Pedicabs

Here Come Pedicabs, The Horse-Drawn

Here Come Pedicabs, The Horse-Drawn Carriages Of The Bike World

Your next cab ride around Philly may be inside a Velo-parkcab. The Philadelphia-based company
happily announced that pedicabs in Philly are now legal, having
received a stamp of approval (a signed bill allowing for regulation
recognition) by Mayor Nutter. The Velo-parkcab looks like the combination of a Smart Car and a bike, pedaled by manpower (thus the “green collar” sustainability).

With
the new green light on pedicabs, we can only assume that you will be
seeing your friends employed, sweating and hauling businessmen and
tourists around our city. Or maybe you won’t; the Velo-parkcab website
lists the following requirements for a position: “Driver’s License with
a Clean Driving Record, Personable, Enthusiastic, Positive, Outgoing
Personality, Environmentally Sensitive and Knowledgeable about
Philadelphia, Passion for Cycling and an Entrepreneurial Spirit,
Physically-fit, Motivated, and Responsible, and Cell Phone
[ownership].” A tall order for a human packmule. Tip well.

:::Philebrity…media, culture, music and more::: » Blog Archive » Here Come Pedicabs, The Horse-Drawn Carriages Of The Bike World

Your next cab ride around Philly may be inside a Velo-parkcab. The Philadelphia-based company happily announced that pedicabs in Philly are now legal, having received a stamp of approval (a signed bill allowing for regulation recognition) by Mayor Nutter. The Velo-parkcab looks like the combination of a Smart Car and a bike, pedaled by manpower (thus the “green collar” sustainability).

via www.philebrity.com

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Lawsuit Filed in Death of a Watertown Man
By: Daniela Forte
12/03/2009
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WATERTOWN-The family of Watertown resident Peter Dzioba, who was killed in a pedicab accident in August 2008, filed a lawsuit last week against the Seattle, Wash., company Cascadia Cabs and Chinese pedicab manufacturer Ningbo Nanyang Vehicle Company Ltd, based in Zhejiang, China.

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"This is just such an unfortunate and entirely preventable tragedy. The key problem is that the Chinese manufacturer of the pedicab made a pedicab that had real inadequate brakes," said Reed Schifferman, a Seattle attorney representing the family. "This isn't a flat city. I can't imagine why you would make a brake system like this."
According to a release, Mr. Dzioba and his wife, Mary, were passengers on the popular Seattle tourist ride, sitting in an open-air, two-seat cab powered by a driver pedaling a three-wheeled bicycle.
Unable to Brake for Light
The couple was celebrating its 25th wedding anniversary and passing time before boarding a cruise to Alaska with close friends. The pedicab driver was not able to brake for a red light at the intersection of Western and Cedar streets in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood.
The pedicab hit a scooter then slammed into a minivan, throwing the driver and the couple into the street, where the minivan ran over Mr. Dzioba, killing him instantly.
The lawsuit claims the manufacturer's brake design was not adequate for stopping safely, and that the manufacturer provided no information or instructions about the braking ability of the pedicab sold to Cascadia.
A separate claim for wrongful death has been filed on behalf of each of Mr. Dzioba's children.
Mr. Dzioba worked as a chemical engineer and was a member of the Watertown public building committee. Mrs. Dzioba resigned from the Board of Education in February of this year.
Originally from New Jersey, Mr. Dzioba was a dedicated fan of Bruce Springsteen and an avid traveler. The Dzioba family had many trips planned for the future, including fulfilling Mr. Dzioba's lifelong dream of seeing the Alaskan glaciers on the couple's upcoming cruise.
"Our trip to Seattle should have been a cherished memory of our 25th wedding anniversary, but it turned into a nightmare," Mrs. Dzioba said in a release issued by the Seattle, Wash., public relations firm Firmani + Associates. "We were on a trip celebrating our life together. And instead, I ended up mourning his death. This should have never happened to us and I want to ensure that it will never happen to another family."
According to the lawsuit, Cascadia Cabs hired drivers, including Matthew Wilson, who was the operator of the pedicab at the time of the incident, without performing background checks or evaluations.
According to Mr. Schifferman, the pedicab company bought the least expensive bike with the least expensive brakes. The lawsuit claims that Cascadia's negligence was the proximate cause of the crash that killed Mr. Dzioba.
"It's just a strap around the drum," the attorney said of the braking system. "It doesn't have caliper brakes and it doesn't have disc brakes, either of which are easy to install and have stopping power. What the Chinese company did and what the pedicab [company] did both put the public at risk."
The family is also suing the pedicab manufacturer and the Washington company for the injuries to Mrs. Dzioba that described as being permanent and will require future medical care, attention and treatment. Additionally, the lawsuit says, Mrs. Dzioba has suffered loss of consortium, and loss of care, comfort and society, along with witnessing the death of her husband.
The claims on behalf of Mr. Dzioba are technically filed by his estate, and the suit cites his lost years of life, and the pain and suffering, both mental and physical, he experienced prior to his death.
Earl Sutherland, a Seattle attorney representing Cascadia Cabs, said the company ensures its pedicabs work properly and that drivers are given instruction and trained to ride the pedicabs.
"It seems the driver ignored the instructions by Cascadia. There were comments in the police report that the cab had malfunctioned. It's our view that they leave the Cascadia shop [and] they are safe," said Mr. Sutherland.
"My client has been very sympathetic to the loss they suffered; it's really a sad event," Mr. Sutherland added.
According to Mr. Sutherland, the company had no similar prior incidents with its pedicabs. "We are really proud of the record to that regard," said Mr. Sutherland.
Mr. Sutherland said the pedicab involved in the accident was retained by the police and has since been released. The lawyer for Mr. Dzioba's estate and Mr. Sutherland have entered into an agreement to preserve the evidence.
"Nobody has tested it, no one in this lawsuit. When they say there was some malfunction I don't have any reason to believe that was the case. The morning it left it worked fine," said Mr. Sutherland.
Pedicabs have a history in Seattle since 1962, though few regulations exist to monitor the safety or operation of the cabs. According to the release from Firmani + Associates there is no requirement for cabs to have a vehicle license or insurance, undergo government safety inspections or conduct driver background checks. Those pedaling the cabs do not need a special driver's license. Cascadia cabs has had 46 pedicabs operating on the West Coast, including 17 in Seattle.
There has been some confusion about where the Dzioba family lived. Several news reports said the family is from New Britain, but officials in Watertown have confirmed that the family is from Watertown.

©Litchfield County Times 2009
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Tuesday, December 1, 2009 5 Comments
Will San Francisco Review Its Uneasy Relationship With Pedicabs?

by Matthew Roth on December 1, 2009

Among the many users of San Francisco's streets, pedicabs occupy a space somewhere between a bicycle and a motorized taxi cab, though their movements are restricted far beyond other modes, in part because pedicab owners don't have the budget to lobby city leaders and don't have an obvious constituency to advocate on their behalf. This could change as new pedicab businesses move to the city and push for their right to use the roadways for their enterprise.

pedicab_photo_small.jpgSan Francisco Pedicab drivers waiting for fares near Fisherman's Wharf. Photo Lulu Vision.

San Francisco Pedicabs, the sole company operating pedal-powered liveries in the city since 1989, is about to be joined by Golden Gate Pedicabs, an offshoot of a company from Boston. Rather than resist the addition of a competitor, San Francisco Pedicabs owner Keith Saggers has been working with Golden Gate Pedicabs to negotiate the complicated permitting procedure with the SFPD, whose Chief Gascón has sole discretion over where the bicycle taxis may operate.

Saggers, whose company has a permit to do business exclusively along The Embarcadero between The Ferry Building and Fisherman's Wharf, hoped the addition of a new company and the growth of pedicabs in general would convince the city to revisit the pedicab rules, which were established in 1986 as Article 39 of the Police Code. He said the permitting procedure is a constant issue for him as his company has expanded to 15 cabs and as demand for greener transportation choices increases. His current permit limits his drivers to a route that doesn't connect to important downtown destinations like Union Square and the Moscone Convention Center. He also conceded that his drivers will occasionally take the risk of a ticket when customers request those destinations.

"Sometimes I think the routes are a stupid idea, sometimes I think they are good because they keep us off dangerous streets," said Saggers, who added that efforts to expand his permit to include a route to the Moscone Center had been met with resistance from the SFPD and the MTA at meetings of the Interdepartmental Staff Committee for Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), an interagency body that traditionally determines street closures.

According to a policy document adopted by ISCOTT in 2000 [PDF], there are a litany of reasons why new routes should not be approved, particularly in the downtown core, the logical place for pedicab business. Permits are discouraged in general for routes that include transit or heavy traffic, unless those routes have a bike lane wide enough to fit a pedicab or if the vehicle lane is wide enough to comfortably fit a vehicle and a pedicab side-by-side.

When asked whether its policy should do more to promote pedicabs in San Francisco, the SFPD Officer Samson Chan said that the issue for his agency was whether or not the proposed new route "will mess up the flow of traffic."

MTA spokesperson Kristen Holland echoed the SFPD, saying their "policy is to approach new pedicab permits cautiously.... Introduction of pedicab operations in the downtown area or on transit or arterial streets that don’t have bike lanes could impede the flow of transit and traffic."

Though the SFBC hasn't lobbied publicly for pedicabs in the recent past, the group did suggest they should be considered in the city's wider green transportation policy goals. "It seems like this is a no-brainer," said SFBC Program Director Andy Thornley. "There should be people-powered transit [in] San Francisco to serve the city's many policy goals for congestion relief, climate protection and better smelling streets."

Deputy City Attorney Tom Owen said the pedicab law on its face was similar to other permitting laws and implied that changes to it would have to come from the legislative branch of city government. "The Chief of Police has to exercise sound and reasonable discretion--he would have to assume that there is some reason to restrict the movement," said Owen about the SFPD's permitting procedure. He clarified that the moment a pedicab charges for a service, they are no longer simply bicycles with three wheels and that similar route restrictions apply to jitney service.

"There is no right to operate a business on a public street. It's a privilege."

For Saggers, the question of how much room the city will make for pedicabs was the central concern. In addition to new routes, he said the city will have to consider staging areas for the cabs, whether or not they can wait for fares on sidewalks as the do currently on Port of San Francisco property, or whether the city would eventually consider pedicab standing areas on-street, similar to those for taxis.

With the exception of Supervisor Chris Daly, said Saggers, the issue doesn't seem to be on the political radar, and until the city takes a more serious look at its policy toward pedicabs, his company and future competitors will continue to operate in a gray area.

"Officers have said they don't have the man-power to police pedicabs," said Saggers. Their advice to his drivers? "Just stay out of trouble."

Conn. family sues over fatal Wash. pedicab crash

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE -- A Connecticut family is suing a Washington pedicab company, saying faulty brakes were to blame for their father's death in a Seattle crash last year.

Peter Dzioba, a 60-year-old father of four from New Britain, Conn., was killed when the pedicab he and his wife were riding in could not stop at a red light in August 2008. The three-wheeled vehicle was coming down a hill in the Belltown neighborhood when it collided with a scooter and veered into the path of a minivan.

The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court on Monday, names Bellingham-based Cascadia Cabs as well as Ningbo Nanyang Corp., the Chinese company that manufactured the cab.

Cascadia Cabs did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Last year, its owner said the brakes were working properly and the driver should never have taken the pedicab down a steep hill.

Regulated, Inspected and Licensed
Julie Glassberg/The New York Times

Ricardo Hernandez, picking up passengers near Grand Central, started in 2000 and applied for his pedicab license this week.

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By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: November 20, 2009

New York City’s pedicab business, by most accounts, began on an East Village side street circa 1995, as a close-knit collective of tricyclists squeezed into a garage next door to the Hells Angels. Tap dancers, undertakers and striptease artists were among the first drivers.
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Julie Glassberg/The New York Times

Memet Emin Ozgan repairing pedicabs at Zenk Pedicab on West 57th Street.

From these bohemian beginnings came an unlikely pairing: green transportation and unbridled capitalism, a pollution-free way around town that, in good times, earned its proprietors upward of $1,000 a week.

But as the business grew, so did its troubles. Hundreds of new bike operators arrived, pestering tourists and testing the city’s tolerance. Pedicab owners, alarmed at lax safety standards, began a push for regulation — an effort that stretched for years, encompassing a rare mayoral veto in 2007 and a protracted court battle that ended only last spring.

Now, the upstart enterprise has officially become a profession. Citywide regulation went into effect this weekend. Under the new rules, pedicabs must be insured and inspected for safety. Headlights, seat belts and hydraulic brakes are required. Drivers must be licensed, and prices clearly displayed. Infractions will result in warnings, suspensions and, for repeat offenses, an outright ban.

“We’re going from something that was born in a dusty downtown garage, completely out of grass-roots activism, into a commercial, regulated activity,” said Peter Meitzler, who ran one of the early fleets. “12:01 Saturday, we’re in a new era.”

Regulation is a milestone for a business that has long yearned for respect, yet some owners and drivers worry that the rules could go too far. Rumors abound that the city will ban pedicabs from Midtown, hurting sales. And drivers fear overzealous police enforcement.

But many longtime pedicab workers recognize that the business has changed, and that they must change with it.

“We grow, we get older, we’re changing. Life is different,” said Igor Krugov, 24, a student who started driving a pedicab in 2005 and now rents out four. Initially attracted to the glamorous side — meeting celebrities, flying down to work the Super Bowl, giving free rides to pretty girls — Mr. Krugov now says the rules will make the business more legitimate.

“Now we are officially a part of the city,” he said the other day, pointing to an official rate card freshly affixed to a bike. (Not all of that do-it-yourself quality has been lost: the prices were printed on computer paper.) The new rules, however, could put a damper on the easygoing mentality that let out-of-work artists and amateur bike nerds get paid to do what they loved. In the off-season, some drivers spent their earnings on vacations to London, Brazil and Mexico that lasted for months.

In 2000, Ricardo Hernandez, a musician, needed $800 to pay his rent in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He answered an ad in the Village Voice seeking pedicab drivers; in his first week, he made $900. “We were like troubadours,” Mr. Hernandez recalled recently at a pedicab garage on 57th Street. “We all knew each other. You’d go back to the garage and gather and talk about your day.”

“Now there’s a lot of normal people, just average people,” he said. “Now it’s an average job. It’s lost its charm.” Mr. Hernandez registered for his license this week; he said he hoped that the new rules would make customers and police officers consider pedicabs a safer form of transit. “They’re going to have to respect us,” he said. “We’re not anonymous anymore.”

In June, a pedicab driver and two passengers were injured in a collision with a taxi at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, prompting a renewed effort by the city to regulate. Fleet owners like Cevdet Kiziltan, who owns 30 cabs, said accountability would keep reckless players out of the profession. He said he missed the days when customers were friendlier and the business looked out for its own.

As of Friday morning, the city had received applications from 303 drivers and 150 businesses, for a total of 844 individual pedicabs.

Officials said they were disappointed that many waited until the last minute. “This industry is taking a journey toward professionalizing itself,” said Jonathan Mintz, the commissioner of consumer affairs. “It’s going to be a long journey.”

George Bliss, 56, started the original garage on East Third Street; at first, he thought pedicabs would be a popular way for clubgoers to migrate crosstown on weekend nights. Nowadays, he is more ambivalent.

“Even some of my most cherished drivers didn’t care whether they had liability insurance or not,” he said disgustedly. “The attitude was, ‘Go ahead and sue me, I don’t have any assets.’ ” But he admitted to some nostalgia.

“Those are the glory days of my life,” he said. “People would just tell me: ‘I love this job. You have given me the best job of my life.’ ”

Plus, there are the health benefits.

“Pulling two Texan tourists, that’s 400 pounds you have in the back, plus the cab is 150 pounds,” Mr. Bliss said. “I had many people take that job to lose weight.”
Next Article in New York Region (3 of 15) » A version of this article appeared in print on November 21, 2009, on page A14 of the New York edition.

Clemson City Council nixes request for Pedicabs
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By Greg Oliver (Contact / Staff Bio)
November 20, 2009 - 12:00 a.m. EST

CLEMSON — Safety and convenience won out over novelty Monday night as Clemson City Council members agreed by consensus that a request for a Pedicab operation was not in the best interests of the city.

City Administrator Rick Cotton told council that since there was overwhelming opposition, the proposal did not require formal action.

Also known as bikecab, cyclo, trishaw and, more broadly, as rickshaw, Pedicabs are vehicles that are human-powered as a type of tricycle designed to carry passengers in addition to the driver and often used on a for-hire basis. Pedicabs are found in many cities, including Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, and Jason Pressley appeared before council last month to request a license to operate the service in Clemson.

During that meeting, Pressley admitted that reaction from Clemson University was lukewarm at best, and city officials also expressed concerns over the vehicle’s ability to operate in the downtown area. Cotton recommended Monday night that Pedicabs not be a part of the city, adding that Clemson “is just not a very convenient town in which to operate.”

“Clemson’s downtown is very narrow and, quite frankly, not conducive to pedicabs,” Cotton said.

Cotton listed concerns over staging areas; an unwillingness to have Pedicabs stationed on public sidewalks; concerns by Clemson Area Transit that route times could be impeded; safety issues compared to taxis, vehicles or buses; conflicts with football and other major events and nighttime visibility.

Clemson Police Chief Jimmy Dixon said his concern, from a law enforcement standpoint, is safety.

“Whoever operates this business is going to want to be in the immediate downtown area,” Dixon said.

Council members said they felt pedicabs were not a good fit for Clemson.

“Charleston is very level — we’ve got a lot of hills,” said J.C. Cook. “There, you get a history lesson while I don’t think it would be the same experience here. It would be novel at first, but I think it would wear off very fast. I honestly don’t feel it is safe enough and conducive enough to have in Clemson.”

Mayor Pro Tem Butch Trent was more to the point, saying, “I think we need to tell them to just forget it.”

Mayor Larry Abernathy said he wishes Pedicabs could have become a reality in the city, yet realizes why that would be impractical.

“It saddens me that the downside outweighs any benefits,” Abernathy said. “But while it adds to the ambiance of downtown Charleston, we’re not Charleston.

“I went downtown, walked around and still can’t figure out how it would work.”

greg@dailyjm.com | (864) 882-2375

Pedicab Operators Face Steep Fines as Registration Deadline Looms
November 18, 2009


DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — Pedicab owners in the city have until Friday to obtain a business license or face steep fines should they risk staying on the road.

The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, which is administering the licenses, said 119 companies had applied for licenses as of Tuesday, accounting for 649 pedicabs.

However, it's difficult to determine how many of the city's pedicabs could be operating illegally beyond Friday because owners may be stocking up on licenses ahead of an 18-month freeze. Each owner can register up to 30 cabs.

The Department of Consumer Affairs reported an acceleration of applicants this week, though it could not predict how many pedicabs would ultimately be licensed. Two weeks ago, 70 pedicabs had been registered, compared to more than 600 this week. The licensing office was bustling with activity on Wednesday.

The city regulated the booming industry after a string of injuries and accidents. Legislation had been in the works for more than two years, and was kick-started last June after an accident that injured a pedicab driver and its two passengers on the Williamsburg Bridge.

The Department of Consumer Affairs will not comment on the specific strategies they will use to enforce the new law, but they said they will be aggressive in their tactics. Fines will range from $200 and up for a first violation to upwards of $4,000 for a third. In some cases, authorities could immediately seize unlicensed pedicabs.

In order to be licensed, pedicab companies must pass an inspection, provide proof of insurance and make sure that all of their drivers have obtained a special driver's license from the city.

The business license costs $110, with each additional cab registration adding $60. Though no other business licenses will be issued until the spring of 2011, drivers may register for a license at any time at a cost of $35.

A lack of regulation has made it difficult to determine the exact number of pedicabs in Manhattan. The number is estimated at around 700 to over 1,000 depending on the source.
Heather Grossmann

By Heather Grossmann, DNAinfo.com
Follow Heather on Twitter @hgrossmann

Read more: http://dnainfo.com/20091118/manhattan/pedicab-operators-face-steep-fines-as-registration-deadline-looms#ixzz0XJ3UJwJm

Licensing Deadline Looms for Pedicab Owners
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Nicholas IacovinoSarah Maslin Nir for The New York Times Nicholas Iacovino, a 26-year-old pedicab driver, plans to get out of the business.

Get licensed or get out, is the message from the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs to the city’s pedicab professionals, who have until Friday to obtain business licenses and register their vehicles or else close up shop. The Nov. 20 deadline marks the end of a 60-day period in which the city invited pedicab operators to apply to become licensed, a process that entails submitting their rickshaws to a rigorous inspection, and retrofitting them with things like seat belts and turn signals to bring them up to new safety standards outlined in the law.

“Friday is an end and a beginning; it’s the end of a very, very long process in which the pedicab has been seeking regulation,” said Chad Marlow, a spokesman for the New York City Pedicab Owners’ Association, a group of about 70 rickshaw business owners who have pushed for the new rules. They include pedicab licenses for drivers who were unlicensed.

The city’s commissioner of consumer affairs, Jonathan B. Mintz, said in an interview that the move toward licensing would address concerns expressed over years about safety.

“There has been a significant concern, including from those in the industry, that an unregulated and rapidly growing industry posed some concerns to public safety,” he said. Though the city law setting the licensing requirements was adopted by the City Council two years ago, business owners sued because they were unsatisfied with certain points. A final compromise version went into effect two months ago.

After Friday, no business licenses will be issued for 18 months, after which point, the city will reassess its decision. There is no deadline for applying for a pedicab driver’s license — those will continue to be issued.

Although pedicabs entered the city’s streetscape around the mid-1990s, they became prevalent — some would say too prevalent — only about five years ago. At first, the human-powered carts had no oversight except by voluntary groups founded by those in the business, like the owners’ association.

In the industry’s early days, regulation wasn’t necessary because the small number of operators held one another accountable, said the association’s president Gregg Zukowski, who owns 22 pedicabs he rents out to drivers from his company, Revolution Rickshaws.

After Sept. 11, 2001, according to Mr. Zukowski, when pedicabs gained national attention and positive P.R. by ferrying people to cordoned-off areas downtown, the number of drivers and vehicles boomed. Industry estimates put the number now at more than 1,000. “The industry is taking its next steps into a more responsible era,” Mr. Zukowski said, “It got very big and unwieldy and it needed a little help from the city to get it into a more accountable sort of arena.”

One sticking point in the new licensing program is that it is heavily favored toward those who already own pedicabs. The licenses are limited to businesses with a fleet of no more than 30 cabs, and permit only the registration of existing cabs.

After the Friday deadline, owners may purchase registered cabs from one another, but there will be a cap on the total number of pedicabs. The pedicab businesses themselves can be sold, but only with the department’s permission.

As of Monday afternoon, 100 pedicab operations had applied for the necessary business licenses — which are awarded only if the company has insurance and its vehicles are deemed to be up-to-speed — with a total of 519 pedicabs.

But only 240 people have applied for the pedicab-driver licenses, despite what Mr. Mintz said was a rigorous long-term outreach program to make people aware of the deadline. (It is possible that some have not applied for the driver licenses because the Friday deadline is not as firm for them as it is for owners.)

Mr. Mintz speculated that some drivers were not prepared to meet the rigorous new requirements, because of financial and other reasons. “Our sense is that there are hundreds of operators out there right now who are not willing to make an investment, or not able to make an investment in insurance or retrofitting,” he said. “The process of professionalizing the industry will weed several out.”

One of those who may be weeded out is Nicholas Iacovino, 26, a pedicab driver for the past four years who says he makes $1,500 to $2,000 per week giving tourists rides through Central Park and other parts of the city. He said he had no plans to seek a license. “I think it is going fine the way it is now,” he said. “If I am doing something wrong, write me a ticket. Why do I need a license?”

The newly created pedicab licenses will be issued only to people who already have driver’s licenses. Because Mr. Iacovino, a native of the Lower East Side who has never had a driver’s license, owes $2,338 to the city in unpaid tickets from when he was a bicycle messenger (he says he didn’t believe traffic rules like pausing at red lights should have applied to those on bikes) he has been unable to get a driver’s license because he can’t afford to pay the fines.

“Strictly speaking, you don’t need a driver’s license to ride a bike,” said Mr. Zukowski, the president of the owners’ association, but “as a baseline, it’s a good way to make sure people are on the record, and insure that they know the rules of the road.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a large number of pedicab drivers are foreign, largely working illegally in the city, drawn to a job where it’s possible to make a living under the radar by paying just $20 to $50 to rent a rickshaw for the day. “We know that happens,” said Mr. Zukowski, who says he has rented his bikes to people from around the world. He says he pushed initially for drivers to be required to have a driver’s license issued in the United States.

“Immigration status is not a factor in getting either a business or a driver’s license,” said Mr. Mintz. “When we look at whether somebody is fit to get a pedicab license, we don’t ask what their immigration status is.”

Yet, some attribute the low application turnout to fear of discovery by some drivers and rickshaw owners who are working illegally. Mr. Iacovino, the pedicab driver, said that many of his colleagues say, “Why would I put my immigration status at risk just to ride a bike?”

“There’s a lot of guys in my situation,” said Mr. Iacovino. “They just say, ‘Hey you know what? We can’t do anything.’”

Friday, he said, will be his last day as a pedicab driver.