Today’s Headlines, 9/11/14 |
| The story |
Mathematicians worldwide tackle bike-share rebalancing
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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.
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| The storyT |
Citi Bike disputes Post's "one third of fleet in shop for repairs" 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.
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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.
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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
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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.
BikeBlogNYC
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Bikesharenyc.blogspot.com is your resident purveyor of NYC’s Citibike program. The site is helpful for things like tracking the “NotSpots” (stations with no bikes) shown here in a heat map of Manhattan with the white circles being completely empty..png)
Headlines: How #CitiBike compares to London & Paris, work zone safety push, Canarsie DUI, the B37 is back & more: http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/04/09/todays-headlines-1859/ …
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In a perfect world, every station would be half full and half empty, but Rademaekers recognizes just how complex the problem is. He’s hoping that his NotSpot index will provide a valuable way of visualizing the imbalances.
"I don’t want to put myself out there as the decision-maker about what is an acceptable service level," he says. "But if the blog started that conversation, that would be great."
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The length of time it takes for empty bike stations to get refilled has also been noted; since January, blogger Rademaekers has been displaying data on his blog on locations of empty bike stations, and how long it takes for empty bike racks in each Citi Bike station to be refilled. For instance, he noted in a blog post that Fort Greene’s Carlton & Park station had the worst record of the week, with the bike station being empty for 29.5 hours starting from February 24.
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But some Citi Bike stations have stayed empty for dozens of hours at a time, including the worst offender: the docking station at Tillary and Clinton streets in downtown Brooklyn. That station saw its 31-bike corral registered as empty for 365 hours — the equivalent of more than 15 days — since Jan. 1, according to the blog bikeshareNYC, which logs data on Citi Bike stations.
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According to the blog bikeshareNYC, which tracks these sorts of things, one station in downtown Brooklyn was empty for 15 days. “I believe that the system has a decent chance to become as necessary a part of the public transit mix as a taxi or an A train,” wrote the site’s concerned founder. “That can only happen if bicycles are consistently available in all served neighborhoods. And all served neighborhoods must be served equally.”
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A watchdog blog, bikeshareNYC, reported on Monday that 60 of the city’s 330 bike-share stations — nearly 20 percent — had no bikes at all.
At one station on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, bikeshareNYC says, the racks were empty for most of last week.
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A station on Broadway and Battery Place was also difficult to access because of a blanket of snow — and was branded last week’s “NotSpot” by the blog bikeshareNYC.
A DOT spokesman said New York City Bike Share, which is in charge of operating the system, must remove snow and maintain its stations. It also must shovel the sidewalks and street locations when necessary.
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