Controller Seeks New Rules for Delivery Tech Companies

The app distribution industry just needs some attention.

City Comptroller Brad Lander wants to regulate app-based food delivery companies the same way the Taxi and Limousine Commission regulates Uber and Lyft; This is an attempt to address the perceived increasing threat to safety that has fueled anger at delivery workers rather than for-profit companies. This pushes them to make ridiculous deliveries for meager wages.

The new call to action comes from a report released Tuesday. “Strategic Plan for Street Safety in the Age of Micromobility”Its main proposal is for a “city-run licensing program” to regulate app distribution. companiesIt is quite different from numerous city and state bills that seek to impose a registration burden. individual workers.

Lander says this will ease “mod anger” against e-bike and moped users.

“New Yorkers shouldn’t have to feel nervous every time they leave their homes,” he said. “Changing vehicle patterns on our streets need not fuel a sense of disorder and lawlessness in our city.”

Another Taxi and Limousine Commission?

Lander joins the fray after more than a year of intense city action.

delivery worker centers (already promised, not yet built), charging infrastructure (city is piloting this), increased executiveand better street design.

And in FireplaceThe mayor said he would establish a new government agency, “Sustainable Delivery Department,” will attempt to answer the same questions (that said, there have been no updates on where the new agency is or what it will do).

But Lander’s report adds a new level of regulation: a requirement that app delivery companies be licensed to operate a food delivery business in the city. This new regulation will require apps to:

• Share “real-time” anonymized data with DOT to inform infrastructure decisions.
• Fund and implement more safety training.
• Use their algorithms to increase security rather than speed.
• Implement an “accountability protocol” so employees are punished when they violate safety rules.
• Pay a fee for each illegal moped seized during delivery; This fee cannot be transferred to workers.
• Stop “arbitrarily” disabling workers’ accounts with strict consequences.
• Fund and build delivery worker hubs to provide resources like safe charging infrastructure.

When asked about this part of his proposal, Lander cited (albeit in hindsight) the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the city agency that reins in ride-share companies.

“The Taxi and Limousine Commission licenses Uber and Lyft and requires them to provide regular data on how many vehicles are there because there are a number of traffic questions, such as what the fare is and also whether the vehicles used are used as part of a vehicle,” Lander told Streetsblog. “The majority of this business is operating safely,” he told a.

However, TLC has been under fire recently. Bloomberg investigation has found that app companies are restricting access, and worker-focused advocacy groups say they don’t want to see that model adapted to app distribution companies.

Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the delivery rights group Worker Justice Project, said she “does not support a TLC model” because it regulates workers rather than the industry. That’s why he supports Lander’s approach, which doesn’t require delivery workers to register their e-bikes like cars but uses the tech company’s algorithms to promote safety.

Lander believes that by requiring companies like DoorDash and GrubHub to limit the speed of work and the amount of deliveries a worker can make in certain periods of time, it would, in theory, force these bottom-line giants to stop prioritizing profits.

“That’s why the licensing program is needed in the first place,” Lander told Streetsblog when asked how the city would ensure that apps ignore profit motivations.

“Yes, of course they want to get the food there while it’s hot, but if they have a legal obligation to make sure it’s in a safe vehicle, the vehicle is operated safely, and when will the city see that journey? reporting is done. Now you can manage your fleet as a whole and make sure it works the way you need to do to maintain your licence.”

‘Sense of danger’

Lander said he hears concerns all the time from city residents about their fear of mopeds and e-bikes.

“If you talk to people, you know that there is a dramatic sense among a very broad swath of New Yorkers that the proliferation of moped and e-bike use is increasing in a way that our regulations and culture cannot keep up with,” Lander said. “We have to do something to restore a sense of safety on our streets. ”

keyword, perception security.

Lander treads a delicate line that many politicians trip over. Notably absent from Tuesday’s event, the self-styled safety group E-Vehicle Safety Alliance focuses its advocacy on the alleged danger of electric bikes and mopeds to the exclusion of the most dangerous vehicles on the road: cars.

As a result, Council members consistently misrepresent the dangers of mopeds and e-bikes and propose solutions based on this misperception. For example, at a recent EVSA meeting, Council Member Bob Holden said that e-bikes and mopeds had ushered in the “most unsafe era in New York history,” and that is simply not true — unless that is what he meant by the safety of delivery workers.

In 2023, 62 micromobility drivers died in crashes; On the contrary, two deaths occurred with Drivers of micro-mobility vehicles, according to the report.

Lander emphasized that people like EVSA who are upset about mopeds and e-bikes should advocate for broad-based safe systems rather than just regulating a single device.

“I want a city where there are more places where we invest in infrastructure, more places where we create plazas and maintain bike lanes, and things like the 34th Avenue open street (in Jackson Heights),” he said.

UberEats, Doordash and Grubhub declined to comment on the report’s recommendations.

Read the full report here.