A bill to be presented in the New York City Council would prohibit businesses from advertising home delivery times of 15 minutes, citing threats to worker and pedestrian safety.
Councilman Christopher Marte’s upcoming legislation comes in response to startups like Gorillas, Getir, Fridge No More and Jokr that have set up shop in the city over the past year, courting New Yorkers with blazing-fast delivery speeds and deep discounts on groceries and toiletries.
While app response times look appealing for New Yorkers encourage delivery people on electric bikes and scooters to break traffic laws and endanger pedestrians and themselves, Marte told the New York Post.
The councilman said that his bill would ban companies from announce delivery times of 15 minutes and to be introduced within a few weeks as part of a broader package of laws addressing shipping applications of groceries.
“We don’t think that should be legal,” Marte said, referring to companies that announce delivery times of minutes. “We are going to have a series of laws to create a lot more oversight and accountability.”
At the same time, New York City food delivery workers have joined rideshare drivers to together push for more benefits at their jobs, including better wages, health care, and the right to unionize.
In parallel is the issue of road safety. The Mars bill comes after several reports of electric bike-related accidents and fatalities, which were linked to at least 15 fatalities in 2020 in NYC. The trend has not stopped since then.
“The last three years have seen an increase in traffic violence,” Danny Harris, executive director of the road safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, summed up in December.
With fewer cars on the road during the pandemic, NYC streets have become a terrain of speeding and recklessness, according to statistics from another report 2021 from the Manhattan Institute. In addition, restaurants spread out in the open air in the name of social distancing have generated more improvisation in the already narrow spaces shared with pedestrians, riders, garbage bags and vehicles.
But cars are not the only threat: actress Lisa Banes died in June after being hit by a scooter. Also since the pandemic, there are more cyclists – delivery men and walkers – on the streets, who climb the sidewalks and disrespect the traffic lights and the direction of the roads, surprising pedestrians. And the rental and purchase of motorcycles and bicycles, which are not always legal, have been experiencing a boom in the city for some time.
- Even walking has become a fatality in New York: 58% more pedestrians killed this year