We tour TriBeCa, Civic Center; cracked seats now endangered species

For Survey No. 3, we visited 14 TriBeCa and Civic Center Citi Bike stations around midday Tuesday. Here’s how it went:

New seat

The cracked seat count has gone way down. This survey, we found 104 of 242 bikes, or 43%, had cracked seats. In our Sept. 15 survey, we found 56% cracked and in our first survey in early August we found 68%.

The accuracy of the app continues to drop. We’ve now surveyed 56 stations and have found the app to be completely accurate 50% of the time.

ACCURATE = exactly reflecting conditions on the ground

SLIGHTLY OFF = off by fewer than 5 bikes or docks

WAY OFF = off by 6 or more bikes or docks

ANNOYINGLY OFF  = where it tells you all is well at a station that is filled, empty or dead

56 stations
Cumulative
ACCURATE	28	50.00%
SLIGHTLY OFF	14	25.00%
WAY OFF	11	19.64%
ANNOYINGLY OFF	4	7.14%

16 stations	9/30/2014
2 Midtown, rest Civic Center and TriBeCa
ACCURATE	6	37.50%
SLIGHTLY OFF	4	25.00%
WAY OFF	4	25.00%
ANNOYINGLY OFF	2	12.50%

About the annoying circumstances

With the app showing only one dock open, we set off for the Greenwich St & N Moore St station with some trepidation. When we got there, the one open dock wasn’t functioning. Luckily for us, we couldn’t even start to mutter our first profanity when someone took a bike out,  freeing a working dock.

When we arrived at the Hudson St & Reade St station, the app said there were 10 open docks. There were zero.

Red and yellow lights

Twice during our tour we got red lights when docking and once a yellow but the bikes locked on each instance and our trip history showed the trips as closed.

Dock lock

We experienced 8 cases of being unable to return a bike to a dock  at 4 different stations.

Bike availability

TriBeca/Civic Center is at the top of the heap right now with bikes at 72% of the 314 docks we surveyed. FiDi/Battery Park came in at 63% and Lower East/Two Bridges at a paltry 25%