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This weird oversized e-bike is sparking a controversy in New York City.
New York City wants to invite a new breed of delivery vehicle onto its streets — or rather, into its bike lanes.
A proposal by the city’s transportation department would enable larger, electric, pedal-assist cargo bicycles to deliver packages. By allowing a wider variety of commercial bicycles to operate, the city hopes to shift more deliveries by major carriers like Amazon and UPS out of trucks and onto bikes in order to cut pollution, reduce carbon emissions, and improve public safety.
There’s a surprisingly broad array of conveyances that are all, nominally, electric cargo bikes. You may have seen neighbors piloting these 2-wheeled consumer models back from the grocery store, which come with a small, built-in trailer or wagon. In dense cities, many companies are now making deliveries with e-bikes carting long, 3-wheeled trailers stacked with boxes behind them. But in New York, there are currently legal limits on how wide these bikes can be and how many wheels they can have. Some of the models that are growing popular with delivery companies like Amazon and DHL in London and Berlin either have bigger, pallet-sized storage containers attached to them, or more closely resemble golf carts or slim trucks than bikes.
Take this “skinny legend” recently piloted by UPS, which is similar to the model that Amazon is rolling out in London. It may not look like a bike, but there’s no steering wheel or acceleration pedal. It has handlebars and won't budge until the driver begins cycling away — at which point an electric motor kicks in and it can reach speeds of up to 15.5 miles per hour.
It’s also frankly, adorable. Maybe it’s just the innate human attraction to miniaturized things, but I mean, just look at this thing:
The New York City Department of Transportation estimates that heavy-duty vehicles account for roughly half of tailpipe emissions, despite making up a small fraction of vehicle activity, and freight traffic is growing rapidly. Pre-pandemic projections estimated that regional freight traffic would grow 67% between 2012 and 2045, but since January of 2020, the DOT estimates it’s already increased by more than 50%. Cargo bikes are part of the city’s vision for sustainable freight, as a way to make the “last mile” of delivery more efficient.
It’s already working. A NYC pilot program found that in 2022, cargo bikes made more than 130,000 trips delivering over 5 million packages, resulting in the reduction of over 650,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions. The Department of Transportation has determined that there is even more unmet demand that could be addressed if larger cargo bikes are allowed.
But the proposal to allow larger e-bikes on the road has had a rocky start. It’s not surprising — the idea of one of these things bounding down the city’s crowded, narrow bike lanes is a little unnerving. The city’s bike infrastructure has improved a lot in recent years, with more routes and more protected lanes. But many protected lanes still require cyclists to exercise sharp reflexes to dodge idling trucks, parked cop cars, oblivious pedestrians, and zippy mopeds. Without a more comprehensive approach to the e-bike revolution, the city risks creating a more dangerous environment and inviting public backlash.
“We think they really are an opportunity to transition away from trucks to more sustainable and safer modes of transit,” Alexa Sledge, associate director of communications at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives, told me. “But at the same time, the way our streets are built right now is so often prioritizing trucks and cars, and we really need more space for bikes if we are going to transition to using more cargo bikes.”
During a recent comment period and public hearing on the proposal, many New Yorkers turned out to express their concerns that these vehicles pose a danger to pedestrians and other bikers. The city has already faced growing backlash from residents over e-bikes and mopeds riding on the sidewalks as food delivery has become more popular, and many commenters worried this would only make the situation worse. Others accused the bikes of being “mini trucks,” but not in a cute way.
“I am strongly against this,” read a comment by Fawn Sullivan. “The sidewalks and bike lanes are already chaotic and dangerous due to e-bikes/mopeds. We need more regulations for e-vehicles, not less.”
“If they use the same bike lanes as your everyday commuter, it’s going to be an absolute nightmare and clog up the lanes, pushing cyclists into the streets or sidewalks to get around deliveries,” read another by Michelle G. “I can see this being a total mess.”
There were also many supportive commenters who echoed Sledge’s caveat about ensuring the right infrastructure was in place. One commenter named Bill Bruno called the switch from trucks to cargo e-bikes “long overdue,” but wanted to see “wider bike lanes and many more drop-off zones.” Sara Lind, of Open Plans, a grassroots group advocating for “people-first street culture,” wrote, “Functional infrastructure will be critical to make this important program work.”
The proposal follows a program that DOT launched at the end of 2019 to track the use of cargo bikes by commercial shipping carriers. By coincidence, the data collection effort started just as package delivery was exploding due to the pandemic. After just a year, the city found that companies were rapidly increasing the use of electric cargo bikes. Between May 2020 and January 2021, the number of cargo bike deliveries increased 109%.
But existing laws restrict carriers to using bikes that are 3-feet wide and have three wheels. (Although UPS, a participant in the pilot program, seemed to have gotten around the restriction with a four-wheeled model it rolled out last year. Neither the company nor the Department of Transportation responded to my request for clarification.)
In any case, the city’s proposal would officially allow the use of models that are up to 4-feet wide, and have four wheels, like those I described earlier.
But another issue that came up in the comments was that the proposal would backtrack slightly, banning many of the models that carriers were already using on NYC streets. It caps the length of a cargo bike to 10 feet, despite many current cargo bikes measuring out to 14 feet — mostly those that are toting trailers. “We cannot risk alienating the users who have already adopted this sustainable delivery mode,” wrote Lind.
The city is still parsing public comments and has not said when it plans to finalize the rules. The DOT did not respond to a question I sent them about whether it plans to do anything in conjunction with this rule change to address bike lane safety.
This is also just one piece of New York’s broader plans to reduce truck traffic in the city. The DOT is planning to pilot “microhubs,” locations where online orders can be dropped off and then distributed locally by smaller vehicles. Plus, the decades-long battle to establish a congestion pricing scheme may finally be coming to a head, with plans to begin charging vehicles to enter downtown Manhattan sometime next year. When I spoke with Sledge, she said that’s likely to put more pressure on delivery companies to switch to e-bikes, raising the urgency of the need to re-design the city’s streets for a micro-mobility future.
“We can’t continue to have the same sort of street design we’ve had for years if we're going to ask these bike lanes to do so much more,” she said. “It will be even more important to take space away from cars and give it to people riding bikes if they’re going to be such a large number of our road users.”
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.