Week Nine: We're determined to get 'rebalancing' into the dictionary

NotSpot King of the Week

Stuyvesant Town’s 1 Ave & E 18 St station was left staring at its realm of slack-jawed docks for 26 hours until 11 on Monday when a rebalancing crew arrived. Hey, the dictionary says "rebalancing" isn't a word. But it's an important job now.

Got a lot of ink this week, as they used to say

BikeshareNYC wants to thank, in chronological order, the following reporters for having confidence in the quality of the blog’s numbers and our assessments of the bike-sharing system's service levels:

Gabrielle Fonrouge, Aaron Short, and Rebecca Harshbarger of the New York Post

Andy Newman of the New York Times

Joe Coscarelli of New York magazine

Janet Upadhye of DNAinfo New York

Younjoo Sang of NY City Lens

Their reporting is highlighted on the ugly but functioning News Archive page.

Week 9 summary

The NotSpot℠ Index made its debut, giving us an easy way to rank service levels day by day and week by week. Here’s a look at the year, week by week. We don’t like the trend line.

Top 10 NotSpots, by station and neighborhood

Manhattan

WEEK 9	NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS YEAR	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS WEEK
1	Hells Kitchen	W 52 St & 9 Ave	296	14
2	Hells Kitchen	W 54 St & 9 Ave	267	8
3	Midtown North	W 49 St & 5 Ave	244	0
4	Midtown North	W 37 St & 5 Ave	228	2
5	Tudor City	E 43 St & 2 Ave	197	19
7	Lower East Side	Clinton St & Grand St	173	21
7	Times Square	Broadway & W 53 St	161	NEW
8	Midtown North	E 53 St & Madison Ave	153	0
9	Midtown North	W 44 St & 5 Ave	149	0
9	Midtown East	E 51 St & Lexington Ave	149	0
9	Civic Center	Centre St & Chambers St	149	0
10	Greenwich Village	Washington Square E	143	NEW

There was an aggressive attack on the NotSpot℠ hours at the two top, and chronic, offenders. The Hells Kitchen stations logged a combined 71 hours in Week 8, 22 in the current week. At that rate, they won’t stay on the list forever.

Brooklyn

WEEK 9 BROOKLYN	NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS YEAR	NOTSPOT HOURS THIS WEEK
1	Downtown	Clinton St & Tillary St	379	14
2	Downtown	Cadman Plaza E & Tillary St	304	38
3	Brooklyn Heights	Columbia Heights & Cranberry St	249	48
4	Fort Greene	DeKalb Ave & S Portland Ave	226	36
5	Clinton Hill	DeKalb Ave & Vanderbilt Ave	221	41
6	Williamsburg	S 3 St & Bedford Ave	216	0
7	Bedford-Stuyvesant	Hancock St & Bedford Ave	202	18
8	Bedford-Stuyvesant	Lexington Ave & Classon Ave	182	0
9	Clinton Hill	Washington Ave & Greene Ave	174	20
10	Fort Greene	Myrtle Ave & St Edwards St	160	32

What’s happenin’ in Hells Kitchen ain’t happenin’ on Tilllary St

Now, the neighborhood Top 10

Manhattan

WEEK 9	NEIGHBORHOOD	TOTAL STATIONS	TOTAL DOCKS	NOTSPOT HOURS	HOURS PER STATION	HOURS PER DOCK	MINUTES PER DOCK
1	Stuyvesant Town	4	138	34	8.50	0.25	15
2	Lower East Side	18	518	114	6.33	0.22	13
3	Times Square	8	422	90.5	11.31	0.21	13
4	Tudor City	8	108	19	2.38	0.18	11
5	Chinatown	5	180	29	5.80	0.16	10
6	Chelsea	19	693	69	3.63	0.10	6
7	Flatiron	5	194	19	3.80	0.10	6
8	SoHo	4	127	12	3.00	0.09	6
9	Hells Kitchen	14	464	38	2.71	0.08	5
10	Tribeca	12	402	31.5	2.63	0.08	5

Stuyvesant Town hasn’t made the Top 10 since Week 4. Too bad. It was a nice run.

Brooklyn

WEEK 9	NEIGHBORHOOD	TOTAL STATIONS	TOTAL DOCKS	NOTSPOT HOURS	MINUTES PER DOCK
1	Clinton Hill	9	249	115.5	28
2	Fort Greene	19	565	229.5	24
3	Bedford-Stuyvesant	9	205	52	15
4	Downtown	10	309	63.5	12
5	Brooklyn Heights	8	255	48.5	11

Brooklyn’s NotSpot℠ numbers continue to be almost double of those across the river.

Bike count above 4,000

The week started with 3863 available bikes and ended with 4100, topping out at  4360 on Thursday.

Nighty night

"Have a nice night tonight and a good day tomorrow. Goodnight, all."

From John Thomas Ralph Augustine James Facenda, who trademarked this phrase when he was a newscaster in Philly. He later became known as 'The Voice of God' as narrator for NFL Films.

In an interview back in the '70s, he said he started using the phrase when he realized he was the only one saying good night and good morning to a whole lotta people.

The phrase even found its way into the 1956 film The Burglar, starring Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea.