Since 2023, we’ve teamed up with food delivery riders to campaign for cleaner vehicles like legal e-bikes, better pay, and safer cycle infrastructure in UK cities.

Popular services like Just Eat, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats rely on their riders to use their own, personal motorbikes, and bikes to deliver food. The work is often unsafe (facing the full brunt of road danger and air pollution) and insecure (with some people earning as little as £2 an hour).

We need to make sure that the voices of these key workers are being heard when we talk about how we share the roads and manage traffic, and what needs to be done to make their work safer. We need a just transition in every part of the economy, and we want to support riders to act as champions for safer cycleways and less-polluting modes of transport, like e-bikes. Amplifying the voices of gig economy workers will help us to inform policymakers and food delivery companies about how and why to transition to safer and cleaner alternative modes of transport.

A JUST TRANSITION FOR FOOD DELIVERY RIDERS - WE NEED:

  1. Higher wages and more secure work

  2. Support for riders to transition to cleaner, safer vehicles like legal e-bikes

  3. Protected cycling infrastructure

JUNE 2025 UPDATE

Good news: we’ve been working to raise the profile of delivery work for active travel, and in June 2025, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking published a report on this very topic - focused on the rise of fake e-bikes in the gig economy. The report finds that: 

“There is broad agreement across the piece that illegal and dangerous e-bike use is being driven largely by the business practices of delivery app firms that place pressure on riders to make as many deliveries as they can, simply to earn a minimum level of income.” (page 33) 

We’ve got to work together to call for a just transition in every part of the economy, including the food delivery sector.

This project is funded by Impact on Urban Health, and delivered in partnership with IWGB, Green Gumption and the Road Danger Reduction Forum.