The escalating tussle over rights of way on Boston’s streets and sidewalks came to a head last Sunday (July 14) when a dispute between a motorist and riders on mopeds resulted in a fatal shooting. The victim was the motorist, a 35-year-old Boston man identified by police as Andy Báez Manan, a native of the Dominican Republic known to the local community as Yusepi Báez. The shooting took place around 10:17 pm on New Washington Street in Jamaica Plain, at a traffic signal near Forest Hills Station.

According to a Dominican news feed on Facebook, Báez was riding with family members and a friend when their way was blocked by two “pasoleros,” the word often used for riders on mopeds (“pasolas”). After repeatedly honking the horn and getting out of his car, Báez was reportedly shot and killed by one of the riders.

Tense encounters between motorists and groups of riders have been happening in Boston for years, but the incident near Forest Hills Station follows a much wider surge in micro-mobility – anything from electric scooters to e-bikes, electric unicycles, and mopeds, the main vehicles used in food delivery trips that have dramatically increased following the pandemic.

Though micro-mobility has been encouraged by Mayor Wu’s administration as an alternative to motor vehicles, the trend has also made travel space more contested, posing new challenges for regulation and enforcement.

Five days before the shooting, the problem was taken up at a hearing by the City Council’s Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation that is chaired by Sharon Durkan. She requested the hearing in February, after complaints from her constituents in District 8 (Back Bay, Fenway, Beacon Hill, Mission Hill).

“In every neighborhood of our city, we have heard from our constituents and even personally witnessed deliverers using all types of vehicles flout basic traffic laws and the rules of the road. This hectic transportation environment has been especially dangerous for pedestrians,” Durkan said at the start of the hearing.

“Over the past 18 months, a new issue has emerged,” the committee heard from Wu’s chief of Streets, Jascha Franklin-Hodge. “We’ve seen rapid growth in two wheeled vehicles for food delivery, mostly small motorcycles or mopeds. While these vehicles take up less space on our roads and are often preferable to delivery by car, they are often unregistered and frequently operated unsafely. We have seen delivery motorcycles run red lights, drive on sidewalks and bike paths, go the wrong ways down one-way streets, fail to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, and we have heard from constituents about near misses and crashes, including some hit-and-runs.”

Franklin-Hodge put some of blame for hazardous driving on food delivery companies, whose drivers are incentivized to speed up trips, often while looking at smart phones to get directions from a navigation app. Though state law requires that mopeds be registered, he noted that the delivery vehicles being used were not always the ones specified by drivers, nor was every driver the person whose name was on the delivery account.

“Our goal is not to punish a workforce that is trying to scratch out an income in the gig economy,” he said, “but we believe that individual responsibility is essential if we are going to have safe and functional streets.”

At the same hearing, representatives from Uber Eats and DoorDash discussed their safeguards and background checks for drivers, as well as insurance coverage. Franklin Hodge said the overall response by companies to the city’s outreach had been disappointing.

“It is clear that the companies operate largely on the honor system when it comes to public safety,” he said. “They do not verify that their drivers are operating legally registered and insured vehicles. While they do verify a driver’s license if a delivery worker says they’re operating a motor vehicle, they don’t take adequate steps to prevent someone from skipping the license check by claiming to be delivering by bike, but actually operating a motorcycle.”

He also mentioned that the city wanted to discuss regulation of mopeds with officials from the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles.

In days just before and after the hearing, Boston Police reported confiscating 53 mopeds and other kinds of bikes. The actions took place in the Back Bay, Area B3 (Mattapan/Dorchester), and downtown Boston. Many of the vehicles were seized for not having been registered, but some were taken for being operated in pedestrian zones, especially near Downtown Crossing.

At the hearing, Deputy Supt. Dan Humphreys told councillors that the goal for the Boston Police was voluntary compliance. “If the officer observes a traffic offense and they want to stop that vehicle, they would stop that vehicle,” he explained. “I will add, [about] enforcement of traffic offenses relative to the operation of scooters, we have seen a high number of people refuse to stop and they don’t stop. We are not going to have the officers pursue that individual for a traffic offense.”

Under current law, pedal-powered bikes and electric scooters are allowed on Boston’s sidewalks, but not e-bikes. While mopeds are allowed in bike lanes on city streets, they are not allowed on bike paths through parkland, such as those along the Charles River or in the Southwest Corridor. In comments at the hearing, current laws were also described as confusing and in need of updates. In addition, as Durkan observed, regulation has to be compatible with infrastructure.

“It is incredibly important that we link those two things, because safety and space on our streets, the limited nature of the space on our streets, calls for us to figure out how to best provide for safety for all,” she said. “And getting scooters and bikes off of our sidewalks is the most important thing we can do.”

One of the councillor’s constituents, Back Bay resident Ali Foley, blamed recently installed bus and bike lanes on Boylston Street for making travel space more cramped, resulting in “a really hostile situation” with double-parking and clusters of mopeds.

Franklin-Hodge said the mayor’s goal was to group different modes of travel according to speed range. In an interview after the hearing, Stacy Thompson, the executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance, suggested a goal of separated spaces, without biking on sidewalks.

“If you can go faster than 20 miles an hour, it’s not safe to be in shared spaces with people walking and biking,” she said. “And that is true of cars, that is true of trucks, and that’s true of mopeds. And so we have a really tricky situation where we have some electric bikes and some mopeds that can go very fast, and they are small enough to scoot into these spaces that are designed for people to move much more slowly, and that’s where the danger occurs.”

In testimony at the hearing, and in other reactions, the changes in transportation were described as generating a chronic state of fear among pedestrians—whether those with limited ability to observe fast movements and make way, or others reporting near-misses.

“No one should be driving on a public street in a vehicle which is not registered and not insured,” former city councillor Larry DiCara said in public testimony. “And yet they do every day of the week. You see them. I’ve seen them a couple of times. They’ve almost run me over.”

A week after the hearing, Bill Walczak, the president of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association, reported, “I have twice experienced upward of 40-50 bikes and similar vehicles intentionally crossing through Edward Everett Square without regard to traffic lights, seemingly intent on creating a chaotic situation. I don’t know how often this happens but, luckily, all other traffic stopped to let the youthful riders through. It may not be a serious issue, but I found it to be scary.” 

Last Sunday, Roxbury activist Jamarhl Crawford aired his safety concerns in a live feed on Facebook while he was driving a truck. “These moped riders or scooter riders, whatever they are, they are really wilding,” he complained. “I thought the original crackdown was just about the kids doing wheelies all in the middle of the street. But no,no,no,no. It’s a whole other level to it – like these food delivery people and all this. And I don’t know how many scooters are out there because, let me tell you, it’s hundreds.”

Even five years ago, the independent Dominican news outlet Periódico El Día posted a YouTube video showing moped drivers zipping through tight spaces between motor vehicles in New York City, a feat labeled, in the clip’s title, as “calibrando” (calibrating).

Less than two hours after the shooting of Yusepi Báez, a report about it on Universal Hub drew an anonymous comment describing the location of the incident as “motorbike central 24/7.” More concerns were aired at a “virtual town hall” organized by City Councillor at-Large Julia Mejia, with her colleagues and other leaders from Boston’s Dominican community.

During the virtual meeting, District 2 (South Boston, South End, Chinatown) Councillor Ed Flynn said, “Boston cannot continue to be the Wild West,” adding, “we need to do more enforcement of all traffic laws, provide residents with a safe environment, a healthy environment. And we’re not doing that right now. We need to be strict, but also we do have to ensure that all people know the rules of the road.”

Mejia and community activist Elizabeth Amador said moped drivers needed to be educated by people within their community. “It’s really important for us to understand that the work cannot be led by the city,” Mejia said. “The work has to be led by community people who know these young people. All the city is responsible for is creating the resources so these things can happen.”

A moped driver, Luis Felipe, noted that some drivers felt they were targeted by police without being aware they were violating any laws. And he argued for one more kind of infrastructure: a safe, legal place with ample room for recreational moped use that’s not too far away from Boston’s neighborhoods.
Another meeting participant was a bicyclist recovering from a shoulder injury that resulted from a collision with a high-speed electric scooter.
“I think part of the problem,” he said, “is that the bike lanes and the bus lanes have narrowed the streets to such a degree that in some cases – and it’s not every street, but in many of the streets – it’s actually made riding a bicycle much, much more dangerous. And, in fairness to the moped riders, they don’t want to be in the street in those narrow areas, so they come into the bike lanes and they make it that much more dangerous for cyclists.”

In a later interview, Thompson acknowledged that even a road leading to safe, inclusive mobility can, for stretches, be paved with turbulence.
“What’s good for the city is to welcome lots of people and lots of mobility options, so I think that being patient and also recognizing that bad infrastructure can inform bad behavior and the work that the city is doing to make our streets look different is designed to make people behave in more safe ways,” she said. “It might be literally and figuratively bumpy right now, because it’s confusing and different, but we’re using data and evidence to design streets in a way that will hopefully make everyone operate more safely.”

But, during the “town hall,” the death of Yusepi Báez was observed with appeals to support a GoFundMe campaign to help with funeral expenses. The loss was also addressed as a source of trauma, compounded by fears of what could happen on the road, as well as the risks of speaking out.

In a chat comment posted with the meeting, a mother of three reported “a scary encounter with two teens that speak perfect English at a gas station in West Roxbury.” In another post, she said, “My daughter is scare(d) to walk from work in Dorchester due to the recent armed robberies, teens using moped carrying weapons.”

Fear of robberies prompted a chat post in Spanish that called for a ban on ski masks being worn by moped riders—a common sight even during the summertime. Another participant commented, in Spanish, “Zero excuses. Already too much. Sunday it was my buddy. Tomorrow it can be one of us.”