Best Electric Bike NYC: All 262 Neighborhoods

Quick Answer: The best electric bike NYC riders can buy is decided by two lines drawn before terrain enters it: a motor of less than 750 watts and a 15 mph street cap. We measured all 262 City Planning neighborhoods: 117 flat, 40 gentle, 23 hilly and 17 steep of the 197 residential. Eight bikes on our shelf clear every screen.

Below, every one of the 262 neighborhoods is listed with its measured grade, the share of its street blocks that climb, its distance to a protected lane, and the bike to start from.

For most of the flat city that bike is the Eunorau META24 1.0, and the rest of the page says when it is not. Verified against the Department of City Planning, NYC DOT, the Vehicle and Traffic Law and each manufacturer's published specification on September 12, 2026.

262 neighborhoods measured · 8 picks at 15 mph · 8 bikes clear every screen, of 195 screened against Vehicle and Traffic Law § 102-c · 117 flat · 40 gentle · 23 hilly · 17 steep · 99,309 street blocks measured · 1,090 miles of bikeway counted · 15 mph cap · verified September 12, 2026

If you already know your block is flat and your building has a stair, the Eunorau META24 1.0 at $1,699 is where most of the 117 flat neighborhoods should start. The full range is one click further, and most of it sits outside New York's line, so read the rated wattage on anything you open there. If you do not know your block, find it in the table first.

How we verified this guide

Every number on this page was computed here, from a named public dataset, on the date given.

Neighborhoods. The 262 figure is the NYC Department of City Planning's own count for its 2020 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas layer, version 26b, which the Department describes as "medium-sized statistical geographies" that "roughly correspond with many neighborhoods commonly recognized by New Yorkers" while "not intended to definitively represent neighborhoods." The dataset's own count endpoint returned 262 on September 12, 2026.

Sixty-five of the 262 are not residential: 40 parks, 14 cemeteries, 2 airports, Rikers Island, and 8 other special areas such as the Navy Yard and the United Nations. City Planning codes each one by type. They stay in the count and are labeled in the table, and every band figure quoted below is for the 197 residential areas unless it says otherwise.

Grade. Elevation comes from the SRTM GL1 one-arc-second tiles that cover the five boroughs, at roughly 30 m spacing, and slope is computed from central differences across the raster.

SRTM is a surface model, so it sits on top of buildings and canopy. Before measuring slope we recover approximate bare earth with a morphological opening, which removes any raised structure narrower than about 140 m while leaving every real hillside intact.

The correction is not cosmetic in a city of apartment blocks. On the raw surface, Woodside in Queens reads 23.3% of its area over a 6% grade and West Farms in the Bronx 28.8%; on bare earth they read 9.1% and 5.8%. Those were rooftops.

Bikeways. Mileage comes from NYC DOT's own New York City Bike Routes dataset, all 29,695 records retrieved on September 12, 2026: 24,461 marked Current and 5,234 marked Retired. NYC DOT publishes no length field, so centerline miles are computed from each segment's geometry. Retired records are excluded from every total, and 60 current records that trace identical ground were collapsed to one.

That leaves 1,090.0 current centerline miles citywide, of which 1,082.8 fall inside the 262 boundaries. The four classes are NYC DOT's own, quoted from its data dictionary in the network section.

Blocks. Every street in the city comes from the city's own Street Centerline file, all 122,269 records retrieved on September 12, 2026. Its data dictionary defines a physical ID as "a unique ID assigned to intersection to intersection stretches of a street," which is a block, and that is the unit measured: 99,309 constructed street blocks, each read against the bare-earth elevation at both ends, each assigned to its neighborhood.

Bridges and step streets are counted separately; highways, ramps, tunnels and paper streets are set aside.

A block shorter than 60 m is counted but never ranked, because the elevation model is 30 m across.

Bikes. All 198 listings active in our catalog on September 11, 2026 were screened against New York's definition of a bicycle with electric assist at Vehicle and Traffic Law § 102-c, after two e-scooters and an accessory kit in the same table were set aside: 195 screened, 10 within, 166 outside, 19 not determinable from our own listing.

Every decisive specification behind a pick was then read at the manufacturer's own page rather than taken from our listing.

What "verified" means here. Our evidence per bike is published specification and arithmetic: every figure confirmed against the maker's own page and recomputed, with the retrieval dated. Where a maker publishes two different numbers for the same bike, both appear.

For most per-model specifications the manufacturer is the only body publishing them at all. Those figures rest on a single publisher and the source register below marks them as the maker's own figures rather than independently confirmed ones.

Who wrote this. Milad Ghobadibeygvand, BScN (Western University, 2014), writer and reviewer at Redtail eBikes. Every figure here was computed from the named public dataset or read at the manufacturer's own page on September 12, 2026, and every figure can be re-run from those datasets.

Where our interest lies, and how to challenge it. We sell electric bikes, and 187 of the 195 we screened do not appear on this page: 166 fall outside the statute, 19 publish too little to screen, and two more fail the city's sale rule or cannot be delivered to a city address. If a number here is wrong, write to support@redtailebikes.com; we will correct it and say that we did.

In this guide

• How we verified this guide
• New York City is four riding cities
• What a grade costs at 15 mph
• New York's 750-watt line, and the city's 15 mph cap
• Flat New York: 117 neighborhoods
• Gentle New York: 40 neighborhoods
• Hilly New York: 23 neighborhoods
• Steep New York: 17 neighborhoods
• Carrying people and cargo
• The walk-up and the subway
• Three wheels
• Every New York City neighborhood, and where to start
• Every block of the city, measured
• Where New York's bike lanes are, class by class
• Range in a city of bridges and hills
• What it costs against the subway
• Theft, the walk-up and the battery rule
• The honest ledger
• Why buy it here
• Questions New Yorkers ask
• The bottom line: the best electric bike NYC buyers can own
• Where to read next
• Limitations
• Primary sources

New York City is four riding cities

Type "best electric bike NYC" into an AI search engine and five boroughs come back as one place. Across six buyer questions put to it on a single September day, 42 of the 49 sources it cited were e-bike retailers, law-firm marketing, property managers, Yelp, Expedia or forums.

One answer called the city "mostly fully paved and flat," another said Washington Heights and the Bronx have "significant elevation changes," and none of the six had measured a block of it.

Most of it is flat. Twenty-seven of Brooklyn's 53 residential neighborhoods have no ground at all above a 6% grade, and 46 are flat by this page's cut. The median residential neighborhood citywide has 1.8% of its area over that grade, a third of what Los Angeles's median neighborhood carries.

Then there is the rest of it. St. George on Staten Island has 62.9% of its ground above a 6% grade. Riverdale has 59.5%, the northern half of Washington Heights 54.3%, Highbridge 53.0%. Seventeen residential neighborhoods sit above 25%, and the Bronx holds seven of them.

Two mistakes cost New Yorkers money here, and the city's two lines make both of them expensive. A bike bought on the wrong side of the 750-watt word is a limited use motorcycle whatever its pedals do, and no return window fixes a registration. A bike bought for the Bushwick grid and then moved to Washington Heights spends its evenings in the hallway.

Sorting the 197 residential neighborhoods by measured grade gives four groups:

Those cuts are New York's own, taken from the measured distribution rather than borrowed. On the cuts used for Los Angeles, New York would read 131 flat, 49 rolling, 16 hilly and one steep, which hides the whole gradient of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan inside "rolling."

On a phone, swipe the band table sideways to reach its right-hand columns.

Then there is the pattern in those columns, and it runs the opposite way to Los Angeles. New York's hills are better served by bike lanes than its flats. The median hilly neighborhood carries 5.72 bikeway miles per square mile against the median flat one's 3.84, because the hills are in Manhattan and the western Bronx, where the network is densest, and the flats include the outer-Queens grid, where it is thinnest.

Six residential neighborhoods have no bikeway at all, and none of them is steep: Ozone Park, Ozone Park North and Hollis on the flat Queens grid, College Point and Arden Heights in the gentle band, Jamaica Estates in the hilly one. South Ozone Park sits 1.68 miles from the nearest protected lane, further than any other residential neighborhood in the city, and the five furthest are all flat.

The block layer says the same thing more sharply. Of 74,240 street blocks long enough to rank, 1,074 climb 6% or more end to end, 1.45% of them, and 406 of those are on Staten Island, 331 in the Bronx, 200 in Queens, 115 in Manhattan and 22 in Brooklyn. In 103 of the 197 residential neighborhoods no ranked block reaches 6%.

In this city your hill usually comes with a protected lane and your flat outer grid usually comes with paint, or nothing. If you live in Highbridge you are choosing a motor; if you live in Ozone Park you are choosing how much traffic you will share a lane with. The table below tells you which purchase you are making.

What a grade costs at 15 mph

The torque advice a New York buyer finds online runs "between 60 and 90 Nm" for a hilly city and "80 Nm or more" for steep climbs, with no grade attached to it and no mention of the two numbers that decide what a New York bike may do: a motor rated under 750 W, and a street cap of 15 mph.

Torque alone answers nothing, because the wheel only cares about power once a speed is fixed.

In New York City the speed is fixed for you. NYC DOT's own page states it in one sentence: "The speed limit for e-bike, e-scooter, and pedal assist bicycle riders in New York City is 15MPH." The question worth asking is therefore what it costs to hold 15 mph on a grade, and on which grade a legal motor stops managing it.

Holding a speed on a hill costs a definite number of watts:

Power = the gravity term (m·g·v·sin θ) + the rolling term (C_rr·m·g·v·cos θ) + the air term (½·ρ·C_d·A·v³).

Gravity, rolling resistance, and air. Take a 180 lb rider on a 68 lb bike, the published weight of a mid-pool city bike, 248 lb all in, a rolling-resistance coefficient of 0.008, a frontal area of 0.55 m², sea-level air, and 80% efficiency from battery to wheel. A "500 W" e-bike is rated on electrical input rather than output, so that last step is the one most advice skips.

Read the 15 mph column, because that is the speed the city lets you ride at. On the level it costs 198 W, and on a 2% grade 384 W. By 6% it costs 753 W, which is more than any bicycle under New York's definition may be rated for.

The same arithmetic gives the speed a legal bike actually holds on each grade, for the 500 W rating every bike in the qualifying pool publishes, and for a bike rated at the 749 W ceiling:

Those figures hold across the whole plausible input range. Varying rolling resistance from 0.006 to 0.012 and frontal area from 0.45 to 0.65 m² moves the 6%-at-15-mph figure between 712 W and 813 W, and every combination stays above the 749 W ceiling.

Load changes it faster than anything. At 320 lb all in, a rider with a child and a week of groceries, holding 15 mph costs 220 W on the level, 697 W on a 4% grade and 934 W on a 6% one. A loaded cargo bike on a Bronx hill works harder than an unloaded one on Todt Hill.

What torque buys you. Watts decide the speed a bike can hold on a grade; torque decides whether it pulls away from the light at the bottom of one. A New York ride is mostly the second thing, because the city puts a light or a stop sign on nearly every block.

A hub motor is geared once, at the wheel, so a long climb slows the motor along with the bike. A mid-drive drives the chain instead, and the rider's gears let it keep its own speed while the wheel loses hers.

None of the eight bikes on this page is a mid-drive, so every pick here is a hub motor, and the section on steep neighborhoods says plainly what that means on a sustained climb.

New York's 750-watt line, and the city's 15 mph cap

New York defines a bicycle with electric assist at Vehicle and Traffic Law § 102-c as "a bicycle which is no more than thirty-six inches wide and has an electric motor of less than seven hundred fifty watts, equipped with operable pedals," in one of three classes.

Class 1 assists only while pedaling and stops at 20 mph. Class 2 "may be used exclusively to propel such bicycle" and stops at 20 mph. Class 3 is a throttle class to 25 mph, and the definition itself confines it to "a city having a population of one million or more."

The width, the wattage, the pedals and the class speed are the four limbs, and a machine that fails any one of them is a different vehicle in New York. If it is a limited use motorcycle under § 121-b, it needs registration and a plate, and since chapter 198 of 2024, signed July 11, 2024, a dealer registers it at the time of sale under § 2261(6).

The wattage word is the trap, and it is the reverse of California's. New York says "less than seven hundred fifty watts." A bike rated at exactly 750 W is outside the definition here and inside it in Los Angeles. On our own shelf, 67 of the 195 bikes screened publish exactly 750 W, and every one of them is outside the definition on that word alone.

The second trap is the speed. The industry's three-class model runs Class 3 to 28 mph. New York's Class 3 stops at 25 mph, so a machine labeled "Class 3, 28 mph" fits no New York class at all, in the city or out of it. Ninety-nine bikes on our shelf publish a top assisted speed of 28 mph or more, and all 99 are outside the definition.

Applied to all 195, the screen leaves 10 within the statute on the figures our listings publish: every one rated at 500 W with a 20 mph top speed. The failures overlap: 99 on speed, 89 above 750 W, 67 at exactly 750 W, 16 without pedals, 4 on published width, and 4 all-wheel-drive machines whose two motors together exceed the line on our reading of "an electric motor", which no New York decision located has tested.

Nineteen more could not be screened because our own listing publishes no top speed or no rating for them.

Sitting outside the motor-vehicle definition also puts your bike outside the mandatory auto-insurance regime. That is our reading of § 125, not a line the section writes.

The rider's own rules, from § 1242. "No person less than sixteen years of age shall operate a bicycle with electric assist." A bicycle with electric assist "may only be operated on highways with a posted speed limit of thirty miles per hour or less." "No bicycle with electric assist shall be operated on a sidewalk, except as may be authorized by a local law or ordinance."

And since June 1, 2022, § 1242(11) has required a manufacturer's label showing "the class, maximum motor-assisted speed, and motor wattage." That label carries the three facts this whole page turns on. Read it before you read anything else. Ride without one and § 1242(11)(b) makes it a civil fine of up to $50, which the court waives on proof a label was fitted before your court date.

Then the city adds its own layer. Since October 24, 2025, NYC DOT's rule at 34 RCNY §§ 4-01 and 4-06 caps e-bikes, e-scooters and pedal-assist commercial bicycles at 15 mph on every city street.

According to NYC DOT's chart, read September 12, 2026, all three classes may use bike lanes, park drives and greenways; vehicle lanes only where the posted limit is 30 mph or less; bridges "only in bike lanes"; and a helmet is required on a Class 3 and "Recommended (Yes, if working)" on a Class 1 or 2.

The chart's safety tips open with "Stay off the sidewalk." Since March 27, 2026, a low-level traffic offense on a city street draws the civil summons a driver gets, a ticket rather than a criminal charge, under the Mayor's office announcement of March 18, 2026.

Park drives and greenways are open to e-bikes under an NYC Parks pilot that runs "from June 20, 2023 through December 31, 2026." The Parks page says what a greenway and a park drive are and maps them; it also says no other motorized vehicle is allowed in a city park.

And the city regulates what may be sold to you. Under Local Law 39 of 2023, codified at Administrative Code § 20-610, a business may only sell, lease or rent powered bicycles certified to UL 2849 by an accredited testing laboratory, with batteries certified to UL 2271, and for an online sale the certification or the laboratory's logo, mark or name must appear on the product page.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection's inspection checklist sets that out.

Since October 9, 2024, General Business Law § 495-a extends the battery rule statewide, requiring certification "for compliance with a battery standard referenced in UL 2849, UL 2271 or EN 15194."

A seller who breaks it faces "a civil penalty of not more than five hundred dollars" for a first violation and up to one thousand dollars for a repeat within two years, each battery a separate violation, so the mark on your battery is one a seller has a reason to get right.

That certification is the second test every bike below has passed, and it is why the list is short. A bike appears below only if its maker publishes a UL certification for it, and the card quotes the maker's line so you can look for the mark on the machine.

After the statute, the city's sale rule and one maker's delivery policy, our shelf offers New York eight bikes, all from Eunorau, at $1,399 to $1,699 on two wheels and $2,499 on three. There is no budget-to-luxury ladder to offer you inside those numbers, so each section below carries the bike that fits the ride and says what it cannot offer.

For everything else the state and its 1,527 municipalities say, read our New York e-bike laws page, which read all 78 local rules at their source.

Flat New York: 117 neighborhoods

Who this is for: you live on the grid. Most of Brooklyn, western and southern Queens, the Manhattan grid from the Battery through Midtown with Hell's Kitchen the exception, the Pelham Parkway corridor of the Bronx. You can ride a mile in any direction without meeting a real hill, and under 3% of the ground around you tilts past a 6% grade.

This is 117 of the 197 residential neighborhoods, 59% of them, and it holds most of the people who will read this page. Bushwick, Astoria, Jackson Heights, Flushing, the Lower East Side, the East Village, Park Slope, the Rockaways, Pelham Parkway and Midtown all qualify. Park Slope, for all its name, has no ground at all above a 6% grade.

On your grid the motor stops mattering. The arithmetic above puts a 500 W bike at the 15 mph cap on the level and on a 2% rise with power in hand, so on a flat Brooklyn avenue the sign limits you before the bike does.

What takes over is the building. Weight, because a flat neighborhood in this city puts the bike up a stair far more often than into a garage. Certification, because the building you live in may ask for it before you charge indoors, and the city requires it before anyone may sell it to you.

And the lane, because flat New York is where the network is thinnest: three of the six neighborhoods with no bikeway at all are here, and so are the five furthest from a protected one.

Flat New York also holds the densest network in the city. Greenwich Village carries 18.84 bikeway miles per square mile, the West Village 17.79 and Chinatown 17.01, the three highest figures of any residential neighborhood, and Carroll Gardens through Red Hook carries more total miles, 20.2, than any other residential neighborhood.

The two picks here are one platform in two sizes, and the maker's own rider-height ranges decide between them.

The lightest pick — flat New York

The pick for taller riders — flat New York

The cheapest bike in the pool, the META275 1.0 at $1,399, sits in the hilly section because it is also the strongest. On flat ground it costs you 7 lb and 2 Ah of battery against the META24, and if the $300 matters more than those, start there.

Gentle New York: 40 neighborhoods

Who this is for: you live where Queens and the Bronx start to tilt. Between 3% and 10% of the ground around you sits above a 6% grade, and a hill here is one block long, then the avenue levels out again.

This is the band Los Angeles would call flat and New York cannot afford to. Queens holds 17 of the 40: Woodside, Sunnyside, Elmhurst, Maspeth, Forest Hills, Rego Park. The Bronx holds 11, Manhattan 5 including Yorkville and Lincoln Square, Brooklyn 4 including Bay Ridge, and Staten Island 3. On an unpowered bike you feel each of those blocks; on a powered one you notice how often the road asks for a restart.

Gentle New York is also, on the measurements, the best-served part of the city for its terrain: a median 4.76 bikeway miles per square mile and a median 0.26 miles to the nearest protected lane, closer than the flat neighborhoods manage.

What matters to you here is the restart on a slight rise and the wheel under a cracked outer-borough avenue, in that order.

The grade table puts a 4% grade at 569 W to hold 15 mph, which is past what a 500 W bike sustains, so on the steeper blocks here you will ride at 13 or 14 mph and not notice the difference. What you will notice is how the bike responds when the road tips up, which is a wheel-and-sensor question before it is a motor one.

The outer-borough pick — gentle New York

The suspension pick — gentle and hilly New York

Hilly New York: 23 neighborhoods

Who this is for: from 10% up to 25% of your neighborhood sits above a 6% grade, and 2.8% of its street blocks, the median for this band, climb 6% or more. Getting home means climbing something most days.

The Bronx holds nine of these: Norwood, Fordham Heights, Mount Hope, Concourse, Tremont, Kingsbridge and Marble Hill among them. Queens has five, including Jamaica Estates, Kew Gardens and Bayside; Manhattan three, Inwood and the two central and northern Upper West Side areas; Brooklyn three, including central Sunset Park; Staten Island three, including Tottenville. The Grand Concourse rises gently for miles; the streets off it rise quickly for a block, and it is your block that decides your bike.

The grade table now sets the pace. A 500 W bike holds 8.8 mph on an 8% grade, and a bike rated at the statute's ceiling holds 12.5, so on the steeper blocks in this band every legal bike is riding under the cap. What separates the picks is the pull from a standing start on that grade.

The consolation is the road. The median hilly neighborhood carries 5.72 bikeway miles per square mile, the highest of the four bands, and sits a median 0.25 miles from a protected lane. In the Bronx that is the Grand Concourse and the greenways along the Harlem River; in Upper Manhattan it is the Hudson River Greenway.

The pick here publishes 65 N·m at the manufacturer, the highest figure any two-wheeler inside New York's definition on our shelf carries, a figure only the heavier G30-CARGO 2.0 matches. There is one card in this band and no ladder above it: the next step up would be a mid-drive, and no mid-drive on our shelf publishes figures inside the statute.

The torque pick — hilly and steep New York

Steep New York: 17 neighborhoods

Who this is for: more than a quarter of your neighborhood sits above a 6% grade. In four of these, more than half does.

Nine of the city's twelve steepest street blocks are on Staten Island and the other three are in Washington Heights; Brooklyn has 22 steep blocks in the whole borough and none of them makes the list.

St. George-New Brighton at 62.9%, Riverdale-Spuyten Duyvil at 59.5%, Washington Heights North at 54.3%, Highbridge at 53.0%, University Heights South and Morris Heights at 49.4%, Kingsbridge Heights at 46.5%, Manhattanville and West Harlem at 46.4%, Grymes Hill and Silver Lake on Staten Island at 45.4%, Morningside Heights at 44.8%, Todt Hill at 43.1%, Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill at 39.5%.

Relief turns those percentages into feet: Todt Hill spans 327 vertical feet between its low and high ground, Grymes Hill 307, Douglaston 213, Washington Heights North 198.

The steepest ranked block in the city is Centre Avenue in West New Brighton at 21.6%, and the steepest in Manhattan is West 183rd Street at 18.2%; every neighborhood's own steepest street is in the table, and the block layer is explained below it.

Up here a climb lasts minutes, and the way your bike is geared decides how those minutes feel for you.

On a 15% pitch a 500 W bike holds 5.1 mph and a bike rated at the statute's ceiling holds 7.6, which on West 183rd Street is a fast walk.

Every pick here is a hub motor, so the answer for the steepest blocks is the one with the most torque the statute leaves us, ridden at a walking pace on the worst of it.

The lane, at least, is usually there. The median steep neighborhood carries 5.02 bikeway miles per square mile and sits 0.31 miles from a protected one; Washington Heights and Morningside Heights sit beside the Hudson River Greenway, Highbridge beside the Harlem River greenway and the High Bridge itself.

Up here the statute's ceiling, and not the city's network, is what a rider runs into.

The steepest street in each of these neighborhoods is named in the every-block section below, with the grade a rider meets on it.

Carrying people and cargo

Who this is for: the school run, the bodega run, the laundromat with a week's washing on the deck. Terrain matters less here than load, because a child seat weighs the same in Bay Ridge and in Highbridge and the grade table charges for every pound.

The grade table assumed 248 lb all in. Put your child and a week of your shopping on the deck and you are near 320 lb, and the gravity term charges you for every one of those pounds.

At that weight the 15 mph cap is out of reach on any 4% rise for a 500 W motor, so a loaded cargo bike on a gentle Queens block is working harder than an empty commuter on Todt Hill.

New York adds a limb here that no other state writes. A cargo build stays a bicycle only inside 36 inches of width, so a wide box or a twin rear seat can take a machine out of the definition without touching its motor.

The cargo pick

The walk-up and the subway

Who this is for: the bike has to live indoors, go up a stair, or share an elevator with your neighbors.

If you rent a walk-up, your deciding specification is your door, your four flights and your closet. A bike that lives inside is one that is neither stolen nor charged in a corridor, and getting it inside is a folded-size and weight question before it is a motor one.

The fire rules and the lock come later in this page; they matter, and they are not what stops a Bushwick or Inwood renter from buying. The fold and the weight are.

Of the eight bikes on this page, one two-wheeler folds and one trike folds; the trike is in the next section.

The folding pick — the walk-up and the subway

Three wheels

Who this is for: a rider who wants to stop at a light without a foot down, or who stopped riding two wheels and would like to ride again.

Three wheels take balance out of the ride, and on a New York avenue with a light every block that is most of the ride. The grade stays, and 500 W moving three wheels and two baskets is slower up it than 500 W moving two, so this pick belongs to the flat and gentle neighborhoods that make up four fifths of the city.

New York narrows the trike shelf twice. The 36-inch width limb reaches trikes first, and four trikes we carry publish widths over 36 inches and sit outside on that alone. One maker of trikes we carry also does not deliver to New York City under its published restriction, so its machines cannot reach you here however the statute reads them.

The three-wheel pick

Every New York City neighborhood, and where to start

Every one of the 262 neighborhoods City Planning publishes is listed below with its borough, its measured grade, the share of its street blocks that climb 6% or more, its steepest street, its relief, its current bikeway mileage, how much of that is protected, how far it sits from a protected lane, and the bike to start from. Find yours and read across; the starting bike is the first pick for that terrain band.

One table per borough, alphabetical inside it; the 65 non-residential areas are labeled by type and carry a terrain word but are not counted in the 117, 40, 23 and 17.

A park or cemetery can read Steep on its ground and have flat streets, because the terrain word measures the land and the street columns measure the roads. On a phone the tables scroll sideways: the bike to start from is the second column, and the rest follow to the right. The columns are defined under the tables.

Jump to a borough: Manhattan · Bronx · Brooklyn · Queens · Staten Island

Manhattan: 32 residential neighborhoods

Back to the borough list

Bronx: 37 residential neighborhoods

Back to the borough list

Brooklyn: 53 residential neighborhoods

Back to the borough list

Queens: 59 residential neighborhoods

Back to the borough list

Staten Island: 16 residential neighborhoods

Back to the borough list

Ground over 6% is the share of that neighborhood's land above a 6% grade. Blocks over 6% is the share of its street blocks of 60 m or more that climb 6% or more from one end to the other, with the count of such blocks.

Steepest street is the block that climbs hardest, of any length, with its grade; a short steep block can appear here and not in the count, which uses blocks of 60 m or more. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers, and the terrain word is set from the unrounded figure, so two rows printing the same percentage can sit in different bands.

Bikeway is current NYC DOT centerline mileage inside the boundary, with retired records excluded. Protected is the mileage NYC DOT classes as having "some form of protection or separation from motor vehicle traffic." Nearest protected lane is the straight-line distance from the neighborhood's center to the closest such facility; streets run longer, and a bridge approach longer again.

Every block of the city, measured

A neighborhood's ground is not its streets: a hillside no road climbs counts toward the first figure and not the second. So every block of the five boroughs, all 99,309 constructed street blocks, was measured on its own, end to end, from the city's own centerline file, and the result is smaller and sharper than the ground figures suggest.

Of the 74,240 blocks long enough to rank, 1,074 climb 6% or more, which is 1.45% of the ranked blocks, and 153 climb 10% or more. The median block grade is 0.65%. New York is a flat city with steep corners, and the corners are where the table says they are.

The first table is the borough count, the second the twelve neighborhoods with the largest share of steep blocks, the third the twelve steepest ranked blocks in the city; a street that appears twice in the third is two different blocks of it, corner to corner. On a phone the wider tables scroll sideways.

Staten Island holds nine of those twelve and Washington Heights the other three; the steepest block in Brooklyn is Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights at 15.5%, one of only 22 in the borough over 6%.

The city also keeps 245 constructed step streets, staircases the centerline file carries as streets: 115 of them in the Bronx, 22 in Highbridge alone. A step street is the city's own admission that a block was too steep to pave for wheels, and the neighborhoods with the most of them are the ones at the top of the second table.

Bridges are measured for the count and not for the grade. The elevation model reads the ground, and under a bridge deck the ground is a river or a valley, so the number it returns for the High Bridge or the Verrazzano is the drop beneath the span rather than the climb across it. The approach to every East River bridge is a real hill; how steep is a question this method cannot answer honestly, and so it does not.

Where New York's bike lanes are, class by class

New York City has 1,090 current centerline miles of bikeway, and 445.9 of those miles put something physical between a rider and a moving car. NYC DOT publishes every facility it maintains as a record with a class, and the classes tell a New Yorker more than the green lines on the bike map do.

The four classes inside that figure are NYC DOT's own, defined in the dataset's data dictionary:

Two of every five miles are protected by NYC DOT's own definition. In Los Angeles, by LADOT's definition of separated riding, the figure is 15.2%. The two cities do not define the term identically, so the comparison is between each city's own count of itself rather than a single ruler, but the gap is large enough to survive the difference.

Inside the 1,090 miles, 277.0 are greenway alignments and 245.6 sit off the street entirely, at sidewalk grade or on a path through a park or over a bridge. The file carries a Class I facility on the Brooklyn Bridge, whose two-way protected lane opened in September 2021 on a repurposed traffic lane, and on the Queensboro, Pulaski, Kosciuszko, RFK, Henry Hudson, Washington, Goethals and Bayonne bridges among others.

That distribution is why the neighborhood table lists distance to a protected lane as its own column. In Greenwich Village you are 0.1 miles from one. In South Ozone Park you are 1.68 miles from one, and the ground in between is flat, painted, and busy.

Range in a city of bridges and hills

A maker's range figure is measured on flat ground at low assist under a light rider. Most of New York can supply the flat ground. The 17 steep neighborhoods cannot, and every East River crossing puts a bridge approach into a route that the table calls flat.

The grade table turns that into a rule. Riding on the level at 12 mph costs 123 W; the same speed up a 6% grade costs 567 W, four and a half times as much. In the Bronx a battery is spent on the climbing in a route long before it is spent on the miles.

Compare two commutes to City Hall from this page's own table. Far Rockaway sits 15.3 miles out straight-line with none of its area over a 6% grade; Washington Heights North sits 10.6 miles out with 54.3%. The Rockaway rider covers half again the distance and spends nearly all of it at the 123 W end of the table; the Heights rider spends the last mile home at the 567 W end.

Three rules decide the pack you need.

1. Read the maker's figure against your own row in the table. In a flat neighborhood it will be close to what you get. In the steep 17, plan on a good deal less.
2. Tick the second battery for the grade rather than the mileage. Most bikes in the qualifying pool take an optional second pack, and in this city it pays for itself on Fordham Road rather than on the Rockaway boardwalk.
3. Count the bridges. A round trip across the Manhattan Bridge is two climbs, and a hill neighborhood puts its climb at the end of the day, on the emptier battery.

What it costs against the subway

The comparison a New Yorker reaches for is the $132 monthly MetroCard, and that product is gone. The MTA's 2026 fare materials, read September 12, 2026, retire the 30-Day Unlimited MetroCard, raise the base fare to $3.00, and make the rolling 7-day OMNY fare cap of $35.00 permanent, all "on or about January 4, 2026."

So the honest comparison is the cap. A rider who hits it every week pays at most $35 × 52, which is $1,820 a year. Every two-wheeler on this page costs less than that.

What can be said precisely on the other side is the electricity. Every bike here charges from a domestic outlet, and a 48 V 15 Ah pack holds 720 Wh. At New York's average residential price of 29.49 cents per kilowatt-hour, the Energy Information Administration's June 2026 figure, a full charge of that pack costs about 21 cents.

Whether the bike replaces the subway or the walk, whether you keep OMNY for rainy weeks, and what your building charges for storage are facts about you, and any annual saving figure that skips them is a guess dressed as a number.

What is not a guess is the part we control. Free shipping to New York on every bike on this page, US-based support and warranty handling, and Shop Pay instalments at checkout.

Theft, the walk-up and the battery rule

Your lock advice is the same as anyone's. What differs here is that your building and the fire code have already decided most of the question before you buy the lock.

The fire numbers, from the department that fights them. FDNY's January 8, 2025 release reads: "In 2024, 277 fires were started by lithium-ion battery fires, compared to 268 in 2023." Deaths fell from 18 to 6. The department inspected 585 e-bike shops that year.

NYC DOT's own e-bike page tells you what to do about it: use a battery and charger carrying "a reputable testing agency mark such as UL," never charge overnight or unattended, and never block your way out of the room.

Certification, because it decides whether you are allowed to charge it inside and whether anyone may sell it to you. Every bike on this page is one whose maker publishes a UL certification, and each card quotes the maker's line; Eunorau's own statement of March 5, 2023 says all of its e-bikes have passed UL 2849 testing and its batteries UL 2271 testing.

If your building has written a charging rule, the line to look for on the machine is UL 2849 for the bike and UL 2271 for the battery, which is what the city's sale law names.

If you live in public housing, the rule is already written. NYCHA's Electric Micromobility Policy, effective March 1, 2024, makes it "a violation of your lease to keep or charge" any e-bike "that cannot be operated legally on New York City streets," which is the screen this page runs.

Inside that rule, the policy's charging limits are these, each quoted from it:

Weight, because it decides whether the bike comes inside at all. The two-wheelers on this page run from 61.7 lb to 78 lb by their makers' figures. A bike that takes two people to lift ends up in the shared hallway, which is where bikes are taken from and where the fire code does not want it.

For a walk-up with no elevator, a folding frame plus a removable battery is the combination that works, which is what The walk-up and the subway is built around. If you work in an office, the city's Bicycle Access to Office Buildings Law lets a tenant require the building to admit bicycles by elevator; it applies to commercial office buildings, not to your apartment.

The honest ledger

This page measures the city and checks every bike we sell against New York's law before it recommends anything to you, which makes it narrow on purpose. The second column is where it is the wrong page for you.

Why buy it here

Free shipping to New York on every bike on this page. US-based support and warranty handling, so a claim is filed here rather than overseas. Prices at or below the maker's own current US price. Shop Pay instalments at checkout.

And the part that costs us something: a catalog screened against New York's own statute and the city's own sale law before anything was recommended, which is why 187 of the 195 bikes we screened are not on this page. If your block is flat and your stair is long, the lightest pick here does everything the strongest one does on that block, and we would rather sell you that one.

Nothing here needs deciding today. How buying works sets out the return window, the warranty and the claim process in plain language, and the ordering path from checkout to your door.

New York is flat where other cities are not. For the opposite extreme, the guide to the best electric bikes for San Francisco measures the steepest large city in the country, where no legal e-bike holds 20 mph up a hill. For the other eleven cities graded the same way, the best cities for electric bikes hub ranks all thirteen on the median block, the wind and the statute.

Questions New Yorkers ask

Are electric bikes legal in NYC?

Yes. New York treats a bicycle with electric assist as a bicycle under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 102-c so long as it is no more than 36 inches wide, has "an electric motor of less than seven hundred fifty watts," has operable pedals, and stops assisting at its class speed. Inside the five boroughs all three classes are lawful, and every one of them is capped at 15 mph on a city street.

Why do people say e-bikes are banned in New York?

They are legal now, statewide. The class definitions on the Senate's text of § 102-c took effect on April 17, 2020, and the word survives in two real forms today.

It survives in two real forms: Nassau County's police have enforced a ban on Class 2 and Class 3 machines on county roads since March 2026, which the county Legislature's release datelined March 27, 2026 describes, and a machine over the wattage or speed line is not an e-bike anywhere in the state. Our New York laws page walks both.

Do you need a license for an electric bike in New York?

No. § 125 excludes a bicycle with electric assist from the definition of a motor vehicle, so no driver's license, registration, plate or insurance is required. NYC DOT's chart confirms it for all three classes and adds the one condition: the rider must be 16.

What are the speed limits for e-bikes in New York City?

Fifteen miles per hour on every city street, for every class, since October 24, 2025, under 34 RCNY §§ 4-01 and 4-06. The class speeds in the statute, 20 mph for Class 1 and 2 and 25 mph for Class 3, describe what the bike may be built to do, not what you may do on a Manhattan avenue.

Is a 750W e-bike legal in New York?

No. § 102-c requires "an electric motor of less than seven hundred fifty watts," and 750 is not less than 750. A bike labeled 749 W is inside; a bike labeled 750 W is a limited use motorcycle candidate. On our own shelf 67 bikes publish exactly 750 W, and none of them appears on this page.

Is a 28 mph e-bike legal in New York?

No, anywhere in the state. New York's Class 3 stops at 25 mph and exists only in a city of a million or more; there is no class that assists to 28. A "Class 3, 28 mph" label from another state's model fits no New York class, and 99 bikes on our shelf are outside on that number alone.

What about an unlockable e-bike?

It is an open question, and this page states it both ways. Class 2 under § 102-c is a motor "that is not capable of providing assistance when such bicycle reaches a speed of twenty miles per hour." Read one way, that looks at the bike as sold and labelled; read the other, at what it can be set to do, and no New York decision resolving it has been located.

This page reads the label § 1242(11) requires and the mode the maker ships, and tells you to leave the bike in it. A rider who unlocks one is riding a machine its label no longer describes.

Can e-bikes handle hills?

Yes, at a pace the grade sets. On the 6% grade this guide sorts the city on, a 500 W bike holds 10.8 mph; on a 10% grade, 7.3 mph; on a 15% pitch, 5.1 mph. The grade table gives every step, and for the hill bands the META275 1.0 is the pick, at 65 N·m.

Can you bike on the Brooklyn Bridge?

Yes. NYC DOT's own Brooklyn Bridge page records that "In September 2021, a two-way protected bike lane opened along the Brooklyn Bridge, repurposing one lane of vehicular traffic." NYC DOT's chart allows all three e-bike classes on bridges "only in bike lanes," and the 15 mph cap applies on the bridge as on the street.

Are e-bikes allowed in NYC apartments?

No law bars one, and no law obliges your landlord to admit one; the building's own rules decide, and a building that has written a rule usually asks for a UL mark.

The city's sale law requires UL 2849 on the bike and UL 2271 on the battery, so a bike bought lawfully in the city already carries the marks a building is likely to ask for. FDNY asks that you never charge it overnight, unattended, or between you and the door.

Do I need to wear a helmet when riding an electric bike in New York City?

On a Class 3, yes, at every age: § 1238(5-c) reads "No person shall ride upon, propel or otherwise operate a class three bicycle with electric assist unless such person is wearing a helmet." On a Class 1 or Class 2, NYC DOT's chart reads "Recommended (Yes, if working)", in its own words. Under 14, a helmet is required on any bicycle statewide under the same section.

Where can I ride electric bikes in New York City?

Bike lanes, park drives and greenways for all three classes; vehicle lanes on streets posted at 30 mph or less; bridges in their bike lanes. Sidewalks are off limits under § 1242(5)(a) unless a local law opens them, and the city's does not. The park drives and greenways are open under an NYC Parks pilot that runs through December 31, 2026. The neighborhood table tells you how far your own front door is from a protected lane.

Is biking safe in NYC?

This page does not carry the city's crash figures, so it cannot answer that with a number. What it carries is the city's own answer to the question, which is separation: 445.9 of the 1,090 bikeway miles have some form of protection from motor traffic by NYC DOT's definition, and the table's "nearest protected lane" column tells you how far your own front door is from one.

What is the best electric bike for commuting in New York?

For most of the flat city, the Eunorau META24 1.0 at $1,699: a Class 2 rated at 500 W with a published 20 mph top speed, a maker-published UL certification, and 61.7 lb to carry up the stair. In the 40 hilly and steep neighborhoods it is the META275 1.0, and the table says which you are in.

Why are folding e-bikes ideal for NYC?

Because the storage problem is architectural. A folding frame goes through a hallway door, into a closet and onto a train, and a bike that lives inside is one that is neither stolen nor charged in a corridor. The trade is weight: the Eunorau META20 1.0 folds to about 105 × 78 × 56 cm and weighs 63 lb by its maker's figure, and it still has to get up the stair.

Is there a good e-bike under $1,000 in NYC?

Not on our shelf, inside New York's definition. The cheapest bike that clears every limb of § 102-c its maker publishes, and carries a maker's UL line, is the META275 1.0 at $1,399.

Six bikes under $1,000 in our catalog publish a 500 W rating: three publish a top assisted speed that fits no New York class, and for the other three neither our listing nor the maker's page publishes one, so we cannot tell you whether they are bicycles here.

The bottom line: the best electric bike NYC buyers can own

Read the label first: class, top assisted speed, wattage. Then find your neighborhood in the table. Those two things about this purchase cannot be changed, and together they decide everything else.

If you are in flat New York, which is 117 of the 197 residential neighborhoods, buy for weight and certification rather than power: the Eunorau META24 1.0 at $1,699 is where most flat-city riders should start, and the META26 is the same bike for a taller rider.

If your streets are gentle and long, the META275 2.0 at $1,699 takes the second battery; if they are gentle and broken, the Defender at $1,599 has the suspension.

If you live on a hill, in the Bronx, Upper Manhattan or Staten Island's North Shore, buy the torque: the Eunorau META275 1.0 at $1,399 publishes 65 N·m, the most of any two-wheeler the statute calls a bicycle on our shelf, and it is the bike for every one of the 40 hilly and steep neighborhoods.

For the school run the G30-CARGO 2.0 at $1,699 carries 440 lb; for the walk-up the META20 at $1,699 folds; for three wheels the NEW-TRIKE 2.0 at $2,499 is the one that can be delivered here.

Then buy the lock and the lights to go with it, and read your building's rule before the bike arrives. In this city the bike that gets ridden is the one that gets inside, and the return window in how buying works runs from the day it does.

Where to read next

The law by municipality, the shops that carry stock in the five boroughs, and how to read a specification sheet are each their own page.

• New York e-bike laws, all 1,527 municipalities counted and 78 local rules read
• eBike shops in NYC, verified stores in the five boroughs
• Best folding electric bikes, if the stair decides it
• Best cargo electric bikes, if the load matters more than the hill
• Best commuter electric bikes, the national commuter guide
• Electric bike buying guide, how to read a specification sheet
• Best eBikes for Los Angeles, the same method on the other coast
• Best electric bikes for Denver, the same method a mile up, where the statute draws its line at 750 W inclusive rather than below it

Limitations: twelve things this page cannot tell you

Here is where this page stops, and what would age it. The largest are that it recommends from a small pool because the statute leaves a small pool, that it measures neighborhoods rather than streets, and that it carries no population figure.

1. The 262 are City Planning's 2020 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas, not neighborhoods as any New Yorker names them. City Planning says so itself. Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil share a row; Washington Heights has two. The names in the table are the Department's.
2. The pool is small because the law is, and it is one brand. New York's "less than 750 watts" and 25 mph Class 3 leave 10 of the 195 bikes we screened inside the definition; one of those cannot be delivered to the five boroughs under its maker's policy and one has no published UL certification, which the city requires for sale. The eight that remain are all Eunorau. The page recommends from that pool and does not widen the line to reach a second brand or a price ladder.
3. The block grades are end to end on a 30 m elevation model. A block shorter than 60 m is counted but never ranked, so 25,069 of the 99,309 blocks carry a grade the page does not rank; a block that climbs and then falls reads flatter than its steepest pitch; and a bridge's grade is the ground beneath its deck, so bridges are counted and never graded. The ground figures and the block figures are two different measurements of the same neighborhood, and the table prints both.
4. The elevation source is a 30 m surface model. Bare earth is recovered by morphological opening, which is an approximation. It performs well on the controls we checked, and dense Midtown still reads higher than its ground warrants because a block of towers is wider than the filter window.
5. Bikeway mileage is computed from geometry, because NYC DOT publishes no length field. Centerline miles, so a two-way lane on one street counts once. NYC DOT's own lane-mile figures are a different measure and are not interchangeable with these.
6. A segment carrying two classes is counted at its highest, which is NYC DOT's own convention for the class field; 757 of 24,401 current segments carry more than one class.
7. Distances in the table are straight-line from a neighborhood's center. Street distance is longer, and in the hills considerably longer.
8. Population is not measured here. The NTA layer is built to carry Census data, but this page carries no Census join, so it cannot tell you how many New Yorkers live on steep ground.
9. The labels for the 65 non-residential areas rest on City Planning's published legend as rendered by a search engine, because the metadata PDF's text could not be extracted directly; the legend was then checked against the dataset itself: every type-9 row is a named park, every type-7 row a named cemetery, both type-8 rows are airports, and the one type-5 row is Rikers Island.
10. No search-volume figure appears anywhere on this page. The questions it answers are the ones New Yorkers were observed typing into search and asking AI assistants on September 12, 2026; a question of yours that is missing here was not observed that day, and you can send it to us.
11. Specifications are the manufacturers' published figures, verified against each maker's own page and recomputed here. Where the maker publishes "UL certified" without a standard number, that is what the card says. Eunorau publishes neither a weight nor an overall width for the NEW-TRIKE 2.0; the width is the limb New York's definition reaches trikes with, and it is confirmed on a measured unit before that bike ships to a five-borough address.
12. When this page expires. Re-check it on any of these named events: NYC DOT republishes the bike-route file; the city republishes the Street Centerline; City Planning issues a new NTA version; the Legislature amends § 102-c or § 1242; NYC DOT amends 34 RCNY § 4-06; the NYC Parks pilot ends or is made permanent after December 31, 2026; the MTA changes the fare cap; any pick leaves the catalog or changes price; or a manufacturer revises a published specification quoted above. Absent any of those, the terrain and bikeway measurements age slowly and the prices age fastest.

Primary sources

1. NYC Department of City Planning, 2020 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs), version 26b, on NYC Open Data (dataset 9nt8-h7nd). Feature count 262, retrieved September 12, 2026. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/2020-Neighborhood-Tabulation-Areas-NTAs-/9nt8-h7nd
2. NYC Department of Transportation, New York City Bike Routes, on NYC Open Data (dataset mzxg-pwib), with its data dictionary. 29,695 records retrieved September 12, 2026. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/dataset/New-York-City-Bike-Routes/mzxg-pwib
3. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 102-c, definition of a bicycle with electric assist and the three classes. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/102-C
4. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1242, operation of bicycles with electric assist: age, sidewalks, highways, Class 3, the label. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1242
5. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 125, definition of a motor vehicle and the exclusion for bicycles with electric assist. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/125
6. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 121-b, definition of a limited use motorcycle. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/121-B
7. General Business Law § 495-a, lithium-ion battery certification for sale. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GBS/495-A
8. NYC DOT, Speed Limits for E-Bikes, E-Scooters, and Pedal-Assist Commercial Bicycles, 34 RCNY §§ 4-01 and 4-06, effective October 24, 2025. https://rules.cityofnewyork.us/rule/speed-limits-for-e-bikes-e-scooters-and-pedal-assist-commercial-bicycles/
9. NYC DOT, Electric Bicycles & More, the class chart, read September 12, 2026. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml
10. NYC Parks, Electric Micromobility Pilot, June 20, 2023 through December 31, 2026. https://www.nycgovparks.org/things-to-do/e-bikes
11. NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Inspection Checklist: Micromobility Devices and Batteries, Administrative Code § 20-610. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/businesses/DCWP-Inspection-Checklist-Micromobility-Devices-And-Batteries.pdf
12. FDNY, Commissioner Tucker Announces Significant Progress in the Battle Against Lithium-Ion Battery Fires, January 8, 2025. https://www.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/03-25/fdny-commissioner-robert-s-tucker-significant-progress-the-battle-against-lithium-ion
13. NYC DOT, Brooklyn Bridge, infrastructure page recording the September 2021 two-way protected bike lane. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/brooklyn-bridge.shtml
14. NYC DOT, Bikes in Buildings, the Bicycle Access to Office Buildings Law. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikesinbuildings.shtml
15. Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 2026 Fare Change Materials. https://www.mta.info/document/186881
16. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, average residential price by state, June 2026, released August 26, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
17. NASA/USGS SRTM GL1 one-arc-second global elevation, tiles N40W074 and N40W075, from the public terrain-tile registry. https://registry.opendata.aws/terrain-tiles/
18. NYC Department of City Planning, GeoSearch, the geocode for 260 Broadway used as the City Hall reference point, September 12, 2026. https://geosearch.planninglabs.nyc/
19. Eunorau published specifications for the META24 1.0, META26 1.0, META275 1.0, META275 2.0, META20 1.0, DEFENDER, G30-CARGO 2.0 and NEW-TRIKE 2.0, read September 12, 2026, and its statement of March 5, 2023 on UL 2849 and UL 2271 testing. https://eunorau-ebike.com
20. NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, Centerline (NYC Street Centerline), on NYC Open Data (dataset inkn-q76z), with its data dictionary. 122,269 records retrieved September 12, 2026. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/dataset/Centerline/inkn-q76z
21. U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Gazetteer Files, Places, New York: land area of New York city, 300.483 square miles, used to confirm the 262 areas tile the city. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2025_Gazetteer/2025_gaz_place_36.txt
22. NYC DOT, Manhattan Bridge, infrastructure page: the cover's place, its bikeway and its 1909 completion. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/manhattan-bridge.shtml
23. New York State Department of State, Local Laws Database: the full-text search behind the count of 78 municipal e-bike rules carried from our New York laws page. https://dos.ny.gov/local-law-search
24. Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, Mayor Mamdani Announces End to Criminal Enforcement for Minor Traffic Offenses by Cyclists and E-Bike Riders, March 18, 2026. nyc.gov, Office of the Mayor, news, March 2026
25. New York City Housing Authority, Electric Micromobility Policy, effective March 1, 2024. https://www.nyc.gov/site/nycha/residents/micromobility.page
26. New York State Senate, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1238, subdivision 5-c (helmet on a class three bicycle with electric assist), current through September 12, 2026. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1238
27. Nassau County Legislature, CivicAlert release datelined March 27, 2026, describing the county police enforcement against Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes. https://www.nassaucountyny.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=13486

Source register

Every source above by tier: T1 is the body with authority over the fact publishing it itself, T2 a manufacturer's own specification or our own dated computation from a T1 input. No T3 or lower source is cited on this page.

First-party datasets and computations

These were produced for this page from the public sources listed above, each on the date shown, and each can be re-run.

• NYC neighborhood terrain: bare-earth slope and relief for all 262 NTAs, from SRTM GL1. Method and thresholds are described in this page's four cities section.
• NYC neighborhood bikeways: current NYC DOT centerline mileage per NTA by class, retired records excluded and identical geometry collapsed, in this page's bikeways section.
• NYC block grades: end-to-end grade of every constructed street block in the city's Street Centerline file, with per-neighborhood shares and the steepest street, in this page's every block section.
• Grade-power model at the 15 mph cap: the watts a climb costs and the speed a 500 W and a 749 W bike sustain, with every input stated, in this page's grade math section.
• New York legality census: all 195 bikes screened against § 102-c on every published limb, in this page's the 750 watt line section; the picks are linked from their cards above.
• NYC neighborhood profiles: the join of terrain, bikeways and the two distances for all 262 areas, in this page's every neighborhood section.
• Fare and charging arithmetic: the weekly cap and the cost of a charge from the MTA and EIA figures, in this page's cost section.

Image credit: cover photography generated with Nano Banana Pro on Playcut and composited in-house. Per-bike photography is each manufacturer's own product imagery, published on our listings.