By Joseph Morales
A large portion of New York City’s population lives in NYCHA Housing across the five boroughs. NYCHA is home to 339,000 residents or 1 out of 16 New Yorkers across 335 developments. As NYCHA’s developments are located in a variety of neighborhoods across the city, each public housing complex in the city has its own unique mobility needs. While many NYCHA developments are located near immense public transit options or are even located in some of the city’s largest transit hubs, others are located far from the subway or other quality transit options. Thus, New Yorkers in some NYCHA developments are forced to make longer public transit trips with more transfers to either certain bus routes or the subway. Other NYCHA developments are home to a high density of delivery workers, many for a rideshare company such as UberEats who need a mobility device such as a car or bicycle to make deliveries. These and many other transportation needs can be addressed through convenient and reliable micro mobility options such as the availability of e-bikes and e-scooters. These options are generally used for short trips which could be anything from a trip to the subway station, a local deli or for pure recreation. With the plethora of green space and side streets around most NYCHA developments micro mobility has already been a major success in many areas. Citi Bike has stations across many NYCHA developments within its service areas and has a program where NYCHA residents and New Yorkers receiving SNAP benefits can ride Citi Bike for a discounted price of $5 a month. According to an article on Citi Bike’s blog, these users use Citi Bike at about double the rate of full-fare users, indicating how beneficial micro mobility can be for NYCHA residents. Many NYCHA residents also rely on e-bikes and e-scooters to get around.
Unfortunately for these residents, NYCHA has proposed banning e-bikes and e-scooters due to the risks of fires particularly caused by lithium-ion batteries. This would remove micro mobility options from thousands of residents, some of whom rely on micro mobility to work. While the desire to mitigate the risks of these potentially fatal fires is understandable, actions can and should be taken to make sure NYCHA residents still have access to safe, efficient and reliable micromobilty options based on their diverse mobility contexts.
For starters, many NYCHA developments are located in very dense and congested areas of the city. Many NYCHA developments are concentrated in specific regions of each borough with the largest concentrations being the Lower East Side and East Harlem areas of Manhattan as well as the north and eastern most areas in Brooklyn. Though public housing is scattered throughout The Bronx, there tends to be a small cluster of developments in the southwestern part of the borough. While Queens and Staten Island have less public housing than the other three boroughs, the public housing that’s there tends to exist in busy areas such as Long Island City and Downtown Flushing in Queens and on the North Shore of Staten Island. These developments tend to be in congested neighborhoods with many busy streets. Oftentimes, mixed use commercial streets in New York City get congested due to a large number of vehicles attempting to park in order to access small businesses on corridors. This tends to lead to double parking, pedestrian safety concerns and other congestion related problems. Adequate access to micro mobility for NYCHA residents can allow them to more seamlessly make shorter trips such as to a corner store or other activity on a large corridor without relying on a car or public bus.
In addition to alleviating congestion issues and providing an alternative to walking, micro mobility can relieve overcrowding on local buses that are often used for short trips, creating more comfortable commutes for bus riders. Many delivery workers from local businesses make deliveries in the NYCHA developments whether they live in them or not, making micro mobility an option for them as well. Examples of NYCHA developments that reflect these conditions include but are not limited to the Bushwick Houses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Bland Houses in Downtown Flushing. Most NYCHA developments in these areas also have many trails and side streets meaning residents often would not need to rely on the busiest roads to get to key destinations, alleviating many safety concerns that come with riding scooters and bicycles. Most NYCHA developments such as the Pelham Parkway Houses in Allerton, Bronx, Queensbridge Houses in Queens and the Patterson Houses in The Bronx have greenways that can stretch for large portions of their respective neighborhoods, making them perfect for micro mobility.
In addition to commerce, many NYCHA developments are an e-scooter or cycling trip away from a park. Thus, micro mobility can allow NYCHA residents to enjoy the trails, green space and athletic fields offered in these parks in addition to those in their respective developments.
In some NYCHA developments, that are far from subway stations, micro mobility is a great option that can expand the amount of transit accessible to residents dramatically. Many NYCHA developments are located in areas that may be too far or inconvenient to walk to a subway station, but more convenient and enjoyable to ride an e-scooter. Examples include the Red Hook East/West Houses in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the South Jamaica Houses in South Jamaica, Queens and the Astoria Houses in the Astoria section of Queens. The Astoria Houses have Citi Bike racks all around the development, which is an example of how a micro mobility technology can be deployed throughout a public housing development. The city might want to consider prioritizing the addition cycling racks/e-scooter parking spaces to all subway stations a 30 min walk and/or bicycle ride from a NYCHA development to make micromobility options more convenient.
Almost empty Citi-Bike rack on a Sunday Afternoon on 27th Av and 3rd St next to Astoria Houses. It is about a mile from here to the nearest subway station.
To keep e-bikes and e-scooters safe, NYCHA can consider many options. NYC Council Member and former Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer stated to Streetsblog that NYCHA could instead use the FDNY to provide fire outreach and education, ban second hand and refurbished batteries rather than devices and require companies such as Uber and DoorDash pay for better and safer batteries. She also suggested possibly designating charging facilities for them, similar to how the city has many electric car stations. Cynthia Tibbs, the Tenant Association President for West Side Urban Renewal Brownstones has thought of charging stations similar to that of electric vehicles for as well as secure charging hubs where a fire with one device does not damage anything else. Many NYCHA developments often have large parking lots and other spaces where this could work and where there are already electric Citi Bikes and e-scooters in some instances. A variety of micro mobility options could be available to residents and the amount of vehicles such as e-bikes and e-scooters developments receive should be based off population density, the number of delivery workers who can utilize micro mobility, the commercial density/amount of congestion in the surrounding community, distance to the nearest subway and/or ferry station and the amount of green space, side streets, bike lanes and other parks that exist that residents will travel to via micro mobility. The city can explore extending current micro mobility pilots such as e-scooter pilots and electric Citi Bikes to NYCHA housing and ensuring that these options are prevalent throughout the complexes. The city should also invest in e-scooter options that are accessible for those with disabilities. In the event the city has limited resources to devote to micromobility, the city should conduct outreach to individual NYCHA complexes to determine which micro mobility options work best for their communities.
Micro Mobility truly has the potential to change how NYCHA residents get around for years to come. As for the ban on e-bikes and e-scooters, Uber is working with NYCHA and “other stakeholders to find a solution that makes storage and charging of electric bicycles safer.” With its population density and green space, NYCHA housing has the potential to be one of the largest markets for micromobility in New York City. Should the city prioritize providing NYCHA residents with safe micro mobility options, the opportunities are endless.
Works Cited/Further Reading
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Kuntzman, Gersh. “NYCHA Seeks to Bar Residents from Having, Charging or Apparently Even Using E-Bikes.” Streetsblog NYC, 7 July 2022, https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/07/07/nycha-seeks-to-bar-residents-from-having-charging-or-apparently-even-using-e-bikes/. Accessed 4 September 2022.
“NYCHA – About.” NYC.gov, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nycha/about/about-nycha.page. Accessed 4 September 2022.
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