There’s a recent article in the New York Times about how dangerous it is in New York City for the guys and gals doing food deliveries on bikes. They’ve become targets for bike theft due to their usage of expensive ebikes. Ebikes have been essential tools for delivery workers for years now, but have become even more crucial due to the high demand for food deliveries during the pandemic.
This isn’t run-of-the-mill bike theft, where a sneaky thief uses a portable powered saw to cut the lock of a bike that’s been locked up to a bike rack. Instead, these delivery workers are often robbed at gunpoint of their expensive ebikes and cash by old-school armed robbers.
In addition to the specter of gunpoint robberies, these delivery workers are subject to being ripped off by the very apps that customers are using to order food from, leaving them with even lower pay for a job that doesn’t pay well to begin with. All of this is on top of doing physically-demanding work that requires them to deal with the dangers of riding in city traffic on badly-maintained streets for hours and hours, in all types of weather.
As an ebike rider myself, I would always see these workers zipping around the city full-throttle on their Arrow ebikes, making their way from delivery to delivery. I would also see masses of them in front of the men’s room at Union Square Park, watching each other’s bikes as they took turns going to the bathroom, since public park toilets are the only place they can stop to pee during their long days of work. I was riding around for recreation, enjoying the warmth and sunshine during the Pandemic Summer of 2020. These workers were doing it for survival, and providing an essential service to the citizens of New York.
Many New Yorkers are unable to shop for themselves, due to health and mobility reasons, a situation exacerbated by fear of contracting COVID-19. Let’s not forget that needed medicine was also delivered by bike to elderly residents who couldn’t make it to their local pharmacies, so delivery workers have also played a role in the city’s healthcare system. Without delivery workers, New York would have been much worse off during the multiple dangerous waves of the pandemic.
I’m not sure if people would have starved to death without them, but then again, who knows. Either way, the fact is that delivery workers have risked their own health and even their lives to keep this city going. They’ve helped restaurants stay in business, helped deliver medication, and helped people who might not have been able to get food for themselves stay fed.
Because of this, I think that delivery workers are among the true heroes of this pandemic.