Pedicabs Will Now Be Inspected and Licensed

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: November 20, 2009

New York City’s pedicab business, by most accounts, began on an East Village side street circa 1995, as a close-knit collective of tricyclists squeezed into a garage next door to the Hells Angels. Tap dancers, undertakers and striptease artists were among the first drivers.
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Julie Glassberg/The New York Times

Memet Emin Ozgan repairing pedicabs at Zenk Pedicab on West 57th Street.

From these bohemian beginnings came an unlikely pairing: green transportation and unbridled capitalism, a pollution-free way around town that, in good times, earned its proprietors upward of $1,000 a week.

But as the business grew, so did its troubles. Hundreds of new bike operators arrived, pestering tourists and testing the city’s tolerance. Pedicab owners, alarmed at lax safety standards, began a push for regulation — an effort that stretched for years, encompassing a rare mayoral veto in 2007 and a protracted court battle that ended only last spring.

Now, the upstart enterprise has officially become a profession. Citywide regulation went into effect this weekend. Under the new rules, pedicabs must be insured and inspected for safety. Headlights, seat belts and hydraulic brakes are required. Drivers must be licensed, and prices clearly displayed. Infractions will result in warnings, suspensions and, for repeat offenses, an outright ban.

“We’re going from something that was born in a dusty downtown garage, completely out of grass-roots activism, into a commercial, regulated activity,” said Peter Meitzler, who ran one of the early fleets. “12:01 Saturday, we’re in a new era.”

Regulation is a milestone for a business that has long yearned for respect, yet some owners and drivers worry that the rules could go too far. Rumors abound that the city will ban pedicabs from Midtown, hurting sales. And drivers fear overzealous police enforcement.

But many longtime pedicab workers recognize that the business has changed, and that they must change with it.

“We grow, we get older, we’re changing. Life is different,” said Igor Krugov, 24, a student who started driving a pedicab in 2005 and now rents out four. Initially attracted to the glamorous side — meeting celebrities, flying down to work the Super Bowl, giving free rides to pretty girls — Mr. Krugov now says the rules will make the business more legitimate.

“Now we are officially a part of the city,” he said the other day, pointing to an official rate card freshly affixed to a bike. (Not all of that do-it-yourself quality has been lost: the prices were printed on computer paper.) The new rules, however, could put a damper on the easygoing mentality that let out-of-work artists and amateur bike nerds get paid to do what they loved. In the off-season, some drivers spent their earnings on vacations to London, Brazil and Mexico that lasted for months.

In 2000, Ricardo Hernandez, a musician, needed $800 to pay his rent in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He answered an ad in the Village Voice seeking pedicab drivers; in his first week, he made $900. “We were like troubadours,” Mr. Hernandez recalled recently at a pedicab garage on 57th Street. “We all knew each other. You’d go back to the garage and gather and talk about your day.”

“Now there’s a lot of normal people, just average people,” he said. “Now it’s an average job. It’s lost its charm.” Mr. Hernandez registered for his license this week; he said he hoped that the new rules would make customers and police officers consider pedicabs a safer form of transit. “They’re going to have to respect us,” he said. “We’re not anonymous anymore.”

In June, a pedicab driver and two passengers were injured in a collision with a taxi at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, prompting a renewed effort by the city to regulate. Fleet owners like Cevdet Kiziltan, who owns 30 cabs, said accountability would keep reckless players out of the profession. He said he missed the days when customers were friendlier and the business looked out for its own.

As of Friday morning, the city had received applications from 303 drivers and 150 businesses, for a total of 844 individual pedicabs.

Officials said they were disappointed that many waited until the last minute. “This industry is taking a journey toward professionalizing itself,” said Jonathan Mintz, the commissioner of consumer affairs. “It’s going to be a long journey.”

George Bliss, 56, started the original garage on East Third Street; at first, he thought pedicabs would be a popular way for clubgoers to migrate crosstown on weekend nights. Nowadays, he is more ambivalent.

“Even some of my most cherished drivers didn’t care whether they had liability insurance or not,” he said disgustedly. “The attitude was, ‘Go ahead and sue me, I don’t have any assets.’ ” But he admitted to some nostalgia.

“Those are the glory days of my life,” he said. “People would just tell me: ‘I love this job. You have given me the best job of my life.’ ”

Plus, there are the health benefits.

“Pulling two Texan tourists, that’s 400 pounds you have in the back, plus the cab is 150 pounds,” Mr. Bliss said. “I had many people take that job to lose weight.”