Michael Alexander was in New York City on the weekend of June 26. Here is his experience with the recently launched bikeshare system – CitiBike.
I was staying in Brooklyn Heights, at a large residential complex that had a 30-bike station installed in front of it in an asphalt triangle formed where three roads come together. It’s across from a major park, and a painted bike lane runs between the station and the building.
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Some of the residents hate the bike station, and are campaigning to have it moved. One said that it blocked fire trucks. When I asked if they had consulted the fire department to see if that were true, she said they had written a letter, but no response yet.
Despite the chest beating by those convinced that bicycles will destroy New York, Citi Bike’s reception has been, well… New Yorkish. A month after launch, they’ve clocked 1.5 million miles, and nearly 650,000 trips. They’re averaging over 30,000 trips a day; over 50,000 people have annual memberships (now over 100,000 – PT), and 24-hour passes average over 3,000 a day.
The system, provided by a subsidiary
of Alta Bicycle Share from Portland, and funded entirely by Citibank in return for a lot of advertising real estate, proved remarkably easy to use – far easier than our frustrating experiences in Paris and Lyon, France.
A pass costs $10 for 24 hours, $26 a week, or $95 a year. Sign-in is done on a small touch screen at the station’s kiosk. Instructions are in six languages. You dip a credit card, click through several legal disclaimer screens, provide your postal code and an optional phone number, then accept a screen of good habits: yield to pedestrians; stay off the sidewalk; obey traffic lights (good luck); ride with traffic. The last step is to receive a paper slip with a numerical code. You go to a dock, enter the code, pull the bike out, and you’re off for 30 “free” minutes.
Stations (solar powered) are about every two to three blocks in Manhattan, south of Central Park, and on the Brooklyn side of major bridges.
Helmets are recommended, but not mandatory. Discounts are offered at local bike shops.
I quickly learned to check that a working bike was available. If one is broken, the red blinkies built into the rear of the frame will be flashing. Occasional bikes had a pedal missing, and a working bell is vital. Otherwise, the bikes—Montreal’s BIXI design– are 3-speed tanks with step-though frames, highly evolved for tough urban share conditions. The chain is enclosed, there’s a handlebar rack, and the only adjustment is saddle height. The seat post has numbers, so setting it for your height takes seconds.
You can download a well-designed iPhone app (right),
showing all stations, the number of bikes available and vacant docks at each, and where you are. I wish it showed bike route streets in a distinctive colour. It also has a timer which rings at 25 minutes, so you can quickly find a nearby dock and avoid being charged for having the bike longer than a half-hour. The average ride? Eighteen minutes.
The system is designed for short trips. If 30 minutes hasn’t gotten you to your destination, you dock the bike and quickly check out another by dipping your credit card. If you ride the same bike more than 30 minutes, the next half-hour costs $4, with steep increases from there. Annual members get 45 minutes free per ride, and get an electronic ‘key’ that bypasses signing in at the kiosk. However, I saw people using American Express cards having problems.
There’s more, of course, but those are the basics and they’re pretty easy to learn. Still, you see visitors staring blankly at the kiosk. While New Yorkers have a “you’re on your own” reputation, in two days of riding I came across three instances of locals generously assisting confused visitors
So where do you ride? New York has doubled its bike lane network since 2006, to more than 650 kilometres. That’s at Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s direction, and the effective leadership of Transportation Director Janette Sadik-Khan. Still, road surfaces for all vehicles are pretty rough by Vancouver standards. The fat-tyre CitiBikes do a good job of soaking up the bumps..
Correction: if the rear blinkers are flashing, that just means someone else used the bike recently. The red light on the DOCK (not flashing) means that the bike is out of service.
“if the rear blinkers are flashing, that just means someone else used the bike recently”
What is that trying to show? What’s the point? Does someone having recently used a bike… mean anything? ‘Beware of warm seats!’ ?
It’s not intended to show anything. It’s just that the lights have a capacitor so they keep blinking for a few minutes. The intent is that they stay blinking at red lights, etc. Blinking when docked is just a side effect of that.
New numbers just released by Ottawa Canada NCC/Bixi here. Pathetic. They want to sell.
Real loss probably double what they state.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/looks+sell+Bixi+system/8651707/story.html
Expect Vancouver City will place stations here and there and then creep toward Stanley Park as the numbers look so bad and they try to cover their butts.
The objectives/performance criteria in Van City report say nothing about what the system is meant to achieve. No goals.
Alas, it comes down to a public subsidy for Quebec manufacturing. Trek cannot compete with Bixi because they are a private company and must pay market rates for loans, insurance etc.
Public Policy??? Here is ANDY RIGA of The Montreal Gazette September 9, 2010
Bixi’s environmental benefits have been “grossly exaggerated,” with the vast majority of trips taken on the bike-sharing service actually replacing other “green modes” of transportation, McGill University researchers have found.
Eighty-six per cent of Bixi trips replaced walking, or rides on personal bikes or public transit, according to an online survey of 1,432 Montrealers conducted this summer by researchers at McGill’s School of Urban Planning. Another four per cent of trips wouldn’t have been taken without Bixi.
Of the rest, eight per cent replaced taxi trips and two per cent replaced car trips.