Does size matter? No, but being available does

A lot of numbers get thrown around in these Citi Bike stories. Alta put out the 6,000-bike number in its statement yesterday. In an earlier WSJ interview with Alta’s CEO, 7,000 bikes was the Opening Day number. We think its important to use the one number that’s actually meaningful to bike sharers -- how many bikes are available to me. Right now.

The answer of course is that it varies. But this year there have never been 6000 bikes in the docks, let alone 7,000. The most we’ve recorded is 5674 on a cold, rainy Friday evening, Jan. 18. The fewest is 3160 on Feb 19.

Here’s the count day by day since Jan 5.

Another number that is a little lower than the number you usually see in news stories is the number of stations in the system. 

• The Alta statement says CitiBike opened with 332 stations.
• Brooklyn’s Cadman&Red Cross station went out of service in November.

• Citi Bike took away E 24 St & Park Ave S  this month and planned to replace it a block but some judge stepped in the way.
• There are almost always several stations that are out of service for various reasons. Today there are five.

So today, for Citi Bike users, there are 325 stations.