Just how many bikes are there, anyhow?

News stories often make mention of the NYC bike-sharing system’s 6000 bicycles. It’s in the Wikipedia citation and elsewhere.

But we maintain that number is irrelevant. What matters is the number of available bicycles.

And that number, again thanks to the O’Brien map,  is

That’s the highest number we’ve seen since Jan. 2., when we started tracking it, admittedly a very short time.  And the lowest number of available bikes? 4011 at 9:30 am Jan. 4. Stay tuned.

Maybe we’ll all figure out how many there should be.