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Cycling through Manhattan will absolutely drive you nuts, even on an "analog" bike. I used to do it. Suppose you want to go downtown from Midtown on the West Side. You can take 9th avenue, which has a bike lane. It will be filled with garbage trucks, debris, police cars, groups of pedestrians, and various other obstacles, which you'll have to get around. Or you can take 7th, no bike lane, and mix it up with the cars, which is an absolutely insane experience -- and I speak as someone who regularly bikes in traffic on the NJ side. God help you if you somehow end up on Park.
There is not really any way to distinguish in the statistics between "illegal immigrant delivery drivers on E-bikes" from "ordinary people on e-bikes". The delivery drivers on e-bikes have been around for many years -- far longer than they've been legal -- so if the problem is new it isn't at all clear they're a particular problem. The mopeds are distinguishable (they're now tallied under "other motorized" rather than "bicycle"), but it turns out that while they're thoroughly hated, they cause fewer deaths than e-bikes -- at least in 2023, they caused no pedestrian deaths. Probably because there's a lot more e-bikes. It is definitely not true that only the delivery drivers ride them. You can rent them from CitiBike, and plenty of non-delivery drivers ride them.
Yes, I could have been more clear. Both types exist. My (obviously extremely limited) experience was that every time someone blew through a crosswalk it was a delivery driver, not a civilian on a rented bike. In terms of volume they were ~equal.
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