c/o NYC DOT
The Upper West Side could soon get a pair of city-run cabinets where delivery workers trade dead e-bike batteries for fully charged ones — part of a citywide effort to pull risky lithium-ion charging out of apartments and onto the sidewalk.
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At Community Board 7’s Transportation Committee meeting on June 9, a Department of Transportation team walked through where the agency is considering installing them in the neighborhood. One of the two proposed locations did most of the talking for itself.DOT has floated two candidate sites in the district: one at West 106th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and one at West 94th Street and Columbus Avenue. Neither is final. But the 94th Street spot — proposed for the sidewalk directly in front of a residential building, with a preschool nearby — drew the bulk of the room’s pushback, with committee members and neighbors questioning whether that stretch of pavement is the right place for it.
The cabinets are the centerpiece of DOT’s Public E-Bike Charging program. A rider scans a QR code with their phone, drops in a depleted battery, and pulls out a charged one in under a minute — no waiting around for a charge, and, the agency says, no lingering crowds. The batteries inside are certified to national safety standards, and the cabinets are built to contain a fire if one starts inside.
That safety pitch is the whole point. Since 2022, uncertified and low-quality lithium-ion batteries have been linked to more than 900 fires and over 30 deaths across the city, according to NYC DOT, many of them traced to people charging spare batteries at home. The agency is planning roughly 25 cabinets citywide, paid for with a $3 million state grant, after a 2024 pilot that DOT says delivery workers liked enough that many stopped charging indoors altogether.
What it won’t do, several attendees pointed out, is cost the delivery apps anything. By one committee member’s math, the state is putting up about $125,000 per cabinet and the city is supplying the sidewalk, while the workers themselves would pay a monthly membership fee — running around $70 at the private battery-swap sites already operating in the city — to a vendor DOT plans to select through a request for proposals later this year. The apps that dispatch those workers, multiple speakers noted with frustration, are slated to pay nothing. DOT said it is separately pressing the companies, and working with the City Council, to share delivery data and shoulder more responsibility.
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The bigger fight in the room was over the sidewalk itself. With trash containers, Citi Bike docks, bus shelters, and scaffolding already competing for space, several speakers urged DOT to put the cabinets in the roadbed rather than the pedestrian path, or to fold them into existing Citi Bike stations that have already cleared the siting process. DOT said it had considered the roadbed but is wary of exposing the cabinets to traffic, and is still working through clearances with the FDNY.For now, nothing is locked in. DOT makes the final call on locations, but residents can weigh in through NYC DOT’s online feedback portal, which closes July 31. The agency expects to finalize its citywide list by the end of the year, begin construction in early 2027, and switch the cabinets on in 2028.
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