{"id":1025103,"date":"2026-08-26T11:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T11:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1025103\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T11:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T11:16:08","slug":"nyc-council-speaker-menin-restarts-debate-over-age-verification-for-citi-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1025103\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Council Speaker Menin restarts debate over age verification for Citi Bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three months after the Mamdani administration asked Lyft to stand down on plans to implement facial-recognition age-verification<\/a> technology for Citi Bike rentals \u2014 and a month before the City Council is due to debate a raft of proposed e-bike safety bills \u2014 Council Speaker Julie Menin is asking the city\u2019s transportation department to restart age verification talks with the rideshare giant.<\/p>\n

\u201cProtecting privacy and protecting our children should not be mutually exclusive,\u201d Menin wrote in a letter sent Monday to Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn, whose department contracts with Lyft to run the bike-share system.<\/p>\n

As first reported by the Daily News, the Mamdani administration asked Lyft to stop developing an age verification system requested by the mayor\u2019s predecessor, citing fears that the system could not properly secure personally identifying information.<\/p>\n

Citi Bike was examining using biometric screening \u2014 using photos or videos of prospective riders\u2019 faces \u2014 to verify if they were old enough to ride, sources told The News at the time.<\/p>\n

The minimum age for Citi Bike rentals is 16.<\/p>\n

But city officials had expressed concern over facial recognition\u2019s tendency toward misidentifying the age of younger users, and the documented potential for racial bias in facial recognition software, sources said.<\/p>\n

In her Monday letter, Menin sought a middle road.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe there is an opportunity to find a path forward that protects New Yorkers\u2019 privacy while also preventing children from accessing e-bikes they are not legally permitted to ride,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Menin noted that cities like Tokyo, London and Washington D.C. have age-verification systems in place, and suggested that the city explore \u201ctechnology that captures a live photo to verify a rider\u2019s age\u201d \u2014 though it was not immediately clear how such a system would differ from the one already rejected by City Hall.<\/p>\n

The Department of Transportation declined to comment on whether conversations with Lyft regarding age verification were ongoing, and referred further questions to City Hall.<\/p>\n

The council speaker\u2019s letter comes ahead of a hearing scheduled for late September, at which the City Council is expected to hear testimony<\/a> on more than a dozen different pieces of legislation regarding e-bikes and other small electric vehicles.<\/p>\n

The push comes in the wake of several fatal e-vehicle crashes involving illegal, high-speed devices.<\/p>\n

As previously reported by The News, electronic Citi Bikes are limited to a top speed of 15 mph<\/a> in accordance with the city-wide e-bike speed limit. Pedal powered Citi Bikes will still go as fast as you can turn the cranks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three months after the Mamdani administration asked Lyft to stand down on plans to implement facial-recognition age-verification technology…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1025104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1370,728,405,403,5294,5296,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,522,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1025103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-transportation","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117161530877584666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}