New York Mayor Eric Adams announced the establishment of the Department of Sustainable Delivery (DSD) on the 7th as a department under the City Transportation Department, and recruited 45 new sheriffs to enforce the law against illegal use of motorcycles or electric scooters. In addition, the city government has submitted a legislative proposal to the City Council, which aims to authorize the executive department to revoke the business licenses of certain platforms that encourage deliverymen to drive at high speeds to save time.
Adams said that the establishment of the new department is a new initiative taken by the city government to explore the safe use of motorcycles, and the legislative proposal is to address the causes of deliverymen running fast without regard for safety from the source.
According to the training plan, the newly recruited sheriffs are not equipped with guns, and their main responsibility is to assist the police in traffic law enforcement. The 45 sheriffs will be deployed in groups on key traffic violation sections throughout the city to patrol motorcycle users who have speeding, driving against traffic, running red lights, etc.; they are also responsible for cooperating with the outreach team of the Transportation Department to carry out safety education. The entire recruitment and training process will last three years, and the first batch of sheriffs are expected to take to the streets to enforce the law in 2028.
According to the legislative proposal, large food delivery platform companies will be obliged to set a safe delivery time for their deliverymen. If the company imposes unreasonable delivery time requirements on deliverymen by force or inducement, and causes them to drive electric vehicles at high speeds illegally, the company must be held responsible for this, and in serious cases, the license of its application may be revoked by the city government.
In addition to the new measures, Adams’ city government also issued an order in June to limit the maximum speed of motorcycles to 15 miles per hour. Shared motorcycle operator Citi Bike has re-set its vehicle parameters in accordance with the requirements. At the same time, City Councilman Keith Powers and others have also proposed corresponding proposals to fix the 15-mile speed limit in the form of legislation.
However, there are also voices of opposition to the legislative proposal. Michael Replogle, an advocate who was once a senior official of the city’s transportation department, said that when motorcycles and cars are mixed, the speed difference between the two is more likely to cause collisions. He believes that the ideal speed limit for motorcycles should be the same as that of cars, reaching 20 miles per hour. In addition, immigrant rights advocates said that most of the deliverymen who use motorcycles are new immigrants, and criminalizing bicycles is more likely to bring the fear of immigration enforcement to new immigrant communities.
City Council spokesperson Mara Davis said that any new policy may lead to discriminatory enforcement against deliverymen and immigrant groups, so the council has always been concerned about this.
