Aspiring motorcyclists in New York are finally getting some good news as on April 25, 2025, the New York State DMV finally signed off on its new five-year contract with the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF). This compulsory road safety course had been a thorn on both the riders and the state’s side since the previous contract expired and the replacement was taking long to find. But, it is now a solved issue and riding schools can go back to business as usual.
The announcement came courtesy of MSF in a statement to Road & Track “The New York State Motorcycle Safety Program is again ready for riders and would-be riders.” MSF’s Robert Gladden continued “We appreciate the hard work the New York DMV put into shepherding the agreement through the approval process with the state comptroller’s office. We look forward to serving prospective and current riders in the Empire State into 2030, in partnership with the local small businesses that provide essential hands-on motorcycle training.”
Once the contract was signed, updated agreements were sent to all the training providers who were previously authorized and lessons are set to get rolling again in the coming days. And it is sorely needed. Without the course, many local schools have been stuck and unable to help more students, which, considering this is prime time for new riders to jump into training as the weather has improved enough in the state to dust off the bike, has not been ideal.
Why the state of New York was having troubles with this safety contract
Despite the previous contract going out without a hitch and the willingness of both parties to renew, the State Comptroller’s office later revealed that a bid protest from another company had added more time to the process. This meant that the state had to compare both offers and establish which one would be a better fit for the state, and as Mark Johnson from the Comptroller’s office explained “A bid protest has also been submitted by a non-selected bidder that is concurrently being reviewed along with the contract transaction.”
The same thing happened back in 2009, but that time the DMV allowed training to continue using the existing curriculum until the contract was sorted out. This time schools were told to stop everything until it was signed, leaving programs all across New York scrambling and instructors confused and without guidance.
George Tranos of Big Apple Motorcycle School expressed his frustration stating “We have received no communication from [the] DMV at all. We have tried to contact them ourselves; we’ve had our state senator contact them and our local Long Island television station has tried to contact them after they ran a story about the situation.”
This is because many would-be riders prefer taking the MSF course to get licensed because it skips the more rigorous DMV road test. Classes only take two days and offer a safer, more controlled learning environment. Tranos mentioned his school already had around 150 people on a waitlist. “They are extremely frustrated by the delay (as are we),” he said. “We have probably lost business. Many people don’t want to wait and will ride without training or a license. Some of these people may be injured, hurt someone else, or worse, as a result of lack of training.”
Lynne Vandewater, who runs Go Motorcycling in Utica and has been teaching riders for over three decades, echoed those concerns. “Normally, by this time of year, we’re booked out a bunch and are resuming our training season here in Utica,” she said. “The sites downstate are being more impacted than the upstate sites, although we’re starting to catch up with them.”