Friday and we just want to pinch ourselves

• This just in: CitiBike tweets that the Church & Leonard station in Tribeca is back in service. We're sorry we complained yesterday.

• We continue to see remarkable improvement both in the sheer number of empty Manhattan stations and in the length of time that those stations are bikeless. Brooklyn, not so much. Concurrent empties have not risen above 25 for three days running. And we were getting used to regarding 25 empties as a pretty good number.

• Fort Greene’s Cumberland & Lafayette station had the very occasional bike but we’re scoring it 25 bikeless hours.

• Available bikes have stabilized in the low 4000s.

Bikes available at 4:30  pm today: 4330

Bikes available at 4:30  pm yesterday:  4380

Bikes available at this time a week ago: 3277

NotSpots at 4:30 pm  today: 14

NotSpots at 4:30 pm  yesterday: 17

NotSpots at this time a week ago: 37 (see what we mean?)

Thursday: Those CitiBike crews are on a roll

• The number of concurrent empty stations was halved again today compared to most recent weekdays. Worst we found was 25 at `12:30

• Available bikes crossed the 4500 mark around midday and they’re up 1,100 on the week.

• Citi Bike announced via a tweet when it took Tribeca’s Church & Leonard station down on Jan 31 that nearby construction would keep it out of service for 10 days. It's too late to mark your calendar.

Bikes available at 5:30  pm today: 4377
Bikes available at 6:01  pm yesterday:  4119
Bikes available at this time a week ago: 3259

NotSpots at 5:30 pm  today: 17
NotSpots at 6:01  pm  yesterday: 19
NotSpots at this time a week ago: 31

Wednesday and wow! Empty station numbers drop big time

• Today is the first since Jan 26 that the number of empty stations did not top 30 during any of our routine checks. 

• We liked that empty stations chart we published the other day so much that we’ve made it a permanent section of the blog. See the Empty Stations tab under the logo.

• The operators continue to unleash more bicycles. Today we crossed the 4,000 threshold and there about 900 more bikes available now than on Sunday.

Bikes available at 6:01 pm today: 4119

Bikes available at 5:07 pm yesterday: 3853

Bikes available at this time a week ago: 3311

NotSpots at 6:01 pm today: 19

NotSpots at :07 pm  yesterday: 30

NotSpots at this time a week ago: 36

Tuesday pm: Why isn't bikeless in the dictionary?

• Available bike count continues the upward climb that started Sunday.

• Damned if a bike didn’t show up just before we did a last check on Fort Greene’s Carlton  & Park. Until 8:30  tonight  it had gone bikeless since 3:30 pm Monday.

• We got a mention at NYToday this morning. That feels pretty good, kinda like we feel riding down Allen St -- river below, trains above. Thanks, Andy.

Bikes available at 5:07 pm today: 3853

Bikes available at 5:30 pm yesterday: 3611

Bikes available at 4:02 pm a week ago: 3318

NotSpots at 5:30 pm  today: 30

NotSpots at 5:30 pm  yesterday: 37

NotSpots at 4:02 pm a week ago: 36


And thank you, blogger, for taking over decisions like spacing, typeface etc.

A closer look at the number of empty stations

So thrilled and emboldened were we by the mention in NYToday that we decided to take a deeper look at empty stations since the beginning of the year.  We think the chart provides some evidence that our worst fear (of the moment) may be grounded. Yes, creeping Notspotism.

Questions we frequently ask

The fewest empty stations we've recorded? 5 on January 11
Has there ever been a moment when every station had a bike? Not this year.
The last time the empty station count was in single digits? Jan 20.

A record 60 empty stations at 11:30 am today

• This is what we don’t want to see: creeping NotSpotism. We confronted the year’s high for empty stations -- 60 --  at 11:30 am on a cold (35F) and blustery Monday. Previous high we recorded this year was 57 empties around 11 pm last Tuesday.

• The bike infusion we reported on Twitter last night continued into today. Good thing, too, considering the NotSpot record.  We found 3895 bikes available at 3:30 pm today. That’s the most since Monday Feb 3. We hit a low of 3160 last Wednesday.

• Good morning, Front & Gold.  The Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, station emptied out on Tuesday Feb 4, slept peacefully through the storms and reemerged today, serving bikes like nothing ever happened. And it didn’t.

Bikes available at 5:30 pm today: 3611

Bikes available at 5:30 pm Friday: 3277

Bikes available at 5:30 pm a week ago: 3278

NotSpots at 5:30 pm  today: 37

NotSpots at 5:30 pm  Friday: 37

NotSpots at 5:30 pm a week ago: 36

Out of service: The usual suspects

The weekly NotSpot report: Did y'all have much snow this winter?

The first week we conducted our surveys coincided with the first big snow. That week it took an average of 9.2 hours for an empty station to start serving up bikes again. Of course it was the first snowstorm that the Citi Bike crews ever faced.

This past week, under much worse conditions, stations were back at it in an average 7.6 hours. Impressive.

The  week’s Top 10 NotSpots: Manhattan

WEEK 7 RANK	NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS YEAR	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS WEEK
1	Hells Kitchen	W 52 St & 9 Ave	256	120
2	Midtown North	W 49 St & 5 Ave	244	34
3	Midtown North	W 37 St & 5 Ave	216	22
4	Hells Kitchen	W 54 St & 9 Ave	214	4
5	Tudor City	E 43 St & 2 Ave	178	27
6	Midtown North	E 53 St & Madison Ave	153	9
7	Midtown North	W 44 St & 5 Ave	149	14
8	Midtown East	E 51 St & Lexington Ave	149	32
9	Lower East Side	Clinton St & Grand St	148	NEW
10	Greenwich Village	Washington Square E	143	NEW

• You just cannot get more NotSpotty than this year’s new leader, W 52 St & 9 Ave. It was down from one minute past midnight Monday morning to midnight Friday. It is, happily for all, serving up bikes as of this writing on Sunday evening.

• The pattern that keeps repeating itself is Midtown, Midtown, Midtown. And if not Midtown, east and west of it aren’t much better.

The  week’s Top 10 NotSpots: Brooklyn

WEEK 7 RANK	NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS YEAR	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS WEEK
1	Downtown	Clinton St & Tillary St	327	55
2	Downtown	Cadman Plaza E & Tillary St	266	84
3	Williamsburg	S 3 St & Bedford Ave	215	0
4	Brooklyn Heights	Columbia Heights & Cranberry St	181	84
5	Clinton Hill	DeKalb Ave & Vanderbilt Ave	178	11
6	Fort Greene	DeKalb Ave & S Portland Ave	173	28
7	Bedford-Stuyvesant	Hancock St & Bedford Ave	168	72
8	Bedford-Stuyvesant	Lexington Ave & Classon Ave	138	34
9	Clinton Hill	Washington Ave & Greene Ave	134	0
10	Downtown	Gallatin Pl & Livingston St	115	NEW

Somebody, somewhere  should be embarrassed by what doesn’t happen week after week at Brooklyn’s two Tillary St. stations.

The Gallatin Pl appearance surprised us. We had not recorded a NotSpot event there until this past week. Maybe storm stuff.



NotSpots by neighborhood: Manhattan

WEEK 7	NEIGHBORHOOD	TOTAL STATIONS	TOTAL DOCKS	NOTSPOT HOURS	MINUTES PER DOCK
1	Tudor City	8	108	69.5	39
2	Times Square	8	422	165.5	24
3	Gramercy Park	5	157	52	20
4	Hells Kitchen	14	464	150	19
5	Lower East Side	18	518	158.5	18
6	Chinatown	5	180	47.5	16
7	Flatiron	5	194	46	14
8	Civic Center	3	121	28	14
9	Greenwich Village	15	517	110	13
10	Midtown North	15	661	135.5	12

• Tudor City, a constant among the Top 10, makes its third appearance this year as leader of the pack.
• The string of Broadway stations through Times Square were hard hit either by the storm or by more customers than bikes.

NotSpots by neighborhood: Brooklyn

WEEK 7	NEIGHBORHOOD	TOTAL STATIONS	TOTAL DOCKS	NOTSPOT HOURS	MINUTES PER DOCK
1	Bedford-Stuyvesant	9	205	208	61
2	Downtown	9	290	278	58
3	Brooklyn Heights	8	255	110	26
4	Vinegar Hill	5	112	34	18
5	Fort Greene	20	584	107	11
6	Park Slope	1	34	6	11
7	Williamsburg	9	265	40.6	9
8	Navy Yard	4	73	4	3
9	Clinton Hill	9	249	11	3
10	Boerum Hill	3	100	0	0

• Bed-Stuy’s minutes per dock number is the worst performance so far this year of any neighborhood, Brooklyn or Manhattan. Minutes per dock is the critical number because it’s the one number that creates a level field for all neighborhoods.