Why Food Delivery Personnel’s Can’t Switch To E-Bikes As Easily As You Think

When the PMD ban was implemented, everything was sudden.

If you’re somehow not kept up to date on the PMD ban despite us typing so much PMD until we forgot what PMD actually means, here’s a video:

And I’m not saying that this is a shortsighted last-minute decision, but some people have pointed to the PMD grant being rather last-minute as a sign.

Basically, the Trade-in-Grant (eTG) is a S$7 million grant for food delivery riders who are still working as a food delivery rider as of 7 Nov 2019 with a PMD. They can trade-in their PMDs for grants of S$600 or S$1,000 to buy a new bicycle or e-bicycle.

If you’re using common sense here, you can probably already tell that this probably wouldn’t work that well. PMD and e-bicycle are different things.

But just to put things on paper, let’s just examine why this is actually bad. Don’t take my word for this, cause delivery riders’ concerns were voiced over on both TODAYOnline and Mothership.

So let’s start with the first reason.

Monetarily, It’s Not The Same

It’s almost like when you were a kid and asked for a Gameboy Colour, only to be given the S$10 knock-off GomeBoy Calour that somehow has 1000 games and they are all shit.

You can probably also tell that e-bikes are slower. This means e-bicycle deliveries are about a third of what a PMD can deliver. Which means lower money for the rider.

It’s not just that. PMDs can cost more than S$1,000, and most delivery riders buy the PMDs specifically for the job. Some of them even have two PMDs.

Because the ban was so sudden, some riders owned their PMDs for not long, perhaps only a few weeks.

And compared to the Gameboy Colour, a Gumeboy Cholur doesn’t have the same computing power- I mean,

E-bikes Are Still… Bikes

And that means you have to ride them. Like bikes. This is unlike PMDs where you let the machine do the work.

You can think of them as the difference between a Batman suit and an Ironman suit.

I can imagine that if Tony Stark were to say, be physically disabled, he could still use voice commands to tell JARVIS to do shit for him. If Batman loses an arm, he’s done.

Same thing for food delivery riders here. Or take, for instance, Leo, a 20-year-old with a hip and tailbone injury who was interviewed by Mothership. Riding an e-bike worsens his injury, and that was why he made the switch to PMD in the first place.

E-bikes On The Road = More Accidents

E-bikes are allowed only on roads. Bicycles, on the other hand, are allowed on roads, footpaths, cycling paths, shared paths and park connectors.

PMD is like a Gameboy Colour and E-bikes are like Gumboi Cellar remains true here. It can’t play Pokemon Yellow no matter how hard you try. A PMD can basically travel at the speed of a motorbike, even when not modified. An e-bicycle is still a bicycle.

A bicycle on the road is a potential for road accidents.

It’s Surprisingly Hard To Do Deliveries On A Bicycle

You’ve probably noticed that PMDs and e-scooters are generally easier to ride than bicycles. Mothership interviewed a 36-year-old rider:

“For bicycles, because I borrow a bicycle, and my seat is very high. So to reach my feet on the ground, it’s actually tedious because I have food on my bag and then I’m afraid I might spill because I did spill some of the food for the customers.”

He also explains that e-bikes and bicycle are more cumbersome to navigate. To add to that, they have to carry bulky items as well.

E-bikes are also apparently easier to steal since places often don’t have parking slots for them. E-scooters, on the other hand, are activated by ignition and not easy to just take and run off with.

…and with everything above, it seems to make sense that PMDs are almost needed for deliveries.

So here’s a suggestion: like how policemen are licensed to have a gun, why not a work-related license for PMD?