Help Citi Bike Expand to Our Neighborhood

Since Citi Bike launched in 2013, many of you have been asking the same question: When is it coming to our neighborhood?

I’m pleased to report that we’ve got an answer: 2016.

Next year, Citi Bike will be expanding into Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Red Hook. And right now, you’ve got a chance to help identify good locations for the bike-share stations (or places you don’t think a station would make sense).

It’s no secret that Citi Bike hit some bumps along the way. But under new leadership, they’ve taken great strides – with both new bikes [1] and stations, and hardware and software [2] that are getting great reviews.

Now, Citi Bike is moving forward with a long-promised expansion, doubling the system from 6,000 to 12,000 bikes, adding many new neighborhoods, and finally expanding into ours! 

This means a great new transportation resource. Citi Bike is especially good for short trips that are far to walk and not well served by existing transit – when you’re headed to the subway, the greenmarket, the park, a restaurant, or a friend’s home across the neighborhood. Or when your day makes it easier to head into work on the F train, but home on the 2/3, and many other instances.   

Right now, Citi Bike and the NYC Department of Transportation want to get as much feedback as possible from you to help them make informed decisions about where to site the bike share stations.

In June, DOT and Citi Bike held a meeting with Community Board 6 where community members could look at a preliminary map of possible stations. In case you couldn’t make it to the meeting, DOT has provided this map of potential bike share locations in our district [3].

Please take a look and think about where you’d like to see a bike share station – and/or where you think a bike share station doesn’t make sense (much better to say so now, rather than later in the process). Then fill out this google form [4] to give your feedback to DOT.

A few things to know about the map:

• There will be approximately one bike share station per purple gridded square on the map. This ensures that stations are evenly distributed, and that they are about a five-minute walk away from one another.

• The icons on the map represent potential station sites. In some places, it will make sense to put the station on sidewalks, and in others it will make more sense to put the station on the edge of the street. You can see sidewalk and street planned stations on the key on the map. There are many more potential sites on the map than there will be stations.

• The numbers inside the circle, square and triangle icons are just for DOT to keep track of each site and don’t mean anything. 

It’s taken a lot of hard work and advocacy to get Citi Bike to start coming into our neighborhoods, and it’s going to take even more hard work to ensure that we have a successful and smooth implementation.

I know DOT and I both look forward to hearing your feedback.

-Brad

P.S. I’m excited that many of our neighborhoods are included in Citi Bike’s expansion plans – but I’m continuing to push for Citi Bike to expand not only to the rest of my district, but across the rest of NYC.

That’s why I’m sponsoring legislation [5] to make sure that Citi Bike provides regular, transparent data to the City about its ridership and profits.

At some point, getting a fair and comprehensive bike share system across NYC will likely require public funding. While it’s great that we’ve gotten this far with private funds, bike share shouldn’t only be available in neighborhoods where it pays for itself. The information from my legislation will help in our efforts to expand bike share in a way that is equitable, and supports better transportation for all New Yorkers.