When Looking at Pedestrian Safety on NYC Streets, Who is the Biggest Culprit: A Defense of Cyclists

By: 2025 New York Fellow Ava Gallo

If you live in NYC, you know that every type of New Yorker can be seen on a bike: a suited up commuter, a family of three enroute to school on a cargo bike, a tourist looking to cover as many neighborhoods as possible, food delivery workers, teens hanging with friends. In most months of the year, cycling is the easiest way of getting around the behemoth of this city.

But recently, the tide has been shifting on this mode of transportation from the highest levels of city government to the average person walking the streets of New York. What did cyclists do to deserve this widespread hate?

Are Cyclists the Enemy?

In the past year, there has been a crackdown on cyclists as enemy number one of the street. Mayor Adams has been leading the charge claiming that car drivers have been solely targeted for far too long. This public backlash has led to protected bike lanes being ripped out, criminalizing minor traffic violations by cyclists, and reducing the speed limit of bicycles to 15 miles per hour.

Let’s break down the change in procedure for cyclists. Prior to April, cyclists who receive a moving violation like running a red light or failing to stop at a stop sign would receive a civil penalty that could be paid online or settled via a virtual DMV hearing. With the new NYPD policy, officers have been dispatched to 14 corridors with the highest reports of cyclist infractions, ready to serve criminal summons, which require someone to show up to court in person. Cars, on the other hand, are still subject to the same minor civil penalty.

This has specifically sounded the alarm from advocates for delivery workers. According to Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of Los Deliveristas Unidos, many people who ride electric bikes in New York are undocumented migrants working for restaurants and food delivery apps. In a time with heightened risk from immigration officers, the criminal summons increase the vulnerability of these groups.

Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?

But let’s step back for a second and ground truth the true impact of these actions. If pedestrian safety is the number one priority, are traditional cyclists and e-bikes the real problem? According to NYPD’s own data, e-bikes have caused less than 1% of pedestrian injuries in 2024. Bicycles now have to comply with a 15mph speed limit while the car speed limit for all NYC streets sits at 25mph, even though studies show that higher speeds cause more crashes that are more likely to be fatal or severe.

Cars are also getting heavier. From 2000 to 2018, the weight of the average pickup truck rose by 24%. The size and weight of a vehicle is the main factor determining whether a person survives a crash, such that for every 1,000 pound increase in vehicle weight, there is a 46% increase in motorist fatalities. E-bikes weigh about 40–70 pounds, classic bicycles weighing even less than that, with the average car weighing over 4,000 pounds.

Looking at the data, the intense scrutiny on cyclists seems disproportionate to the harm they inflict on pedestrians, so why is there a crackdown on bikes while car enforcement remains largely the same?

Ulterior Motives

New Yorkers love free parking. Former DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg testified in 2019 that NYC has over 3 million free parking spots. And in a city with some of the highest land values in the world, that means a free giveaway of 23% of our street space to parked cars — even though the majority of New York City households are car-free. And the average car owner makes nearly twice as much as the average non-car-owner, meaning we are giving a free resource to some of the wealthiest residents of the city.

Giving even a fraction of that street space to creating protected bike lanes, proven to reduce total deaths and serious injuries by 18.1 percent, has brought out the ire of neighborhoods across the city. One community in Queens called the bike lanes an “intrusion into their lives and neighborhoods.” The protected bike lanes provide a safer way to get around a neighborhood without easy access to public transportation. Yet the loss of a few free parking spots has dominated local conversations.

What Can We Do Better?

Establishing universal daylighting in NYC has been a big push of the transportation advocacy community in recent months. A bill introduced by Council Member Julie Won would eliminate parking within 20 feet of an intersection and harden 1,000 a year with bike racks, bollards or other objects to prevent parking. 44 states already require daylighting, including NY state, but NYC is exempted.

Banning parking near intersections increases visibility for drivers to see the full crosswalk and cross streets while turning and increases the ability for pedestrians to see incoming cars as they attempt to cross a street. According to the Federal Highway Administration, when cities limit parking immediately next to intersections, pedestrian accidents can be reduced by 30%. Hoboken, hailed as a vision zero beacon, prides daylighting as one of its most successful policies, leading to the city’s lack of a single traffic death since 2017, despite it being the 4th densest city in the United States.

With the enactment of Sammy’s Law in 2024, New York City is allowed to reduce its own speed limits from 25 mph to 20 mph and from 15 mph to 10 mph in special traffic-calming zones, or “slow zones.” But the efficacy of a law is only in its implementation, and the new Mayor can choose to be as ambitious as possible with reducing speeds on eligible city streets. We’ve seen in cities like Madison, Wisconsin, that have reduced the speed limit on a majority of city streets, see a remarkable decrease in fatalities, with a 58% reduction in fatalities in 2024.

There are a myriad of ways to make New York City streets safer for all of its residents from a child riding their bike to school to an elderly resident walking to the grocery store. But if Mayor-elect Mamdani is true to his campaign promise of making streets safe for every New Yorker, it is critical to focus limited resources on data-driven policies that have proven success in other cities and not scapegoat cyclists, an often already vulnerable group.