Delivering Safety
Delivering Safety
A Regulatory Framework to Rein in the Destructive Practices of Same-Day Delivery App Companies for Calm Streets and Just Working Conditions
In response to Mayor Eric Adams’ recent announcement of his plans to launch a Department of Sustainable Delivery, Transportation Alternatives (TA) stands in support of this initiative and proposes the following regulatory framework. Our goal in advancing this important new department, which would be the first of its kind in the nation, is to provide specific guidance to the City of New York and City Council on the regulation of delivery app companies, as part of what we hope will be a broader strategy to also reform the curb and transform freight in a growing delivery economy.
While this regulatory effort could take many forms — a new agency, a department within an existing agency, a multi-agency task force — it is critical that, in any form, this new entity focus on an unregulated delivery app industry which profits off making chaos on New York City’s streets.
These changes must accompany key infrastructure improvements, as TA has previously laid out in Building an E-Micromobility Future and The Case for Self-Enforcing Streets. Specifically, we have called for safety improvements such as wider protected bike lanes and dedicated lanes for e-micromobility, and the use of automated safety cameras that have been shown to cut down on dangerous infractions such as failure to yield and blocking bike lanes.
Introduction
In 2016, Silicon Valley launched the first “same-day” delivery app companies – such as Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash – and began to wreak havoc on New York City’s streets. Since that time, the industry has grown to massive proportions: Between 2020 and 2022 alone, investors poured more than $5.5 billion into New York City-based instant delivery companies, and food delivery app companies currently contract more than 65,000 New Yorkers as delivery workers. These companies operate largely without oversight, showing no regard for street safety, worker well-being, or public life in New York City.
Without regulation, delivery app companies have fueled several interrelated safety concerns: the proliferation of unsafe micromobility vehicles and flammable batteries, deadly working conditions for delivery operators, and danger on city streets. These conditions are related and exacerbate one another – such as the delivery worker who uses an unregistered moped to make more deliveries in the required, limited time, or who operates with a dangerous battery because replacing it is an unattainable cost.
A solution to these overlapping safety concerns is for delivery app companies to pay for the privilege of operating a business in New York City and operate by a standard that does not harm its workers, any other New Yorkers, or the city at large.
These companies, which use public infrastructure and affect New Yorkers’ quality of life, must be accountable for street safety, worker safety, and the quality of life of all New Yorkers.
By setting minimum safety standards on the privilege of operating a delivery business on New York City’s streets and charging companies a fair market rate for operating, the City of New York can update infrastructure to meet the needs of this moment: safe streets, safe intersections, safe batteries, safe e-bikes, safe charging stations, and more. By creating a holistic regulatory system to control these disparate areas of New York life, we can solve several pressing New York problems at once and improve quality of life for all road users.
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Read our new comic explaining how regulating delivery apps will make our streets safer.
The City must invest in keeping vulnerable road users safe. This investment should include both infrastructure, such as protected bike lanes and intersection improvements, and automated enforcement such as speed safety cameras. The City must also put forth a proactive strategy to reform the curb and transform freight in a growing delivery economy. In that context, TA supports the regulation of same-day delivery app companies to make streets safe, to protect workers, and to safeguard the quality of life of all New Yorkers. Whether through a new city agency or a new department in an existing city agency, this entity must be tasked with both reining in the chaos on our streets and across the delivery industry, and with looking towards new modes and mechanisms of moving goods.
Having a single agency — to collect data; process complaints and grievances; collate legal evidence or file complaints in case of crashes, theft, or violence; investigate on-street dangers; and hold companies to account — would give the public a central place to direct their concerns, give the New York City Council a mechanism for oversight, and more effectively enact change.
TA recommends that the City of New York fund and empower this office to:
Create a contract bidding process for delivery app companies that wish to operate in New York City, modeled on the Department of Sanitation’s Waste Carting Zones, fees from which would directly fund infrastructure projects, including centralized charging stations and protected bikes lanes, and insurance for delivery workers against theft, injury, and harm.
Develop a contract for delivery app companies that wish to to operate in New York City, including requirements to:
Provide delivery workers with compliant e-bikes and approved UL batteries.
Compliant e-bikes must have speed limiters set to New York State-mandated limits based on vehicle class, front and back lights, bells, and UL-approved batteries. These vehicles should have engraved serial numbers to deter theft and resale in case of theft.
Provide safe public charging infrastructure and/or battery swapping at delivery hubs.
Provide secure on-street bike parking at high pick-up and delivery locations.
Offer delivery workers paid time to seek medical care or equipment repair, or file a police report, in the case of on-the-job injury, damage, or theft.
Share data with the City of New York, including routes, speed, wages, hours worked, to be anonymized and published on the Open Data portal.
Advance new laws which:
Phase out using all gas-powered vehicles, including cars and mopeds, for same-day delivery starting at a future date, and instead require companies to provide non gas-powered mobility devices to workers.
Require the Department of Transportation to prioritize the construction of protected bike lanes based on delivery data, cyclist injury rates, and “biking on the sidewalk” summonses.
Require the City of New York to integrate existing plans for electric vehicle public charging infrastructure to include options for e-bikes and other delivery vehicles, accelerate the commitments to “Deliverista hubs,” and create NYCHA e-micromobility charging stations accessible to delivery workers.
Prevent the sale of mopeds to unlicensed drivers.
Prevent the sale of non-UL batteries within city limits, with powers to penalize at the point of sale and shut down businesses that repeatedly violate these laws.
Ban the practice of “immediate” delivery apps, including any service which promises delivery within 20 minutes or less.
Why Regulation Must Take an Industry-Wide Approach
Delivery work is the most dangerous job in New York City by a significant margin. As with other labor-driven industries from manufacturing to agriculture, the solution lies in regulating companies themselves. Individual workers need to be protected, not penalized. TA is opposed to the licensing of delivery workers or e-bike riders because it will be ineffective, costly to taxpayers, and lead to increased police harassment of all people who use any type of bicycle or scooter.
Evidence that licensing will be an ineffective solution can be found in places that have tried it. Cities across North America, including Toronto, Houston, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Jose, have implemented and then repealed bike licensing laws. The city of Toronto studied the idea extensively and concluded that it is expensive, overly bureaucratic, and ineffective at changing behavior. Enforcement of bike licensing laws is known to be discriminatory. The City of New York should not adopt an idea that is proven to not work and to cause harm.
It is far more effective to focus on regulation and infrastructure. For example, creating public battery charging stations, partially funded by the multi-billion dollar companies that profit off these modes, protects everyone from dangerous battery fires. Mandating that companies distribute street-legal, speed-governed e-bikes with safe batteries to delivery workers gets thousands of illegal mopeds and motorcycles off the street. Installing protected bike lanes reduces speeding, as well as crashes, injuries, and fatalities for all road users. This can even change behavior for the better — the installation of protected bike lanes reduces cycling on sidewalks by as much as 94%. And the installation of on-street bike corrals reduces sidewalk riding and keeps sidewalks clear for pedestrians.
By regulating the delivery industry that currently profits off creating chaos on city streets, the City of New York can fund the cost of these changes, change the conditions under which delivery workers operate, change behavior, and save lives.
Evidence of the power of regulating the delivery industry can be found in the City Council’s first-in-the-nation minimum wage requirement for delivery workers. Within a few weeks of its implementation, delivery workers who were no longer pressed into an impossible pace of work by an unlivable wage delivered at a slower, safer pace.
However, this lone regulation cannot correct all the chaos that the delivery economy has caused. Unsafe batteries, illegal mopeds, lack of insurance, wage theft, vehicle theft, traffic violence, overcrowding on streets, bridges, and in bike lanes, and other problems remain, and require comprehensive regulation to solve.
Many Models for a Solution
It is common for the City of New York to regulate commercial business practices to protect New Yorkers and the public space they share. Cable companies are regulated into paying for the exclusive rights to dig up the street to lay their cables and commercial waste haulers are required to bid on access to geographic zones, limiting dangerous traffic. Pedicab, sightseeing bus, and horse-drawn carriage companies are all regulated to prevent a glut of any one on city streets and sidewalks. When it was revealed that dangerous labor practices at nail salons were threatening the health and safety of salon workers and customers, the City of New York regulated these workplaces, despite the non-employee status of many of the workers.
“Today, the TLC controls the working conditions of an Uber driver but when that same driver switches their app to work for Uber Eats, they are no longer protected.”
In perhaps the most direct example, after Silicon Valley launched Uber, Lyft and other rideshare ventures, and wreaked havoc on New York City’s streets by financially pressuring workers to complete as many trips as quickly as possible, the City of New York expanded the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) to regulate the industry and provide protections for for-hire vehicle drivers. However, today, the TLC controls the working conditions of an Uber driver but when that same driver switches their app to work for Uber Eats, they are no longer protected.
In all of these examples, regulators charge the profiting company for access to the city as a market. In many cases, those charges are used to fund the regulatory process and counter the harm that the business practice may cause. These examples can be a model for the City of New York to regulate the delivery industry as part of an overall street safety strategy that includes infrastructure investments and automated enforcement.
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