New 15 MPH Speed Limit for E-Bikes Starts on Oct. 24

The new 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes, e-scooters, and pedal-assist commercial bicycles officially becomes law on Oct. 24, but questions remain as to just how the new law will be enforced.

”This speed-limit lowering is meaningless without the critically needed registration of all e-bike vehicles, “ said Janet Schroeder, head of the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance.

Traffic Alternatives, a bike advocacy group, has blasted the 15 mph speed limit as ill-conceived.

Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, said, “A 15 mph speed limit on e-bikes and no other vehicles is half-baked and ill-conceived. Bikes and cars sharing the same road would be subject to different speed limits and consequences—and those consequences would be inverse to the potential for harm.”

The 15 mph speed limit will match the same speed limit that currently applies to stand-up e-scooters. Mayor Eric Adams unveiled the plan for the new, lower speed limit in June, but it took four months before it became official. The new rule is designed to mirror best practices for e-bike speeds in many other areas of the world, including the European Union, which has implemented speed restrictions for e-bikes of 25 kilometers per hour (approximately 15 mph) in bike lanes.

“I have heard, over and over again, from New Yorkers about how their safety—and the safety of their children—has been put at risk due to speeding e-bikes and e-scooters, and today, our administration is saying enough is enough: We are implementing a new 15-mile-per-hour speed limit for e-bikes and e-scooters that will make our streets safer,” said Adams when he revealed his plan back in June.

The speed limit becomes law after a lengthy comment period. The limit does not apply to pedal-only bikes, which can also easily go over 15 mph. The Department of Transportation said that since pedal-only bikes are lighter than bikes and scooters with lithium-ion batteries, they do not pose as big a danger of injuries.

The pedestrian-injury factor appears to be a big motivation behind the new regulation. Streetsblog, a bike advocacy news site, argues that the vast majority of pedestrian injuries comes from drivers of cars and trucks, who were responsible for 99.96% of pedestrian injuries reported to the NYPD in the first quarter of 2025.

But Schroeder at the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance says the vast majority of e-bike collisions with pedestrians never get reported to police and so do not turn up in official statistics. Often, an e-biker will stop only momentarily after a collision, before riding away from the scene.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch directed the NYPD to start handing out criminal summonses to e-bikers who violate traffic laws, primarily by running red lights in May. But the NYPD did not respond when queried as to how exactly it plans to enforce the new speed limit law.

The NYPD also did not respond when asked how many criminal summonses have been handed out to e-bikers since the crackdown began in May. And consequently, a second query, as to how many of the criminal summonses resulted in “convictions,” through either voluntarily pleading guilty or being found guilty by a judge after a hearing, could not be determined. Early reports on social media sites said that judges were dismissing many of the early summonses due to improperly filled out forms or misinterpretation of the law by a ticket-writing NYPD officer.

Bikes—whether pedal-assist, e-bike, or pedal power only—must obey the same rules of the road as motor vehicles when it comes to stop signs, red lights, one-way streets, etc.

Transportation Alternatives argues that bikers on e-bikes face greater penalties than two-ton motor vehicles under the current system.

“If you’re driving a two-ton SUV at 40 mph, you get a traffic ticket, but if you’re riding an e-bike at 16 mph, you are summoned to criminal court,” said Furnas at Transportation Alternatives. “City Hall has identified no legal precedent for having different speed limits on different lanes of a road or different vehicle classifications.”

Some migrants-rights groups were suspicious of the criminalization push from the start. They point out that many of the delivery workers on e-bikes are migrants. Handing them a criminal summons could make it more likely they can then get snagged in immigration law violations with a criminal conviction. A traffic violation would not show on their record, but a guilty verdict on a criminal complaint would show.

Citi bike had already voluntarily lowered the speed limit on its pedal-assist bikes after some prodding by Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro.

Some deliveristas reengineer bikes to reach higher speeds so they can better speed through more deliveries and make more money.

And some worry that until the city and NYPD outline how the new speed limit will be enforced, it will be a toothless law.

Schroeder at the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance said her organization is pushing for the state to pass Priscilla’s Law, a bill named for Priscilla Loke, a beloved teacher who was killed in Chinatown in September 2023 when she was struck by an e-biker. She banged her head and went into a coma and never regained consciousness before dying two days after the incident. Police, under pressure from the family, eventually tracked down the e-biker but declined to press charges in part because he had alerted police that he had hit Loke. While they were tending to the injury, the biker presumed everything was under control and drove away.

But Loke’s death became a rallying cry for advocates pushing for all e-bikes to have registrations. “We are in favor of Priscilla’s Law for visible plates and registration for all e-vehicles,” said Schroeder. “Without it, a speed limit is nothing beyond a gesture, as a way to appear that something is being done.

“They could make the speed limit 5 mph or 40 mph and riders will change nothing about their speed or their egregious riding behavior, unless they are held accountable to the speed limit. Right now, there is no accountability.”