Where do you want bike share?
by Hugo Torres-Fetsco
It was announced in November 2018 that Citi Bike would be getting a $100 Million investment from parent company Lyft to double the current service area and more than triple its number of bikes to nearly 40,000 on NYC streets. Some of the biggest criticism of Citi Bike is that it has not expanded to low-income and predominately minority neighborhoods lacking transportation options. The planned expansion will allow for more low-income New Yorkers to be within the service area and benefit from targeted Citi Bike membership discounts (i.e. $5/mo for NYCHA residents or SNAP recipients). In addition, there will be opportunities to improve upon the previous community engagement efforts.
1 Previous DOT Community Engagement Approach:
- In 2011 and 2012, New Yorkers could suggest bike-share stations at public workshops where participants mapped out where they wanted stations to go
- Eighteen months of meetings, demonstrations and discussion, 14 community planning workshops, and more than 10,000 online suggestions produced a vast quantity of information on where New Yorkers wanted to see Citi Bike stations
- DOT used that information to come up with a preliminary map of 600 bike-share stations
