Delivery in progress (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
By Mark Chiusano
The post-Independence Day missive from Mayor Eric Adams had notes of grandeur: the city was announcing a new “Department of Sustainable Delivery.” Funding was on the way. Once again, New York was taking the reins to regulate the nascent gig economy — a timely move, since the field has shaped how New Yorkers shop and experience the city, as companies turned streetscapes into workplaces for tens of thousands of bikers and drivers, stretching the limited rules already in place.
But the reality was a little tamer, if you read the fine print. The “Department” was actually just an entity within the city’s Department of Transportation. Its first class of up to 45 peace officers — who will be trained to enforce commercial cycling laws, moving violations, and vehicle parking violations like blocked bike lanes — isn’t slated to deploy until 2028. And the planned focus seems to be largely on delivery worker enforcement, as opposed to direct regulation of how the companies and delivery apps function and shape the city.
“It’s not concrete,” said Manhattan City Council Member Shaun Abreu, who has been working on delivery-related legislation separate from the new entity. “It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot happening there.”
The press release represents a slimmed down version of an idea that has been animating workers, app companies, and regulators alike for years. In his 2024 State of the City address, Mayor Adams said, “we are in discussion with the City Council to create the ‘Department of Sustainable Delivery,’ a first-in-the-nation entity that will regulate new forms of delivery transit and ensure their safety.”
The mayor went on to promise that this new outfit would combine work spread across agencies, hitting on traffic safety and corporate accountability. The need for such a watchdog had become more and more obvious since the COVID-19 pandemic, as door-to-door delivery exploded for everything from milkshakes to paper towels to pet food. The consequences have been complex, touching on worker protection as well as public space, as double-parked delivery trucks scramble roadways and speed-seeking delivery workers turned to electric bikes and their dangerous batteries. No surprise, then, that officials warned Streetsblog that the delivery department effort would take time and, crucially, legislation, but the outcome would be audacious: including a framework “to regulate all new and existing modes of delivery, including e-bikes and — perhaps, one day — drones.”
That vision had buy-in from some workers. “We have been supportive of the idea of a Department of Sustainable Delivery,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project, which organizes the worker group Los Deliveristas Unidos.
Guallpa said the group had been part of conversations with the city dating back to Meera Joshi’s tenure as deputy mayor for operations. (Joshi left City Hall earlier this year along with three other deputy mayors amid Adams’ apparent cooperation with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.) The early vision included building a department that offered more protections for delivery workers and “that serves as a hub to track and regulate these multi-billion dollar corporations,” said Guallpa of app companies like Uber Eats and DoorDash.
She expressed concern with the new office’s stated priorities via press release, such as enforcement against “illegal moped, e-bike, and e-scooter riding,” performed by new unarmed officers, some of them on e-bikes.
Asked for more information about the delivery department, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) said that staff would include more than the peace officers, citing “leadership roles for both the division and enforcement arm, as well as data and policy support.” The fiscal year 2026 city budget, which covers July 1, 2025 through the end of June 2026, allotted over $6 million for 60 positions within the new bureaucratic arm. The spokesperson said DOT is working on hiring now to build out the unit.
But little more intel was available, despite the onetime prominence of this idea. “It’s a ‘concept’ to score political points during an election year,” said one City Council source, in a nod to Adams’ bid for a second term and interest in appealing to the kinds of voters who often complain about e-bikes buzzing around.
Legislative Standoff
Part of the Department of Sustainable Delivery’s modest launch comes from the missing second piece of Adams’ vision.
As part and parcel of the Department, the Adams administration had also hoped to regulate delivery with proposed legislation that could require helmets, safety courses, compliant batteries, and $200 biennial license fees for delivery bikers; and penalize app companies whose workers break the rules.
In the July delivery department press release, Adams implored the Council to “bolster the work of this newly created department” via legislation.
Instead, the Council moved a week later to advance its own package of delivery-related bills, which focus more directly on improving the conditions for workers and follows the 2021 establishment of a delivery minimum wage for many who actively perform deliveries. The new bills extended that protection to grocery delivery workers, and addressed app companies’ new tendency to place the tipping function at the very skippable end of the purchase experience.
The conflicting approaches from the two sides of City Hall may not be a surprise, as officials toggle between constituent feedback that e-bikes are a menace and that delivery is an economic and consumer godsend.
“I think people are trying to find, you know, like everything else, how to be sensitive to the workers and thoughtful, and at the same time try to get the rules of the road,” said Manhattan City Council Member Gale Brewer. “Easier said than done.”
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Mark Chiusano is a Senior Fellow in New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.