Upper West Side Citi Bikers will get some help parking their bikes at a particularly busy station next month. The Citi Bike docking stations at 72nd and Columbus will have valets at peak usage times in early April, Citi Bike-operator Motivate said on its website.
If you’re bringing a bike to the station, you’ll still need to place it in a regular dock, but if none are available the valets will be able to take the bike from you instead of making you bike around to find another station. There will be icons on the Citi Bike map showing stations with valet service.
“We have limited availability based on off-station bike parking capacities, so look for a valet icon on the Citi Bike map for live service status before riding.
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I thought motorized “e-bikes” in NYC were illegal (the way they should be), now CITI bike offers them?
dafuq???
Citibikes are pedal-assist, which is legal. You’ll always see the rider pedaling; an electric motor helps out on the uphills, but does not let the rider go any faster.
The delivery e-bikes have an “accelerator” (throttle) which lets the rider control the motor so it acts like a scooter. I believe that a cop has to witness the rider moving without pedaling (ie. using it as a scooter) to cite them. If they’re pedaling, they’re getting motor assist and using them that way is legal.
It’s still not clear to me if delivery bikes are legal in NYC, or how they differ from, say, a motorized wheelchair or motorized skateboards or those stupid hoverboards. And whether it’s legal for any of those to use bike lanes.
Just like highways that fill up no matter how many lanes of traffic the Moses wannabes build, citibike demand will rise to take as many bikes the company can squeeze into any one spot.
The answer remains good mass transit.
Meanwhile, every single CitiBike docking station north of there are 95% empty, maybe 2-3 bikes, the rest empty docking stations. Pretty clear, most consider these commuter bikes, not ride around the city bikes… so plans must be adjusted accordingly. Like depending on how fast they fill up, they need to be trucked north to fill all those empty stations). Might mean multiple trips each day.
Mass transit suffers and declines – service and route cuts on buses, overcrowded subways, fare increases, etc.
And yet funding and policy support for bicycling just grows.
Valets?
Unbelievable.
Obesity also grows obscenely in the US. And who wouldn’t prefer fresh air to a rank subway platform for a delayed train? This is a great way to stay active.
Bike sharing quickly and affordably provides new transit options for underserved neighborhoods. In the UWS you maybe fortunate not to have to walk great distances to a convenient subway stop.
Also, I thought citibike was privately funded? Not much public subsidy at all?
But the metastasis in bike lanes choking streets like cholesterol on arteries is city funded and built on the backs of young families and the elderly.. Bikes don’t work for any families with small kids, anyone doing their week’s shopping, people with joint issues or bad knees, young and healthy people who can’t arrive sweaty at work, and anyone at all in rainy, super hot or freezing weather … so this is basically a bad joke for most upper west sliders. Not a joke? Further stripping street parking and formerly gracious north south arteries for the handful of folks so politicos can virtue signal their hip wokeness.
You are wrong on most counts. Citibike has been an immensely successful program, funded solely by private interests and users. Statistics show that the demographics of users are spread between 20s to 60s. I am a father of young children, and I use it daily except for during the rain and below freezing weather. I ride to work, to pick up my kids, to the store. And am am merely one of thousands who do likewise on a daily basis. If people are going to complain about changes in this city’s transportation, complain about Uber/Lyft, services that have flooded the streets with additional vehicles, usurping and financially affecting public transportation.
What most people don’t get is how terrifying biking in the city is for many older people, and with good reason. Younger people, who don’t think about things like injury and mortality, jump on the bikes, without helmets and take off. I both ride a bike (my own)- always with a helmet, drive a car, and take public transpo. But I don’t use Citibike. Besides its prohibitive cost, and the way it uses up too many parking spots which prevent many businesses from flourishing when parking on their block is removed, Citibike won’t help me shlep my groceries from Fairway to my house – because they’re not really designed to be useful that way (no baskets – just a “slot” with no sides). When I lock up my own bike, I know it has a spot and I can always find it. If every avenue had protected bike lanes, like Broadway, WEA. CPW, & around Columbus Circle, maybe more of the over-45 set would use Citibike. Maybe, when e-bikes are commonly available, I might consider using it to go from the UWS down to Battery Park, on a protected bike lane by the river.
Citibike isn’t subsidized by the City or State in any form. So you’re wrong there. Policy-wise it’s encouraged, and by the surging ridership numbers (especially by annual members) shows this is a thriving form of transportation.
As long as nobody considers the City’s providing valuable land to citibike for its stations, and the creation of bike lanes, you have a point.
Make no mistake, I have a citibike key and like it in theory (in use it’s just another means of commutation which makes it largely useless in residential neighborhoods most of the day).
But let’s not sugarcoat this.
You must hate all the city’s subsidies of private vehicles.
Why should we continue to subsidize the 23% of residents with private vehicles so much and give the majority of people next to nothing?
There is none.
Glad you agree that bike share deserves as much right to public space as any other mode of transportation.
We shouldn’t.
What’s your next question?
Since no taxpayer funds are used to support Citibike I fail to see what your point is.
A total disaster in the making.
And… cue the citibike complaints
1. Citibikes is not “free”.
Yes a corporation is funding – but that just means corporate customers are paying. Your banking fees etc. Corporate banking deals. Moreover Citibank could have donated money to support public transit for poor people or STEM education for low income students or any number of worthy causes. But Citibank chose this per Bloomberg Administration deal.
2. The City (with help from Feds) is paying for the entire bicycle infrastructure – bike lanes, street construction, signage. and space for Citibikes.
3. Valets for bikes sends a message that cyclists can’t be inconvenienced. Yet bus and subway riders get to be inconvenienced daily. Not OK IMO.