Whether we like it or not, it seems clear that the summer of 2019 in New York City will be the summer of Revel. After a discreet 10-month pilot program with 68 bikes in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, the Brooklyn-based startup suddenly unleashed 1,000 shiny new mopeds between Astoria and Sunset Park at the end of May, and now the app-activated Vespa-style scooters are everywhere, outstripping any new pop song or summer fashion in ubiquity.
It happened without any advertising. People noticed the bikes and hopped on.
Whether they become a permanent feature of cityscape remains to be seen, but for the next couple months, their novelty alone will likely sustain public interest. When I read that Revel had leased a 10,000-square-foot operations facility in Red Hook, I sent the company an email with a few questions, and they invited me to visit them in person to learn more.
The Red Hook location employs about 40 workers on Bowne Street. It’s where Revel performs maintenance on the bikes. But warehouse is still under construction, so their representative asked me to come to the company’s office in a coworking space in Gowanus instead.
What I wanted to know was what Revel was really for. Joyriding? Commuting? Running errands? Journeys across the city or outings within the neighborhood?
“It’s a little bit of all of those things,” General Manager Lauren Vriens explained. “At the core of it, it’s just another great way for New Yorkers to get around. We’re not necessarily trying to replace public transit or buses or anything along those lines, or even Lyft or Uber; we’re just another option.”
She continued, “That said, these are electric mopeds, and we’re very cognizant of that and think that’s important because it doesn’t contribute to local pollution levels. They’re smaller, so they don’t contribute as much to congestion. We like to view them as a transportation method that can seamlessly integrate into the city’s infrastructure because they park on the street but also take up very little space for parking.”
According to Vriens, Revel can be useful for “last-mile” transportation – the distance between the subway station and the destination – or for full trips. A customer survey showed that they most often replace carshare rides by Uber or Lyft.
Here’s how it works: you download the app, submit a photo of your drivers license and a corresponding selfie, and after a fast $19 background check for DUIs or excessive speeding tickets, you find the nearest bike on the interactive map, unlock it (or, if it’s a bit of a walk, reserve it for up to 15 minutes first), and start your ride for $1. After one free minute, intended for you to retrieve one of the two helmets from the hatch in back, each minute costs $0.25, unless you pause the ride, in which case the rate drops to $0.10.
You can’t cross any major bridges or tunnels or use highways, but otherwise you can go anywhere within the battery’s range as long as you ultimately return to the Revel coverage zone. At the end of the ride, you can park the moped (perpendicular to the sidewalk, with the rear wheel to the curb) in any on-street parking spot that could be used for cars, as long as it’s valid for the next 24 hours.
The bikes look like Vespas, but the Revel website describes them as mopeds (despite their lack of pedals), partly because that’s how the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles officially classifies them, and partly because avoiding the term “scooter” distinguishes them from electric kick-scooters like Lime’s or Bird’s. At the Revel office, however, employees refer to the bikes simply as “Revels” and even use the proper noun as a verb (as in “I Reveled to Coney Island last weekend”).
With a silent engine that reaches a maximum speed of 29 miles per hour, the Revel (manufactured by NIU in China) is swift, nimble, and easy to ride. It has two rearview mirrors and blinkers that shut off automatically after completed turns. It has retractable footrests for a companion in back. It even has a cell phone mount and a USB port for charging. Every three or four days, a mechanic stops by to replace the battery, clean the helmet, and check for problems.
Riders and onlookers alike may worry about safety, understandably. Users must be at least 21 years old, and the whole service shuts down between midnight and 5 am to avoid any potential late-night hijinks.
The app offers a how-to video for newcomers, but Revel encourages beginners to sign up for a free lesson in Gowanus before starting out. Their easygoing in-house instructor, Brandon Gilbert, helpfully gave me the rundown.
Revel is great fun, but for me, the cost – cheaper than an Uber but pricier than a bus – puts it into the category of a once-in-a-while treat, not that of a potential daily expenditure. The app has seen noticeable success in the mostly wealthy sections of Brooklyn and Queens to which it’s currently restricted, but it remains to be seen whether, upon expansion, anyone will use it in East New York or the South Bronx.
Revel offers a 40 percent discount to anyone on public assistance, including all SNAP recipients and NYCHA residents, but the app doesn’t make this obvious or immediately accessible. Those who’ve happened to hear about the offer can (with proof of status) email the company’s customer support for the discount code, but others who would qualify will likely end up paying full price without knowing better.
According to Google Maps, my commute from Bushwick to Red Hook takes 35 minutes by car without traffic, which would cost me $9.75 one-way via Revel. At rush hour, per Google, it might take an hour and 15 minutes, which would cost $19.75. By bicycle, it takes 30 minutes at any time of day and costs me nothing. “Lane-splitting” – the practice that allows motorcycles to sidestep stalled traffic – is illegal in New York, and mopeds can’t use bike lanes, which means that a Revel, operated legally, is subject to the same fluctuations of roadway congestion as a car. Those who weave in and out of traffic risk a moving violation.
Revel arrives in New York amid a nationwide “micromobility” revolution of sorts, as cities attempt to the determine how best to regulate e-bikes, e-scooters, electric skateboards, and other new modes of personal motorized transport. Revel, whose insured and registered bikes all bear New York State license plates, didn’t need to petition Albany for a change in law to bring their mopeds onto the streets, but it’s not clear that City Council would stand by if an app tried to rent them out by the minute in Manhattan. Just to be safe, Revel set up introductory meetings with Councilmembers in Brooklyn and Queens before commencing limited outer-borough operations.
Following Silicon Valley lobbying, the New York State Legislature passed a bill on June 21 to legalize e-scooters, while prohibiting e-scooter rental services in Manhattan. If Governor Cuomo (who’s expressed reservations) gives his signature, the same legislation will legalize throttle-assist e-bikes, effectively decriminalizing food delivery in New York. In 2018, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) opened the door to peddle-assist e-bikes; Citi Bike added 1,000 (since recalled due to brake problems) to its fleet. The DOT also commenced a dockless electric bikeshare pilot program, permitting JUMP, Lime, Motivate, and Pace to operate in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Far Rockaway.
What remains to be seen is what precise role such vehicles (and the tech companies that rent them) will ultimately play in the 21st-century landscape of urban transportation. Revel has positioned itself as a supplementary service, not as a substitute for the MTA; it’s a nice add-on for those who can afford it. But whether it knows it or not, the space it now occupies in the lives of New Yorkers is one created at least in part by the MTA’s deficiencies. As more and more vehicle-sharing apps enter America’s cities, each applying its own variety of band-aid to their ailing transportation systems, the future of mass transit begins to look less like a public monopoly.
In moped-choked Vietnam, the city of Hanoi has announced plans to ban by 2030 the motorbikes that the majority of its 7.8 million residents use daily. It’ll invest in long-overdue rail and buses instead. In the United States, it’s another story.
Here, many urbanites seem to be dreaming of cityscapes based on individualized transport. Last year, The Atlantic published “The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair,” which advocated for a complete abandonment of the trains, whose tunnels would become “subterranean highways” populated by “competing fleets” of reservable autonomous vehicles, “offering different levels of service to different groups at different prices.” Each would carry one person at a time.
On the New York City subway, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO or the janitor; everyone gets the same service. It’s not beyond repair, but repairing it would cost a lot of tax dollars that could otherwise be spent on Ubers, Revels, and Limes. Different modes of transportation can coexist, but we may have to figure out where our priorities are.
