where the L train shutdown will have the biggest effect.

Another bill in the package would legalize throttle e-bikes—the type often used by delivery workers, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has previously called "a real danger" to New Yorkers. The administration's crackdown on e-bikes has largely affected those workers, many of whom are immigrants; pedal-assist e-bikes, meanwhile, have recently been legalized as part of the city's dockless bike share pilot.

"I believe if we're going to have a conversation around allowing e-scooters, we can't move forward without addressing the e-bikes," Espinal told the Times. "What we're trying to do is classify the e-bikes and scooters as devices instead of vehicles."

Espinal had previously told Curbed that he sees e-scooters as a way to bring alternative transportation options to parts of the outer boroughs that are not well-served by services like Citi Bike, which are tied to where docks can be placed. "What I'd like to see is an expansion of modes of transportation—not only in Manhattan, but in the outer-outer-boroughs," he said. "We have Citi Bike, but it hasn't made its way out to East New York and other neighborhoods on the outskirts of the outer boroughs. We have to make sure this transportation is available to everyone."

Lime, one of the major players in the e-scooter market, has announced its support for the bill. "Shared dock-free scooters can make transportation reliable and affordable for all New Yorkers—especially underserved communities that do not have easy access to mass transit," Phil Jones, the company's senior director for its east coast operations, said in a statement. "Legalizing scooters will go a long way to solving New York's growing transit inequity problem."

And Paul Steely White, who left Transportation Alternatives earlier this year for a position at Bird, told the Times that the company is "excited" about the bills.

There are obvious challenges to bringing electric scooters to New York's congested streets, namely safety—they're intended for use in bike lanes, but users in other cities haven't always followed that rule—and where to put them. It took the city until this year to try dockless bike sharing, and electric pedal-assist bikes, which reach a top speed of around 20 miles per hour, were only legalized in July as part of that pilot program.

In addition to approval from the City Council, the bills would also need approval from the De Blasio administration; while it hasn't expressed much of an opinion on scooters, the mayor's objection to e-bikes is well-documented.

"While e-scooters are illegal under State and City law, the Mayor is committed to innovation as part of his all-of-the-above transportation strategy to get New Yorkers moving again," said Seth Stein, a spokesperson for the mayor. "We look forward to reviewing the proposals with an eye toward both transportation innovation and safety on our streets and sidewalks."