It has been a long fight, but it finally seems like pedicab owners and operators are going to get the regulations they have been lobbying for for years.  Way to fight the good fight guys!

The following story was published at the following wesite in it’s origional context:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/council-adopts-overhaul-of-pedicab-regulation/

 

Council Adopts Pedicab Rules

By Simon Akam

As expected, the City Council unanimously passed a bill on Wednesday afternoon to license and regulate pedicabs, seven weeks after one of the vehicles collided with a yellow taxicab at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

“While we want to support greener transit options, we need to make sure that businesses like the pedicab industry are operating as safely and responsibly as possible,” Christine C. Quinn, the Council’s speaker, said in a statement.

“This legislation strikes a balance that makes our streets safer and greener,” she added.

The new law will create a 60-day period for owners to apply for pedicab business licenses and registration plates and will limit business owners from operating more than 30 pedicabs at one time.

Businesses will be required to provide safety training for pedicab drivers, and there will be increased penalties for those who do not obtain proper licensing.

Councilman Daniel R. Garodnick, a Manhattan Democrat, was one of the bill’s sponsors.

“Today the absence of regulation of pedicabs creates some very dangerous and chaotic situations for pedicabs, bystanders and drivers,” he said after the measure passed, 47 to 0.

“We need to address that and that’s what we did today.”

Pedicab licenses will be issued by the Department of Consumer Affairs.

“Today the City Council voted in favor of an amendment to the city’s pedicab law that at long last will allow this department to hold this industry accountable for safe and fair operations for New Yorkers and tourists alike,” the department’s commissioner, Jonathan Mintz, said in a statement.

“D.C.A. now will be able to begin the speedy but careful process of inspecting each and every pedicab that would operate on the city’s streets,” he added.

Chad A. Marlow, the president of the Public Advocacy Group, testified in June on behalf of the New York City Pedicab Owners’ Association at a City Hall hearing to thrash out the details of the new bill.

“This is fairly close to the exact regulatory law the pedicab industry has been seeking for five years,” he said on Wednesday.

When this bill becomes law, New York’s streets will be reserved only for the pedicab industry’s safest drivers and most responsible owners.”