Citi Bike’s carbon offset makes 136 New Yorkers as green as you can get

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Courtesy of Citi Bike riders, through August 136 lucky New Yorkers have no carbon footprint for the year. That number should climb by year’s end. How green is that?

Using figures supplied by UK Data Explorer, each American annually produces 17.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide. And Citi Bike calculates from January through August it has offset 21,386 metric tons of CO2 by keeping people away from spewers like cars, buses and subways.

Here’s how New York Bike Share, the system operators, explains how it comes to the carbon offset number:

Our analysis compares the miles traveled by Citi Bike to published average emissions for other modes of transportation (walking, subway, bus, taxi, private car). NYCBS is currently assuming that Citi Bike trips avoid other modes equally (i.e. each Citi Bike mile traveled avoids .2 miles in each of the other modes).

Source:  NYC Bike Share monthly reports