NYC Drivers Who Run Red Lights Get Tickets. E-Bike Riders Get Court Dates

Summary

On Wednesday morning, Ivan Boston’s day began at the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Downtown Brooklyn. Last month, police officers stopped him for running a red light on his electric bicycle, and Mr. Boston, a construction worker, assumed that the D.M.V. was where traffic tickets were paid.But the pink slip of paper in his hand was no traffic ticket. It was a criminal summons. In bold, black letters it read, “To avoid a warrant for your arrest, you must go to court.”When Mr. Boston noticed, a task he had considered a minor annoyance instead turned into a half-day ordeal. He hurried to court at the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building, across from City Hall.“This is ridiculous,” said Mr. Boston, 56, whose unplanned day off cost him $200. “But I don’t want to get a warrant.”Lawyers who spend much of their careers fighting summonses in criminal court find the situation just as baffling.“These are just not charges that lawyers and judges inside the summons part of the court are used to seeing,” said Gideon Oliver, a lawyer who regularly practices in summons court.New York City has begun a crackdown on e-bikes and scooters riders. It follows actions by city officials from Paris to Honolulu to Hoboken, N.J., who are responding to residents angry about zippy vehicles with silent electric motors zooming down sidewalks and streets, often startling people, and occasionally hitting pedestrians.For years, some New Yorkers have complained about such behavior, which “gives people the impression of chaos and disorder,” Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, said at an April news conference at which she announced the enforcement action. “It erodes our sense of public safety, and New Yorkers have had enough.”That day, officers began staking out intersections across the city around the clock, watching for riders who ignored red lights and stop signs, rode against traffic or on sidewalks, rode under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or were reckless in other...