On Jackson Heights’ open street, NYC’s ‘moped crisis’ is in full throttle

Luz Maria Mercado fought for the creation of her Jackson Heights neighborhood’s 26-block open street along 34th Avenue. Her early elation over the 2020 initiative in Queens has since given way to fear over the safety of her teenage sons when they use the thoroughfare, which is shared with a steady stream of e-bikes and mopeds.

“When they walk out the door,” Mercado said of the 13- and 16-year-olds, “I always say to them, ‘I love you, come home to me.’”

Mercado and her neighbors shared their concerns about the two-wheeled, motorized vehicles in their midst, at a recent jammed town hall meeting at P.S. 122, where one commenter after another spoke of being clipped or nearly clipped by someone using one of the machines.

“It is terrifying,” said Dorothy Magnani, a local senior. “Pedestrians need to be considered first.”

Matters came to a head in January, when a 75-year-old man was killed after being struck by an e-bike near the Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue subway station. Last year, two men riding a dirt bike along the open street were seriously injured after crashing into an FDNY ambulance.

Shekar Krishnan, the local City Council member, convened the town hall late last month to discuss what he called the “moped crisis,” but the concern stretches well beyond the Queens neighborhood. According to the city Department of Transportation there were 6,287 injuries involving motorized two-wheelers citywide last year, a 368% increase since 2017. Fatalities have been on the rise as well, including 100 in 2023, up from 64 in 2020, with riders paying the heaviest toll.

The Adams administration has fought back, recently destroying confiscated two-wheelers using construction equipment, but so far there has been more hand wringing over the vehicles than lasting solutions, with an estimated 65,000 e-bikes on city streets, a proliferation officials say has been fueled in part by the large number of migrants doing delivery work.

And there are other recent issues – beyond the well chronicled and separate concern of fires caused by e-bike batteries. The problem of unregulated mopeds and their operators was thrust into view after two police officers were shot while investigating robberies in East Elmhurst on June 3. According to the NYPD, the suspect, 19-year-old Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, was illegally operating a moped before he opened fire, causing non-life-threatening injuries to the officers. He was charged with attempted murder.

“Mopeds and scooters are not only endangering pedestrians when they are driven recklessly, but we have also seen an exponential increase in criminals using them to ride around and snatch property from New Yorkers,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference two days after the shootings.

He delivered his remarks at an outdoor lectern with police officials, in front of what city officials said were more than 200 mopeds and scooters that have been seized this year.

The NYPD has confiscated 13,000 two-wheelers and ATVs this year, according to the Adams administration. That follows the seizure of more than 18,000 such vehicles in 2023, which the city said was a record for one year and a 128% increase over 2022.

“When it comes to public safety, I like to say we are crushing it,” Adams said, as two enormous earthmovers drove back and forth over the vehicles, pulverizing them. But the quipping mayor conceded that there are no “simple answers” to what is a complex issue, and that “heavy-handed enforcement” won’t be adequate.

He noted the “massive shift” in the number of home deliveries since the onset of the pandemic – putting more two-wheeled delivery vehicles on the road – and praised the “honest working deliveristas” who rely on them for their jobs.

According to DOT figures, the vast majority of those injured or killed are those operating the vehicles, rather than pedestrians. Since 2022, the agency said, there have been six pedestrian fatalities involving two-wheelers, out of 275 total pedestrian fatalities.

Adams said that the city would be better off engaging with the app-based delivery companies that employ delivery workers, rather than punishing them.

Najy Kamal, a Grubhub spokesperson, said the the safety of the "communities we serve, including our delivery partners and pedestrians, is an ongoing focus and top priority." He added that "our delivery windows allow adequate time for them (deliverers) to travel from the merchant to the customer safely."

Eli Scheinholtz, a DoorDash spokesperson, said the company is "committed to helping ensure the safety of everyone who shares New York City’s streets, and we have absolutely no tolerance for reckless driving no matter what kind of vehicle someone is using."

He added, “It’s simply untrue to claim that there is pressure for Dashers to break rules of the road or put themselves or pedestrians in harm's way."

Meanwhile, in Jackson Heights, the major concern of residents has been just how to cross the street safely.

Residents and elected officials there have different ideas about the right way forward, and how best to strike a balance between protecting the livelihoods of workers with the safety of pedestrians. Broadly speaking, the solutions on the table have fallen into three categories: education, enforcement and engineering or design.

Krishnan, who has championed the 34th Avenue open street since its inception in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, stressed the importance of effective street design. He said the city Department of Transportation had failed to implement significant changes meant to deter mopeds and e-bikes from entering the open street, known as Paseo Park.

The linear park, as it’s often called, runs through an area composed entirely of residential buildings and schools. On any given day, local residents can be seen walking their dogs, jogging, biking or sitting on the median to enjoy a meal or a chat with a neighbor.

“We are seeing mopeds speeding down as if it was a highway for mopeds and we need to address that problem head on,” Krishnan said. “This is a problem we're seeing all over New York City.”

DOT officials say they are working to improve safety on the corridor through a combination of signage and other street design, and such measures as installing large planters to slow down vehicles. The agency said it has also engaged in educational efforts, by conducting outreach to cyclists as well as to delivery workers in Spanish, Mandarin and Bangla.

At the same time, DOT officials say enforcement efforts have been stepped up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood. Since May 20, police officers have issued 137 moving violations and seized 30 illegal vehicles and devices – a broad category that includes mopeds, motorcycles, ATVs, e-bikes and dirt bikes, along with skateboards and Segways.

And an agency spokesperson noted that the number of “motorized injuries” along the open street alone had fallen from 31 in 2019-2020 to eight in 2022-2023.

“This Open Street is a vital public space in a neighborhood with little parkland, and our project has dramatically improved safety on the corridor,” Vincent Barone, a DOT spokesperson, said in a statement. He added that the number of collisions involving pedestrians on the avenue was 61% lower during the 12-month period ending in July 2023 than it was in the year that roughly preceded the creation of the open street.

State Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, whose district encompasses part of the 34th Avenue open street, said legislation she co-sponsored in the Assembly would prevent drivers from purchasing a moped, officially known as “limited use motorcycles,” without registering them.

The Adams administration voiced support for the measure, which passed both chambers and was sent to the governor. The mayor's office said the measure would help stem the tide of unlicensed mopeds and hold sellers accountable.

Advocates for delivery workers say pedestrians are not alone in their concerns about safety. Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, said workers themselves are at risk, because they’re under intense pressure from the app-based delivery companies that employ them to deliver food fast. According to a 2022 Department of Consumer and Worker Protection report, 33 workers had been killed since 2020 while using e-bikes and mopeds; delivery workers have a fatality rate that is five times that of construction workers in the city.

In an email, Gabriel Montero, the director of development and communications at the Workers Justice Project, said his organization agrees on the need to register moped drivers at the point of sale. Montero also noted that 91% of delivery workers in the city are people of color, citing the city report.

“Criminalizing, policing and targeting Deliveristas and their main tools of work is not the solution,” said Montero. “A holistic vision of street safety that includes sound labor protections for app delivery workers and safe street infrastructure for micromobility is the answer.”

Krishnan said the DOT’s proposal to put “more signage” along the open street was “absolutely inadequate.”

He advocated the creation of a “micromobility lane” in the vicinity – car lanes converted into lanes for vehicles that travel 20 mph or less, as defined by Transportation Alternatives – so that moped drivers are not forced to make “a binary choice” between “using roads with cars or spaces for people.”

“We are far behind other cities of the world that have them,” Krishnan said. A DOT spokesperson did not respond to questions regarding the proposal.

One longtime resident, Helen O’Reilly, said at the town hall the open street had initially been “a joy to the neighborhood.”

“I walk there with my mom, who still lives in the neighborhood,” said O’Reilly. “We run into neighbors.”

But she said she was “increasingly more scared” for the safety of her 4-year-old daughter, and that police enforcement was needed in conjunction with signage and improved street design.

“The signs are bad, but the signs are there, and people are just openly ignoring them,” she said.

There was evidence of this on a recent evening.

Newly installed “No Mopeds” signs are posted at regular intervals along the corridor, which stretches along 34th Avenue from 69th Street to Junction Boulevard.

Still, during one five-minute period just after 6 p.m. at least a half-dozen mopeds and motorized two-wheelers zoomed past signs near Travers Park. Likewise, they zipped past metal barricades with signage plainly indicating the street is reserved for pedestrians and bicycles.

One operator ran a red light.

Krishnan said the problem demanded urgent attention from the DOT.

“This is a now problem,” he said. “We cannot afford to wait.”