23 reasons bicycling is the best way to navigate NYC

The story

An excerpt

No. 3: The sentence "It's all the way crosstown"strikes no fear in a cyclist's heart. "Oh, you just sat down at Empire Diner? Order me a beer, I'll be there in 10 minutes."

Mathematicians worldwide tackle bike-share rebalancing

The story

An excerpt

And Citi Bike—which works with computer scientist David Shmoys of Cornell University, according to Wald—has done a better job on balance lately. The bikeshareNYC blog keeps a NotSpot index tracking how many Citi Bike stations are empty or full. In recent weeks, Citi Bike has been squarely in the rebalancing "green" zone, meaning only 20 to 33 stations were not usable at the time of the survey.

Stations near Williamsburg Bridge rack up most cyclist injuries

The story

Three of the top ten stations with the highest injury density are located just off the Williamsburg Bridge.  Note that we can’t control for bicycle traffic here, so this does not mean that any given rider has a higher chance of getting an injury;  more riders means more injuries. That being said, any one who has biked near the exit of the Williamsburg Bridge knows it’s a bit of a tricky place.  Other top stations are listed above, including three on Broadway.

Comment

This came out in mid-August when we were too involved in house hunting to do much with the blog. We’re sorry we’re tardy because the IQuantNY blog is a great piece of work.

Replacement seats not as comfy, Reddit commenters say

New seats have a groove down center

In a thread on Reddit, people are complaining that the new seats Citi Bike is installing are tilted forward and not as comfortable as the originals.

Citi Bike disputes Post's "One third of bikes in the shop" story

An excerpt

The story

Citi Bike spokeswoman Dani Simons...disputed the figure slightly, saying there are just under 1,200 bikes in the repair shop (and adding that an average of 200 are repaired a day). Earlier this year, Alta Bicycle Share suffered some "seasonal downsizing" of repair workers whose job it is to maintain the bikes and docks. As a result, Citi Bike's rates of repair and maintenance reportedly dropped precipitously.

Comment

The Gothamist was graceful enough to include a mention of our cracked seats post in this story.

NYPD mum on success/failure of Operation Safe Cycle

The story

An excerpt

On Tuesday morning, the NYPD declined to offer any information about the success (or failure) of the operation, including metrics like the number of tickets issued or arrests made.

Available bikes day by day

The New York Post made much recently of one third of the bike fleet being sidelined for repairs. But the number of available bikes has hovered between 4000 and 3300 all summer.  Whatever the number in the shop, there’s been no “shortage” of bikes on the street or we’d see a spike in empty stations. And we haven’t.

Day-by-day look at NotSpot numbers

At May’s end it looked like the NotSpot problem was spiraling out of control. Then the system operators got serious.

DMV admits to cheating cyclists but doesn’t say it will stop

See story

An excerpt

The New York State DMV admits that it is incorrectly overcharging cyclists for traffic violations and wrongly adding points to their drivers licenses, but the agency hasn’t agreed to stop doing it.

In his most recent Streetsblog column, attorney Steve Vaccaro pointed out that the DMV’s online payment system does not distinguish between bikes and motor vehicles. As a result, cyclists who plead guilty and pay traffic tickets online are stuck with an $88 surcharge that doesn’t apply to bike violations, and are getting points on their licenses that don’t legally apply.

New app tracks where cyclists actually ride, helping plan new bike paths

An excerpt

For cities it’s not only a way to plan new routes but to better understand how to take care of existing bike paths. "When local authorities are trying to improve cycling infrastructure with the resources they have available, it's very hard for them to know where to spend that money," says Lindgren. "Even just knowing where to focus their resources on filling potholes on cycle lanes. They just don't know which are the busiest cycle lanes. We felt like there was a real need for cyclists to be better represented in the data."

Our cracked bike seat post got a lot of ink

Cracked Citi Bike Seats Leave Riders' Pants Soaked After Storms, Users Say

An excerpt

BikeshareNYC, a blog about Citi Bike, recently surveyed 24 bike stations in the Financial District and Battery Park City and found that the majority of the docked bikes they checked — 68 percent — had cracked seats.

CHECK YOUR CITI BIKE SEAT

An excerpt

by DNAinfo’s Irene Plagianos: “Cracks on the seats of the shared blue bikes are becoming more prevalent, regular riders say — which creates a nuisance when rain seeps into the fissures and the seats stay soggy for days after a storm. … BikeshareNYC, a blog about Citi Bike, recently surveyed 24 bike stations in the Financial District and Battery Park City and found that [68%] of the docked bikes they checked … had cracked seats.”

Citi Bike struggling to keep up with huge repair backlog

An excerpt

BikeshareNYC, a blog about the system, inspected docked bikes at 24 stations  around the Financial District earlier this month — and found that a whopping 68 percent of them had cracked seats.

Citi Bike now consistently keeping empty/filled stations in Green Zone

Follow our advice or you stand a 68% chance for wet fanny tomorrow

Some are only slighty cracked. Others look
 the victim of wild dog packs

It’s gonna rain. Take along a plastic bag.

How do we know about your 68% chance? We physically inspected the 24 stations in the Financial District and Battery Park last week. Along that journey, we counted 545 docked bikes. Of those, 373 had cracked seats.

The good news: Citi Bike seems to have an aggressive replacement program under way. All the good seats are not pale gray survivors of the winter.  They all look brand spanking new.

Below is a list of the stations we visited

DOCKS	NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	CRACKED SEATS	BIKES DOCKED
47	Financial District	Barclay St & Church St	11	13
36	Financial District	Broadway & Battery Pl	18	33
43	Financial District	John St & William St	22	38
35	Financial District	Liberty St & Broadway	14	24
41	Financial District	Murray St & West St	23	33
37	Financial District	Old Slip & Front St	14	18
35	Financial District	Park Pl & Church St	10	16
42	Financial District	Pearl St & Hanover Square	12	18
39	Financial District	Front St & Maiden Ln	22	39
35	Financial District	Broad St & Bridge St	18	29
27	Financial District	Maiden Ln & Pearl St	18	22
47!!!	Financial District	Bus Slip & State St	35	45
36	Financial District	Cliff St & Fulton St	13	24
43	Financial District	Fulton St & William St	20	26
35	Financial District	Peck Slip & Front Street	17	26
29	Financial District	South St & Gouverneur Ln	15	19
39	Financial District	South St & Whitehall St	21	27
31	Financial District	Spruce St & Nasau St	5	10
31	Financial District	Water - Whitehall Plaza	11	18
24	Battery Park City	Little West St & 1 Pl	11	20
25	Battery Park City	South End Ave & Liberty St	3	7
39	Battery Park City	Vesey Pl & River Terrace	23	33
49	Battery Park City	West Thames St	6	7
39	Financial District	William St & Pine St	11	18

NotSpots not such a problem in recent weeks

The system operators got serious about addressing empty/filled stations in mid-June. The established pattern now is a rough Monday morning because weekend use scatters the bikes followed by gradual improvement as the week goes on.

Wall Street Journal profiles CitiBike’s mystery suitor

An excerpt

Much about Mr. Schulhof and his plans for bike-sharing remain a mystery. A Stanford-trained lawyer who studied French literature and government at Dartmouth College, Mr. Schulhof has spent much of his career inside corporate boardrooms and at private-equity firms.

This Facebook post captures NYC bike sharing in its finest moment

Under threatening skies last night outside Grand Central -- a HUGE thank you to the guy who with enormous trust and generosity handed me his bike when none of the docking stations were working -- no bikes in or out and the thunder was rumbling! "I only used 12 minutes" he said -- "get where you're going and dock it for me" - good luck! Now that's the bike share spirit!!

Hallie Tamez‎

July 16 at 4:11pm ·

App update announced

The app has been updated, CitiBike announced yesterday on its Facebook page. Enhancements include display of bike lanes and a station info refresh button.

What’s missing from looming CitiBike deal? Public sector participation

An excerpt:

For people who want to see bike-share succeed in New York, news that a new team might be taking over is welcome. Without an intervention, the system as it is being operated now seems headed for an inevitable decline, which would be very sad.

The question is, would the city be better off looking at a different model, one in which the public sector takes more control and more accountability, in exchange for greater transparency about the way bike-share is being handled?

Grand Central to Williamsburg: Reporter tails CitiBike No. 0919 for 12 hours

An excerpt:

Our bright blue Citibike, number 0919, starts its day early at the busiest Citibike station, on 42nd Street, outside Grand Central station. Last month, nearly 500 trips started or ended here every day.

7.50am Yuri K, 39, rushes towards Citibike 0919. He just got off the train from Westchester, Connecticut, and is on his way to his office in Tribeca in downtown Manhattan. "Yes, you can follow me," he says as he puts on his blue helmet. "I hope you don't mind going in the wrong direction on some streets."