The snowstorm and the numbers

Here's what we know about how the bike-share system is recovering after the Jan. 2-3 snowstorm (written as we ride into the Jan. 5 ice pellet event.)

7 am status in Manhattan

MORNING SURVEY	1/5/2014 7:00:00
NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS
Battery Park City	Little West St & 1 Pl	15
Financial District	Liberty St & Broadway	58
Financial District	Water - Whitehall Plaza	8
Hells Kitchen	W 56 St & 10 Ave	6
Lincoln Square	W 59 St & 10 Ave	17
Meatpacking District	Washington St & Gansevoort St	22
Midtown East	E 55 St & Lexington Ave	18
Midtown East	2 Ave & E 58 St	14
Midtown North	E 53 St & Madison Ave	1
Midtown South	Broadway & W 32 St	12
Murray Hill	E 39 St & 2 Ave	15
Tudor City	E 43 St & 2 Ave	18
West Village	Christopher St & Greenwich St	7
TOTAL STATIONS 13	TOTAL NOTSPOT HOURS	211
11 STATIONS REOPENED SINCE 730PM 1/4	TOTAL NOTSPOT HOURS FOR THOSE STATIONS	128.75

So what it's saying is that there are (as current as we can get) 13 stations where there are no bicycles or all docks are occupied. Then we report the total hours of no service (NotSpot hours) that those 13 stations have racked up so far.

Under the gray line, we report stations that were NotSpots last evening but now have bikes. We follow that with the total hours those 11 stations were just hunks of metal squatting on formerly perfectly good car parks.

That we can provide the length of time that a station is out of service is made possible by Oliver's Wonderful Map.  So going forward, we ought to be able to start zeroing in on what's an acceptable level of service. Maybe the New Year's Storm of 2014 will service as a benchmark.(A pox on this Winter Storm Hercules business -- Hercules runs the laundry room.)

7 am status in Brooklyn

MORNING SURVEY	1/5/2014 7:00:00
NEIGHBORHOOD	STATION	NOTSPOT HOURS
Boerum Hill	State St & Smith St	14.75
Brooklyn Heights	Columbia Heights & Cranberry St	12
Clinton Hill	DeKalb Ave & Vanderbilt Ave	21
Clinton Hill	Washington Ave & Greene Ave	17
Downtown	Cadman Plaza E & Tillary St	15
Downtown	Clinton St & Tillary St	15
Fort Greene	Myrtle Ave & St Edwards St	58
Fort Greene	Clermont Ave & Lafayette Av	14
Navy Yard	Flushing Ave & Carlton Ave	15
Williamsburg	S 3 St & Bedford Ave	58
TOTAL STATIONS 10	TOTAL NOTSPOT HOURS	181.75
1 STATIONS REOPENED SINCE 730PM 1/4	TOTAL NOTSPOT HOURS FOR THOSE STATIONS	18

Friday evening status

Manhattan

The smaller the dot the fewer the bikes

Midtown to the north and west is a desert. Lower East Side has recovered from midday

Brooklyn

NotSpots are scattered.

Getting out of the Financial District

Getting out of the Financial District can be bewildering. If you're west of Broadway, once you've made your way to the West St. bike lanes, you're good for any uptown destination. But following the East River, if you're destination is inland, the river lane takes you way out of your way.

Take our advice and do not depend on the nice green lines that denote bike lanes around and through City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge and the courts and jails quarter, aka Civic Center. It's all just too much of everything and a portage across the City Hall Plaza is guaranteed.

So here's how you escape Wall St for Union Square and the world beyond. And we even get you back downtown:
:

Northbound=black

• Make your way to Water St and head north (the river should be to your right). Water St. is relatively easy to navigate, although there is no bike lane. But the cabs and the double-parkers create a lot of open space.
• Water St. turns into Pearl St. Pearl St. turns into St. James Pl (and you never made a turn). The toughest part of this stretch is going under the Brooklyn Bridge. There, beware of cars trying to make a right. They really don’t see you.
• St. James ends at Worth St. As you make left, get in middle, not right turn lane. Cross intersection and after one block, turn right off Worth St. onto Mulberry St.
• This is the fun part. Follow Mulberry through Chinatown, Little Italy, and Nolita, It’s one lane and your bike is often faster than their hunk of metal. Don’t ring your bell in frustration.
• After crossing Houston, Mulberry ends at Bleeker St. Get totally illegal and make a left, then a quick right onto the Lafayette St. bike lane
• Take Lafayette north through the East Village to E 9th St.
• Take E 9th St. can take you anywhere you want.

Southbound=red

• From E 10th St. take 2nd Ave south. Careful after E 2nd St. You must cross traffic and get into right lane before crossing Houston St.
• After Houston, you’re on Chrystie St. Cross Chrystie at Stanton (left) into the park.
• Take Stanton (a bike lane) out of the park to the Allen St. bike lane.
• Take Allen St. all the way to the East River bike lane and make a right. Allen St. even has red and green lights specific to the bike lane. Take heed. They protect you from traffic turning right.
• And yes, you could take Allen St/1st Ave/9th st northbound. But then you wouldn’t have seen it on Mulberry St., would you?

Midday status

This is the "bike finder" view at the O'Brien Map for midday today.
Bikes look most scarce in Upper West Side, Lower East Side and scattered throughout Brooklyn.

Another cool map from WNYC

WNYC's map focuses on the other side of the bike-sharing street -- stations that AREN'T being used.

The yellow icons in the screenshot indicates stations where a bike hasn't docked or undocked in three hours or more.

The shot was taken just at the end of the Jan. 2-3 snowstorm so unusage is unusually high.

Our Eureka moment: Discovering the O'Brien map

We've started building out the News Archive  and in doing so came across  Oliver O'Brien's Wonderful Map.
Mr. O'Brien is a suprageographist at the Center for Advanced Spatial in London.

What's wonderful about it? What can it tell us that the official map does not?

For one, it gives us the ability to track NotSpots over time. Heretofore, we were limited to capturing a moment in time, e.g. Broad St & Bridge St. has no bikes at 6:30 a.m. And again, Broad St & Bridge St. has no bikes at 11:30 a.m. But we couldn't say what happened in between those times.
Now we can say Broad and Bridge has been bikeless for the last 10 hours. Althjough, of course, we hope we never have to say that.

For another, the O'Brien map contains this real-time status bar telling you how many bikes are available citywide. While that number may be only of macro interest right now, I'm sure we'll find some sort of threshold number that reliably indicates when Sharers can expect to feel some pain.










So as you can see, we've incorporated the O'Brien map into the right rail of the blog. A caveat, don't be put off by the default colors (above right). With a little fiddling, we found that there's the ability to change colors.

We think we're going to find the gray-scale view the most helpful.  The screenshot (above left) taken Jan 2 at 12:11 pm, clearly shows three bike-sharing "deserts" -- the Upper West Side, the Lower East Side, and in Brooklyn, Fort Greene eastwards.

Sorry boss, can't make it in. They took all the bikes away

This, the  Broad St & Bridge Station, is probably what the 14 other stations that reported being empty during our morning survey look like.

Our guess is that this is an interesting glimpse at what the bike-share operators do when it's NOT snowing -- that as these stations emptied out, they would be rebalanced by crews with truckloads of bikes. But not last night. Every one of the 14 stations has been empty for 12 hours or more as of 7 am

The NotSpots are kind of a theoretical problem, given the 15F temp and the slush on the streets (but we did spot a delivery guy).

The interesting question is how long will it take the operators to recover.