You can’t miss Cargi B. The City of New York’s first e-cargo bike, whose name was plucked from an online poll, looks like a miniature UPS truck from the back and a golf cart from the front. Emblazoned with the white and green Department of Transportation logo and just three feet wide, Cargi B has a Richard Scarry–esque cuteness, an apple car in a city full of 18-wheelers and box trucks. And on one blustery April day, I took the four-wheeler for a test drive under the watchful eyes of a handful of DOT employees.
Cargi B is harder to get going than I expect; it takes a few heaves, much like biking uphill. But once the pedal-assist clicks on, its weight becomes bearable. Turning a corner is a lot more unwieldy than I’m used to: I get stuck a few times, underestimating the distance I need to turn, and a DOT employee has to help me get out of a tight spot. But once I get the hang of it, I’m cruising. And I’m a bit jealous. DOT employees now have this alternative to trucks for smaller jobs and supplies. But it’s also a glimpse of how the agency hopes to transform delivery for everyone.
“New Yorkers hate to see big trucks in our street, but at the same time, they’re ordering online a lot more,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, the city’s transportation commissioner. That dependency on delivery has only grown, with a daily onslaught of 2.4 (some say 3.7) million packages dropped off at doors every day. Cargi B is a prototype that could meet that demand; unlike commuter cargo bikes with their back wagons or even the Amazon tricycles we’re used to seeing, it’s “longer, wider, and able to hold more weight to have all of those boxes,” Rodriguez said.
For Amazon, FedEx, and everyone else, the DOT has adopted rules in late March that finally spell out how e-cargo bikes can operate in the city. The rules include some restrictions: The bikes can only go up to 15 miles per hour (slower than an electric Citi Bike), and they’re not allowed to idle on the sidewalk, ever. But the main question until now has always been: How big can they be? And in that respect, the rules are surprisingly generous: up to 16 feet long, seven feet high, and four feet wide. (The average New York City bike lane is somewhere around eight or nine feet wide.)
It’s a big improvement on the status quo, when the rules for e-cargo bikes amounted to “it depends” and “who knows?” As with e-scooters and e-bikes, the city is playing catch-up to technology that arrived some time ago. A previous DOT pilot in Manhattan and Brooklyn allowed a few companies to deploy a limited number of e-cargo bikes. In that gray zone, Amazon designed a hundred-strong fleet to meet state guidelines. But they soon sat useless on a rooftop in Manhattan after a driver tipped over because the vehicle was too top-heavy. These early models are now allowed under the city’s rules, but it’s unclear if they’re actually functional. (Based on Google Maps, the fleet is still up there.)
The trike is perhaps the most familiar e-cargo bike to New Yorkers.
Photo: Kathy images/Shutterstock
What we’re most used to seeing is the trailer-fitted trike — a more makeshift bike with a back cart that is open to the elements (and to potential thieves). According to an Amazon spokesperson, the majority of Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh shipments (the company’s grocery-delivery arm) were delivered this way in Manhattan. E-cargo bikes are used to a lesser extent by FedEx, UPS, and a handful of more eco-conscious companies.
The rules drop at an ideal time; congestion pricing takes effect on June 30, and companies that want to dodge the truck fees to enter below 60th Street (which can range from $24 to $36 a day) could swap out trucks for e-cargo bikes. They would potentially save themselves over $13,000 a year.
Now the question is how cargo-bike companies will respond. Ben Morris, the founder of Coaster Cycles, a Bay Area–based cargo-bike manufacturer, says his company is now busy designing a vehicle that could meet the guidelines and satisfy what individual customers, not just delivery companies, might want. Compared to Europe, where cargo-bike sales are growing 50 percent each year, and where companies like FedEx and UPS are already using them, New York is the only place in the United States that has rules like this on the books, says Morris, and he has only heard of a few cities looking to join in.
Photo: Richard Levine/Alamy Stock Photo
He doesn’t expect cargo bikes to flood the streets tomorrow — or even this year. It’ll take time for companies to put an entirely new logistics chain in place, from batteries and cameras to drop-offs and training, and to create a bike that will meet what different delivery companies and individual consumers need.
For Amazon’s primary grocery delivery operator, DutchX, the rules change was “the biggest win we could ever have,” said co-founder Marcus Hoed. He says delivering for Amazon Fresh is only one slice — albeit a big one — of the potential New York market. Inspired by Dutch-style bakfiets, which typically have a caboose in front, his company aims to introduce e-cargo bikes to any companies interested in switching over. Since the new guidelines were released, DutchX has already been able to advance several deals but wouldn’t reveal details.
The long-term vision for cargo-bike adoption was on the Zoom screen behind him: a fake background of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, which is slated to become a major maritime freight pier and e-cargo bike hub by 2029. This is part of the city’s Blue Highways strategy, a plan to revive its waterways as delivery routes.
The dream scenario, advocates told me, is this: Trucks or ships drop off your online order at a distribution center at a pier or on the urban outskirts, the package gets moved to a waiting e-cargo bike, and the bike goes the remaining distance to deliver it to your door. Ideally, they’re riding in a traffic lane dedicated entirely to micro-mobility vehicles, rather than a narrow single-lane bike path.
Those changes are happening, albeit slowly. Ten-foot-wide bike lanes, meant to accommodate more cyclists at various speeds, have premiered on Third, Ninth, and Tenth Avenues. There are a few loading spots for cargo bikes — some more informal, with a cone or two, than others. New curbside lockers just opened to public use, which double as drop-off destinations for trucks (or, soon, e-cargo bikes). And up to 20 of those “micro hubs” to transfer goods from trucks to bikes and handcarts are promised for this year. (A study from Open Plans and Columbia University recently said they could save the city $240 million in pollution and traffic reduction.)
But what about cyclists, who have to share space with this new crop of cargo bikes? Jon Orcutt, a former NYC DOT policy director who now works for Bike New York, said he believed the agency “seemed to have listened to actual cargo-bike operators and came up with a decent rule.” The speed limit, he said, was smart policy — other electric-mobility devices, like throttle e-bikes and electric mopeds, are whisking down streets at much faster speeds than traditional bikes, frustrating (and sometimes injuring) other cyclists and pedestrians.
Still, many cyclists are nervous. In September, some told the New York Post that cargo bikes would “kill other riders.” They’re much bigger than mopeds, which are already a threat and nuisance to cyclists, as I’ve reported for this publication. One can only imagine the fender benders should Cargi B stop short or turn abruptly.
This was the biggest concern for Joshua Wood, an organizer with the Worker’s Justice Project, which represents the city’s deliveristas. This last year was a historically deadly one for New York City’s cyclists, especially those on e-bikes. While he sees e-cargo bikes as a “stepping stone” to dedicating entire traffic lanes to two- and three-wheeled devices, given New York’s slow progress on cycling infrastructure, that might take a while.
Wood, who delivers for Uber Eats, doesn’t see the cargo bikes becoming an option for most deliveristas any time soon. Until the prices of the vehicles come down or delivery apps improve how they pay drivers, it will be difficult for most to afford them.
Still, he admitted, “The biggest danger that I personally feel like I face comes from trucks.” As he said this, a truck horn blared in the background of our call. “So one fewer truck on the road is going to increase my odds of not dying, which is generally a good thing.”
