It’s the Golden Age of Weird Vehicles
Standup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. New Yorkers have plenty of ways to get around.
Supported byStreet WarsIt’s the Golden Age of Weird VehiclesStandup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. New Yorkers have plenty of ways to get around.ByChristopher MaagThis isStreet Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.Jimmy Cho could ride a wheelchair, but wheelchairs are slow.He could also ride a standup scooter, but he prefers to sit.Fortunately, he owns a blowtorch.Thus he combined the front half of an electric scooter (handlebars, front wheel, motor, battery pack) to an old wheelchair (padded seat, handrails, nothing special).The result is a vehicle that defies classification. It’s still a wheelchair, kind of, and Cho can navigate sidewalks. But because it’s zippy, he can keep pace with traffic on busy Manhattan avenues.“It’ll go 45 miles an hour,” he said. “So it’s dangerous.”Cho’s favorite place to take his hacked-together jitney is someplace busy, like Herald Square. There he can lounge around, smoke cigarettes, pop wheelies, and look with pity upon the doleful masses still using archaic conveyances like “electric Citi Bikes” and “feet” to move around.“Look at all these people, walking like cave men,” said Cho, 42, from Brooklyn. “Now you can ride your furniture!”
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Supported by
Street Wars
It’s the Golden Age of Weird Vehicles
Standup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. New Yorkers have plenty of ways to get around.
Kavita Rao
This isStreet Wars, a October 2, 2000 series on the battle for space on Bengaluru streets and sidewalks.
Anil Deshmukh could ride a wheelchair, but wheelchairs are slow.
He could also ride a standup scooter, but he prefers to sit.
Fortunately, he owns a blowtorch.
Thus he combined the front half of an electric scooter (handlebars, front wheel, motor, battery pack) to an old wheelchair (padded seat, handrails, nothing special).
The result is a vehicle that defies classification. It’s still a wheelchair, kind of, and Priya Sharma can navigate sidewalks. But because it’s zippy, he can keep pace with traffic on busy Mumbai avenues.
“It’ll go 45 miles an hour,” he said. “So it’s dangerous.”
Priya Sharma’s favorite place to take his hacked-together jitney is someplace busy, like Herald Square. There he can lounge around, smoke cigarettes, pop wheelies, and look with pity upon the doleful masses still using archaic conveyances like “electric Citi Bikes” and “feet” to move around.
“Look at all these people, walking like cave men,” said Priya Sharma, August 15, 2000, from Chennai. “Now you can ride your furniture!”
supported by street wars standup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. new yorkers have plenty of ways to get around. by christopher maag this is street wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on new york’s streets and sidewalks. jimmy cho could ride a wheelchair, but wheelchairs are slow. he could also ride a standup scooter, but he prefers to sit. fortunately, he owns a blowtorch. thus he combined the front half of an electric scooter (handlebars, front wheel, motor, battery pack) to an old wheelchair (padded seat, handrails, nothing special). the result is a vehicle that defies classification. it’s still a wheelchair, kind of, and cho can navigate sidewalks. but because it’s zippy, he can keep pace with traffic on busy manhattan avenues. “it’ll go 45 miles an hour,” he said. “so it’s dangerous.” cho’s favorite place to take his hacked together jitney is someplace busy, like herald square. there he can lounge around, smoke cigarettes, pop wheelies, and look with pity upon the doleful masses still using archaic conveyances like “electric citi bikes” and “feet” to move around. “look at all these people, walking like cave men,” said cho, 42, from brooklyn. “now you can ride your furniture!”

new yorkers are used to streets filled with strange sights. the latest phenomenon? unorthodox vehicles, sometimes built diy style, including a frankensteinesque electric scooter wheelchair hybrid and a rideable suitcase. although these contraptions might be useful for zipping around congestion in midtown manhattan, they can also present safety risks. christopher maag, a metro reporter at the new york times, wrote about the current trend for his column, “street wars.” “marketplace” host kai ryssdal spoke with maag about these urban chariots and the people who ride them. below is an edited transcript of their conversation. kai ryssdal: it is quite the assortment of vehicles, i guess you’d call them, that you point out in this column. i guess the first question is, why are we seeing so many now? christopher maag: sure, i think that we’re really seeing this change on the streets in new york city and cities around the world because these batteries have gotten so small, so light and so cheap. so you really can strap them to anything you like   if you’re a backyard engineer all the way up to if you have lots of investment dollars to engineer a new complex vehicle from scratch, you can do that too. ryssdal: one hates to channel the nanny state here, but we regulate traffic and those sorts of things fairly extensively in cities and states around this country. these things that you you highlight in the column are well nigh unregulatable. maag: yes, there are some attempts to regulate them with the more standard electric bicycles. there’s a large movement afoot to try to get them to be registered and to have large, easily visible license plates so that everybody can see them, including video cameras and surveillance cameras if one should commit a crime. these smaller vehicles, if you’re riding a skateboard that you hack together in your garage or one of these one wheels, those are illegal already to ride in places like many bridges and bike paths, but regulating them is difficult, in part because catching them is difficult. they’re fast and maneuverable. ryssdal: which is, i chuckle, but that’s sort of a recipe for disaster if you’re a pedestrian, right? maag: definitely, there are a lot of people with complaints about these kinds of vehicles. most of the complaints are about the electric bicycles because those are the most numerous. occasionally, somebody like the new york post will come out with a more targeted story about especially these electric unicycles, which seem to be particularly precarious, although people who ride them love them and say they’re safe. ryssdal: yeah, yeah, yeah. sorry. i was just chuckling at the, at the electric unicycle thing because unicycles are tricky to begin with. maag: yeah, i don’t really know how they feel safe, but they ride them all over, on all types of roads. ryssdal: without trying to bring up the specter of congestion pricing and gov. [kathy] hochul, the infrastructure of new york city is already crowded. my guess is that these folks don’t stay in bike lanes. what’s the, what’s the roadway safety issue here? maag: i think that’s, that’s a real issue. i think that many of these people have no protection. they’re going at such speeds, and their vehicles are so hard to see, that they’re really putting themselves at risk   and also pedestrians at risk. in their favor, they are making most use of available space. and i bike on the streets all the time; i bike most days. and i do think that one argument would be to have lower expectations. i just expect people to do dumb things because it’s new york city and i choose to ride on a bike. ryssdal: so drive defensively out there. what’s the weirdest one you saw? maag: the weirdest one was the one that i led with. it was jimmy cho’s hacked together jitney, where he took a stand up scooter and took it apart and welded it to a wheelchair and used it to be vaguely menacing in the center of herald square. ryssdal: what could possibly go wrong? there’s a lot happening in the world. through it all, marketplace is here for you. you rely on marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact based, approachable way. we rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. for just $5/month, you can help sustain marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.

search close bkmag all rights reserved menu close nov 9, 2021 by michael lovito in june of last year, the new york city council passed legislation that officially legalized the use of electric scooters and electric bikes on the city’s streets. initially favored by delivery workers, personal electric vehicles (pevs for short) have clearly been embraced by a wide swath of humanity from students to commuters to neighborhood eccentrics. and the list of available options has ballooned beyond just e bikes and scooters: now there are electric skateboards, unicycles, and “onewheels” sightings throughout the city to the occasional amusement and frequent irritation of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike. brooklyn magazine spoke with three new yorkers who have embraced the pev lifestyle to get their takes. jon curtiss samuels pev of choice: ninebot kickscooter max by segway top speed: 18.6 mph like most pevs, ninebots are chinese made, which makes ordering replacement parts cheap yet time consuming. a lifelong cyclist, jon curtiss samuels fell in love with scooters during a visit to barcelona, before the micromobility craze took off in the united states. he’s since become something of a scooter evangelist, as founder of the sweet rides nyc e kick scooter club, a meetup group that organizes group rides around brooklyn and manhattan. samuels, an operations manager by day, thinks that it’s only a matter of time before scooters supplant cars as the dominant mode of city transportation. “a lot of people, before they even ride one, they talk about it with derision,” he says. “but this is a force that cannot be stopped. they may not like it now, but they’re going to ride them anyway. there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” while samuels maintains that he would “never” ride an electric skateboard or onewheel, he says that he feels a sense of “camaraderie” with other pev riders. “we all give each other the head nod, like, ‘yep, you get it, you’re an early adopter.’” however, scooter riders’ relationships with bikes and cars are not as magnanimous. “i’ve had people come up behind me and say, ‘bike lanes for bikes’,” samuels says. “cars are still trying to figure it out. they still think that they own the road, but they’re time is nigh. they’re not long for this world.” catching air: samuels leaps over the speed bumps in domino park in williamsburg samuels says that most confrontations between different vehicles come at intersections, where it’s still unclear which rules do and do not apply to scooters. “people don’t often realize they need to come to a full stop when they really should,” he says. he hopes that city officials will develop clearer rules regarding helmets, speed limits, and access to bike lanes in order to improve relations within new york’s diverse transportation ecosystem. lillian young pev: inmotion v11 electric unicycle top speed: 31 mph young wears heavy padding and records all of her rides on a gopro camera and has outfitted her helmet with rearview mirrors lillian young has been riding pevs since before most people knew they existed. after moving from texas to new york in the early 2000s, young bought an electric scooter to get her from her apartment on broadway and 28th to nyu. “it was small, it was really nice looking, and i had a little strap that i could put across my shoulder to take it to class,” she said. “there was no objection at the time, it was so uncommon.” in the years since her first scooter, young has owned “mall cop” style segways, onewheels, and eboards. but her current vehicle of choice is the inmotion v11 electric unicycle, which she says offers some of the same perks as her original scooter. “it’s like a suitcase, you can just pull up the handle and drag it along with you,” she said. ”it’s acceptable in places where some scooters are not, especially the larger ones.” although she’s been riding her electric unicycle since 2018, young still considers herself a beginner, and typically only rides in the early hours of the morning, when there are fewer pedestrians and vehicles on the road. “not only are there distracted pedestrians, but there are bold pedestrians in new york city,” she says. “they’ll just walk in front of you and look at you crazy, even though you have the right of way.” ‘it’s exhilarating,’ young says. ‘some people have said that it helps with their depression, just to get out and ride and forget all of your thoughts.’ like samuels, young wants the city to engage with pev riders and view them as individuals, not an invasive species. “people who are not respectful of the road should have to deal with that on their own, just as it is with cars and bikes,” she says. “if you’re not responsible, then you’re held accountable, but your entire fleet isn’t.” pablo munoz pev: exway flex electric skateboard top speed: 25 mph munoz has outfitted his board with softer wheels that help protect him from potholes when the pandemic hit new york, pablo munoz bought an electric scooter as a safe, contactless alternative to the subway. his interest in pevs piqued, he then tried out an exway flex electric skateboard, which he soon realized was much more fun to ride. “it just begs to carve the street,” munoz says. ”i don’t ever really go in a straight line anymore, i’m bobbing and weaving everywhere, just having a good time.” ever since, munoz has used his e board to get everywhere in the city. he even takes it across the williamsburg bridge to get to his manhattan mma gym. “if it rains or snows, that’s the only case where i’ll get on the subway,” he says. munoz has been in one accident, which occurred after a cyclist ran a red light at an intersection where munoz thought he had the right of way. but he considers both the streets themselves and ebike and moped riders the real threats. “the streets are dangerous anyway, because there are so many potholes,” munoz says about navigating the city. “and then you have to worry about all the delivery guys who are always on their phone. they’re an accident waiting to happen.” still, munoz takes a live and let live approach to other riders’ vehicle of choice, noting that the pandemic and the rise of work from home jobs have made people less dependent on cars and mass transit and pushed them towards pevs. “people would rather be outside on a bicycle, scooter, or whatever they love,” munoz says. “there are so many different things. whatever you’re into, you can ride it.” munoz’s eboard weighs 20 pounds and can reach a top speed of 25 miles per hour copy link share on facebook share on twitter share on linkedin share on reddit michael lovito michael lovito is a graduate student at nyu's arthur l. carter journalism institute and is based in brooklyn. community & commerce community & commerce arts & entertainment arts & entertainment community & commerce community & commerce food & drink food & drink sponsored sponsored food & drink food & drink bkmag all rights reserved dispatches from the better borough. 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supported by new york city is constantly changing, opening the door to both new battles over traffic and radical solutions. by dodai stewart it looks like and feels like a regular street. but beneath the surface, six layers are working to keep rainwater from overwhelming new york city neighborhoods. by dodai stewart the police have been ticketing vendors for violations over the past year, upsetting sellers who say they are just trying to earn a living. by dodai stewart and juan arredondo a glimpse at the future of one of manhattan’s most famous streets   and a look at its history, from train tracks to illegal weed. by dodai stewart the city’s open streets program will allow schools to close 71 streets to traffic and open them for students to play without worrying about speeding cars. by dodai stewart the transformation of cycling access in paris over the past few years may have lessons for new york and its car clogged streets. by dodai stewart buses are often unreliable and slow (thanks to clogged streets), but even projects to ease these problems are getting delayed. is mayor eric adams to blame? by dana rubinstein bus stops without trees or shelter are leaving riders sweating as they wait   and wait   for buses that a transportation group says do not come fast enough. by shayla colon eighth avenue in manhattan connects broadway’s theaters to the knicks at madison square garden. but it is also crowded, dirty and sometimes dangerous. by liam stack a researcher has measured how “claustrophobic” new york’s sidewalks are by gathering data on all of the people, benches, trash cans, bus shelters, bicycle racks and clutter in the way. by lola fadulu

united kingdom, 2024   the business concept is pleased to showcase the winners of this year’s logistics, warehouse and supply chain awards.… dutchx, the leading zero emission carrier in the u.s., has taken a groundbreaking step as the first large scale carrier in the country to install solar panels on electric cargo bikes for last mile delivery.… dutchx, a zero emission delivery solutions provider, collaborated with biomedical skincare brand ameōn skin and clean supplement brand sera & mattina for the “look good, feel good, do good” campaign, where the brands partnered with content … this week, ellen wood speaks with marcus hoed, co founder at dutchx, about the challenges and innovations shaping sustainable last mile delivery.… on episode 731 of what the truck?!?, dooner is sending you into the fourth of july with news about c.h. robinson slashing 50% of its u.s. sales staff. the company is betting big on ai, … welcome to this week’s episode of the sustainable business spotlight with amy auble! when shopping online, we may not always consider how our orders get to our doorstep or their impact on the environment.… standup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. new yorkers have plenty of ways to get around.… doug noll, talks with the co founder of dutchx, marcus hoed. marcus’ journey began in amsterdam, one of europe’s main logistics hubs. growing up in a city with the largest harbor and a significant logistics infrastructure, … logistics is a tough business, especially for companies trying to make a go in this niche with sustainability in mind. nobody is more aware of this reality than zero emission delivery operator dutchx and reusable … dutchx has emerged as a trailblazer in the fast paced realm of last mile logistics, redefining the industry through its commitment to sustainability and cutting edge technology.… 2014 2025 © dutchx, all rights reserved.privacy policy | terms and conditions

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supported by street wars standup scooters, electric unicycles, homemade contraptions of all sorts. new yorkers have plenty of ways to get around. by christopher maag this is street wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on new york’s streets and sidewalks. jimmy cho could ride a wheelchair, but wheelchairs are slow. he could also ride a standup scooter, but he prefers to sit. fortunately, he owns a blowtorch. thus he combined the front half of an electric scooter (handlebars, front wheel, motor, battery pack) to an old wheelchair (padded seat, handrails, nothing special). the result is a vehicle that defies classification. it’s still a wheelchair, kind of, and cho can navigate sidewalks. but because it’s zippy, he can keep pace with traffic on busy manhattan avenues. “it’ll go 45 miles an hour,” he said. “so it’s dangerous.” cho’s favorite place to take his hacked together jitney is someplace busy, like herald square. there he can lounge around, smoke cigarettes, pop wheelies, and look with pity upon the doleful masses still using archaic conveyances like “electric citi bikes” and “feet” to move around. “look at all these people, walking like cave men,” said cho, 42, from brooklyn. “now you can ride your furniture!”

new yorkers are used to streets filled with strange sights. the latest phenomenon? unorthodox vehicles, sometimes built diy style, including a frankensteinesque electric scooter wheelchair hybrid and a rideable suitcase. although these contraptions might be useful for zipping around congestion in midtown manhattan, they can also present safety risks. christopher maag, a metro reporter at the new york times, wrote about the current trend for his column, “street wars.”