Citi Bike is a privately owned public bicycle sharing system in New York serving the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, as well as Jersey City and Hoboken, New Jersey. Named after lead sponsor Citigroup, it was operated by Motivate (formerly Alta Bicycle Share), with former Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Jay Walder as chief executive until September 30, 2018, when the company was acquired by Lyft. The system's bikes and stations use technology from Lyft.
First proposed in 2008 by the New York City Department of Transportation, Citi Bike's scheduled 2011 opening was delayed by Hurricane Sandy and technological problems. It officially opened in May 2013 with 332 stations and 6,000 bikes. By October 2017 annual expansions brought the totals to 706 stations and 12,000 bikes, making the service the largest bike sharing program in the United States. Further expansions for Citi Bike are planned to extend its service area across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, and increase the number of bikes to 40,000.
In October 2017 the system reached a total of 50 million rides and in July 2020 the system reached 100 million rides. , there are 180,000 annual subscribers. Monthly average daily ridership numbers increased above 100,000 for the first time in June 2021. The all-time record for ridership in a single month occurred , when the system had 5.13 million rides.
History In an effort to reduce emissions, road wear, collisions, and road and transit congestion and to improve public health, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) researched alternative forms of transportation in the 2000s, publishing a strategic plan in 2008. According to NYCDOT statistics, 56% of all automobile trips within the city were under (with 22% under and 10% under ), well within distances readily served by bicycle. To encourage residents to use bicycles more, the city committed to expanding bike lane miles, bike racks, and bike-parking shelters. In the 2009 bicycle share feasibility report, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) recommended building out the system in three phases in the four most populous boroughs, but no timeline was made public.
Alta Bicycle Share operation
Development and delays
The city, which had already been encouraging cycling as transportation, decided to establish a bicycle share program of the kind that had seen success in other cities. In 2011, it selected Alta Bicycle Share to operate the bike share in New York City. Citi Bike was created as a public–private partnership operated by NYC Bike Share LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alta. The system, which was first supposed to start in fall 2011, was pushed back to summer 2012 due to uncertainties about where to place the rental stations. The city had originally intended to place Citi Bike stalls mostly on sidewalks and public plazas, but there were some locations where stalls would take up parking spaces. Only one phase of the program was to be implemented in 2012, with more phases to come later.
Software problems delayed the planned start until March 2013. These problems were also reported by Alta programs in Chicago and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The problems reportedly occurred because the Public Bike System Company, a Canadian affiliate of Alta, was involved in a dispute with software supplier 8D Technologies. Then, Hurricane Sandy damaged 1,000 bicycles and 60 stations in storage at Brooklyn Navy Yard. As planning progressed, some residents expressed dismay at the lack of docking stations in their neighborhoods while others fought against stations on their blocks.
Deployment Citi Bike began operations on May 27, 2013, with 332 stations. The stations were located in Manhattan south of 59th Street and in Brooklyn north of Atlantic Avenue and west of Nostrand Avenue. Officials said the system opened with 6,000 bikes. At the time of implementation, it was the largest bikesharing program in the United States. When launched, the system was slated to expand to 10,000 bicycles and 600 stations in Manhattan south of 79th Street, plus stations in several Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Greenpoint, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens as well as parts of Queens. At first, the timeline for the expansion was not made publicly available, but it was later announced that the expansion would be complete by the end of 2016. There has been increasing interest in further expansion across New York City; for example, in June 2013 a Brooklyn politician opened a petition drive to accelerate deployment in Greenpoint. In contrast, the May 2013 installation deliberately bypassed South Williamsburg.
Throughout the first year, there were more than 100,000 registered members who rode over , including 70,000 members in the first three months alone. On August 6, 2013, riders took 42,010 trips, the largest single-day total for any North American bike-sharing system. In Citi Bike's first few months, some kiosks docked too many bikes while others did not have enough, so the company started using a fleet of box trucks to carry bikes between different kiosks every day. The kiosks also had some software problems in their early months. Problems included stations that did not accept payment information; kiosks where passersby could take bikes without paying because the bikes were not locked securely; and bike docks that did not work at all, forcing riders to travel to other stations.
The deployment of a clean energy public transit system such as Citi Bike coincides with the sixth IPCC report on mitigation's call for an increase of modes of public transportation such as biking and walking. According to the report, "Case studies suggest that active mobility could reduce emissions from urban transport by 2%- 10% depending on the setting".
Popularity
Citi Bike's massive, unexpected popularity caused problems within a year. In January 2014, the designer of Citi Bike's bicycles and docking stations filed for bankruptcy protection. Officials with Montreal, Quebec-based Public Bike System Company (also known as Bixi) said they were $46 million in debt, partly because the operators of Citi Bike and Chicago's Divvy bikeshare had withheld a combined $5 million in payments because of software glitches in the docking stations. Alta officials, who operate Citi Bike, Divvy, and Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., said they anticipated no interruptions of service, though they did want $20 million to expand the system to 10,000 bikes and 600 stations.
Due to Citi Bike's various problems, expansions to the Upper East and Upper West Sides were delayed for at least a year. Its general manager resigned in March 2014. The new mayor, Bill de Blasio, stated that he wanted to expand Citi Bike's reach, but that he could not make city funds available for such an expansion at that time. By May, the city government wanted Motivate to pay $1 million to compensate for the parking spaces that had been removed for the docking stations.
Citi Bike workers joined Transport Workers Union of America Local 100 in July 2015. The company had about 200 employees joining the union at the time. That September, in the face of overwhelming support for unionization, Citi Bike agreed to recognize TWU Local 100's representation of Citi Bike's labor force.
Motivate operation
Reorganization On October 28, 2014, Alta Bicycle Share and NYCDOT announced a plan to improve and expand the Citi Bike program. Bikeshare Holdings LLC, a new entity formed by the partners at real estate developer Related Companies and gym chain Equinox Fitness, acquired Alta Bicycle Share—renamed Motivate—and named Jay Walder as the new chief executive. The increase of funding included $5 million from Bikeshare Holdings; $70.5 million from a 10-year extension of the Citigroup sponsorship; and $15 million from the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group. As part of the restructuring deal, Walder moved the company headquarters from Portland, Oregon, to New York City. The Citi Bike system would continue to be operated by NYC Bicycle Share, a subsidiary of Alta Bicycle Share. By 2017, Citi Bike was to expand its operations by 6,000 bikes and add 375 new docking stations. Motivate was to pay the city $5 million per year in parking fees. This agreement also called for improvements to the system's operations, including upgrades to its software and technology. The company was also appointing a vice president for technology.
Following two years of software errors in the bike share system, Motivate shut down the Citi Bike system over the last weekend of March 2015 to replace the existing system software with that of 8D Technologies. The new mobile platform was developed by the Polish software house Netguru. Since then, the Citi Bike system has continued to expand its installations using the 8D Technologies as its software and station equipment supplier. Through that summer, Motivate also refurbished all of the system's 6,000 bikes, as well as fixed the bicycle stations' kiosks and improved the bike docks at these stations.
Expansion to Jersey City and Queens
In early 2015, as part of its expansion, NYCDOT and Motivate increased the price of annual memberships from $95 to $149 plus taxes, although annual rates for New York City Housing Authority residents and members of some Community Development Credit Unions will remain at $60 per year. That year, the company installed 91 new stations in Queens and Brooklyn, with 12 of these stations in Long Island City and the other 79 in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Citi Bike also added 48 new stations on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, up to 86th Street. The system expanded across the Hudson River to Jersey City, New Jersey, on September 21, 2015, with 35 stations and 350 bikes. However, some Jersey City residents objected to the implementation of Citi Bike there, complaining of lost parking spots for cars. In July 2016, the Jersey City Citi Bike system was expanded for the first time, with another 15 stations and an additional 150 bikes.
In August 2016, the company started installing 139 new stations in Manhattan up to 110th Street and in Brooklyn between Red Hook and Prospect Park. The stations in the new installation were closer together than in previous phases because the previous phases had not fulfilled National Association of City Transportation Officials' recommended bike share-station density of . Some residents of Park Slope were outspoken in opposition to the loss of car parking. One month later, on September 13, 2016, the system saw 64,672 trips, the highest recorded in one day at the time.
After the December 2016 announcement of a further expansion to Harlem and Astoria, some city politicians proposed expanding the system further to the Bronx and Staten Island. By the end of 2017, Citi Bike planned to double its bike fleet to 12,000, with the possibility that some of the expansion could be publicly funded. On May 18, 2017, Motivate presented a proposal to expand the system in all five boroughs, including adding new stations to the Bronx and Staten Island, without any public funding. To make up for the lost tax funding, Motivate asked the city to waive fees charged for placing stalls inside former parking spots, as well as redesigning the payment hierarchy and possibly adding more ad space on pay stations.