This last week, the Austin Chronicle published a story about a recent sharp uptick in citations to pedicabbers downtown for various seemingly minor infractions such as cuing up outside of the “designated areas.”

Since regulations on pedicabs have come along in an organic fashion and can be wildly different from each company depending on how their authority was written, it has lead to some pedicabbers crying foul over what they see is unequal treatment by APD. The story quotes APD saying that in the past they tended to not really enforce the limits of each company’s authority, but now that pedicabs are ubiquitous, it’s time to reign everyone in. Seems like some uniform regulation like that of motorized taxi drivers is needed here.

In response, Dirtnail Pedicabs (recipients of many of the citations) have put together this online petition calling for the following legislation from the Austin City Council:

1. Bikes everywhere: Allow pedicabs and all other pedal-powered vehicles to operate in every area of Austin with speed limits up to 35 mph, within areas barricaded to cars, and on all roadways up to special events.
2. Stop as yield: Allow bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs.
3. Red as stop: Allow bicycles to treat red lights as stop signs.
4. 3-foot passing enforcement: Require Austin Police to enforce and file monthly reports on the 3-foot passing ordinance, which requires motorized vehicles to give bikes at least 3 feet of room when passing.

Kudos to the pedicabbers for organizing to give us more rights, but there are more than a few problems with this petition. I sympathize with points 2 and 3 which are essentially the Idaho stop law I’ve called for elsewhere. Unfortunately, that is outside of the jurisdiction of the City and would require changing the state traffic code.

Other folks have warned that point 1 could be used to exclude cyclists from roads not included. It doesn’t really do that as it would take a separate action to make prohibitions, but I’d prefer they left it at “allow bikes everywhere.” No reason to qualify the statement.

Finally, point 4 is already the law. APD is required to enforce all of the City ordinances including the 3 foot passing ordinance. Citation numbers are public record and anyone can request this from APD. We may not think that this ordinance is enforced enough, but that is an issue that needs to be resolved with APD, not by enacting again what was already enacted.

Pedicabs are a great, green way to transport people around the urban core. Their origins like many great things are grassroots. While this petition may not get it there, it’s time to get some uniform standards to put them on an even level with other passenger transport.