This week's journey.World Cup tourists are about to discover that everything here is falling apart. Trump needs to figure out how to pay for the Penn Station renovation. OMNY cards will let you have a negative balance — and more.
Will the deadly scooter vs. cyclist crash on Queensboro Bridge bike path serve as a wake-up call?
New Yorkers got a grim reminder last month of the danger posed by unlicensed and unregulated two-wheelers after a cyclist and a man on a stand-up electric scooter were killed in a head-on crash on the Queensboro Bridge bike path.
The nightmarish crash could serve as a wake-up call for the city. Unlicensed and unregulated e-bikes and scooters have proliferated on city streets since the pandemic. Any stand-up scooter capable of traveling more than 20 mph is banned in the five boroughs. Mopeds are required to have a license plate and vehicle identification number and are not allowed in bike lanes.
But those laws are worth about as much as the paper they’re printed on. As everyone in New York City knows, the NYPD and other regulators routinely ignore the mopeds and scooters breaking all manner of traffic laws. Many mopeds and scooters in the city are illegally souped up and capable of reaching speeds of up to 50 mph.
“ I cross the Pulaski Bridge almost every day, and those things are flying over the bikeway faster sometimes than the car traffic in the adjacent lanes,” Jon Orcutt, a former transportation official, told Gothamist. “It's not that hard to spot them if you're out there looking for them. But the question is, is anybody doing that?”
Stephen Nessen/Gothamist
Officials with the city’s Department of Transportation did not have an estimate of the number of unregulated two-wheelers that operate in the city each day. But NYPD data suggests there are more on the streets than ever.
The NYPD seized more than 8,400 illegal two-wheelers so far in 2026, up from roughly 8,000 at the same point last year. Still, shops across the five boroughs continue to sell stand-up scooters and mopeds that aren’t street legal.
Earlier police crackdowns on e-bikes and scooters in the city proved to be challenging and controversial, mainly because they came in the form of enforcement blitzes that targeted delivery workers. These days, any casual observer of the streets can see that regular commuters are also riding unregulated bikes and scooters.
City Councilmember Gale Brewer, whose Manhattan district is ground zero for gripes about the streets, said high-speed stand-up scooters are the latest bête noire.
“ I'm hearing more now about scooters, even than e-bikes,” she said.
Brewer said police have a hard time discerning which two-wheelers are street legal, and which ones should be seized.
In Switzerland, where stand-up scooters are restricted to 12 mph, police have a nifty device to check a scooter's max speed.
Orcutt agreed the city is doing a pretty poor job at addressing the problem. He said there should be a special unit in the NYPD to deal with the range of electric devices on city streets, with officers who are specially trained to identify legal and illegal devices. Nowadays, he said, “it’s not obvious.”
“It's hard to imagine places that are doing it worse in terms of just not doing anything and letting the culture of the streets slide into the gutter the way we have in New York,” he said. “ We have a socialist mayor and, and laissez faire street enforcement, so make it make sense.”
Curious Commuter
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“I use an OMNY card. I tapped to enter the subway but I did not have sufficient funds on my OMNY card. Nevertheless, I was allowed to enter and a negative balance was created on my OMNY card. This never happened with a MetroCard. Why does OMNY do this?”
- George from Brooklyn
The MTA acknowledges OMNY in some cases gives riders a fare on credit, and says the option is possible because the tap-to-pay system is more advanced than the technology behind the MetroCard.
Agency spokesperson Kayla Shults said that OMNY accounts can temporarily go into a negative balance in a “small amount” for “customer convenience.” But once your card is in the negative, it can’t be used until you go to a vending machine, the MTA’s online OMNY portal or a retail store that sells OMNY cards to pay off the debt.
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We're also talking about...
All the infrastructure headaches that World Cup tourists are about to witness. Although the games are happening in New Jersey, fans spending time in the five boroughs might notice that New York City is 400 years old.
“Welcome to New York. We're glad you're here. Please don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk.”
- Gothamist and WNYC reporter Ryan Kost
Getting to the games. NJ Transit’s $98 round-trip trains from Penn Station to MetLife Stadium are probably the most straightforward way. You could also drive there and park at the American Dream Mall for upwards of $300.
Private cars can’t drop off you at the stadium. Ubers and Lyfts are the only known for-hire vehicles allowed to take passengers to MetLife. (It’s unclear if yellow cabs are also permitted.)
Unlicensed tower crackdown. An NYPD auto pound in Queens has banned unlicensed tow trucks from dropping cars off at the facility.
Paying for the new Penn Station. Now that the Trump administration has a grand vision to rebuild Penn Station, the feds need to figure out how to pay for the project, which the president has ordered to begin by the end of 2027.
Second Avenue subway expansion into East Harlem. The MTA this week began excavating a hole at East 119th Street and Second Avenue, which will make way for one of two boring machines that will dig out the new subway tunnel.
