It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC.

Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Matt Katz, reporter in the WNYC Gothamist Newsroom, and I'm filling in for Brian today.

Maybe you saw or heard my colleague Arun Venica Paul's recent story about what he termed the

moped crisis in Jackson Heights.

The proliferation of mopeds on the streets has kicked the criticism of e-bikes into

overdrive, and a lot of pedestrians probably see little difference between an e-bike

and a moped. But maybe you also saw my piece in Gothamist about how the city plans to help

delivery workers get fire safe e-bike batteries and e-bike battery charging stations around the city.

But those plans have been moving very slowly, which has

resulted in some delivery workers replacing their e-bikes with bigger, heavier, faster, more

dangerous mopeds.

Legally, these two vehicles are very different.

So to dig in on those differences and what might help tame the streets is Melinda Hansen co-founder of the

equitable commute project which supports safe e-bike use and she's also the founder

of bright side consulting firm welcome to the Brian Lair show Melinda really

appreciate you being here thanks so much for having me so I the reason why I was hoping to speak with you is because I've seen so much confusion about the various categories of what we call micro mobility vehicles.

And understanding the difference is a real first step to trying to figure out how to tackle what some people see as a real public

safety threat from these things. So can we walk through the different kinds of e-bikes,

mopeds, scooters that fall into this category of micro mobility? Can you give us a little

refresher here? Yep, absolutely. Yeah, there are very clear definitions for each of the modes.

An e-bike is divided up into three different classes.

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