OPINION: Keep rollin in Brooklyn, Citi bikes!

July 15, 2015 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle
AP photo
Share this:

At least in the greater Downtown Brooklyn area, Citi Bike is doing just what it is supposed to be doing — providing bikes for short trips.

Citi Bike, the largest bike-sharing program in the United States, opened in 2013 as a partnership between Alta Bicycle Share, New York City and Citigroup. Despite early technical glitches, delays due to Superstorm Sandy and initial doubts that the program would catch on, Citi Bike is an accepted part of the landscape in many of the city’s neighborhoods.  

In Brooklyn, its territory stretches from Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant to Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights. Citi Bike still has only one bike station south of Atlantic Avenue, although the company’s website assures us that “planning work is continuing for Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.”

Citi Bike provides ridership data online, and we looked at the most recent month available, February of this year. In particular, we looked at rides starting at six Brooklyn locations: Clark and Henry streets, Brooklyn Heights; York and Jay streets, DUMBO; Johnson and Gold streets, Downtown Brooklyn; State and Smith streets, Boerum Hill; Joralemon and Adams streets, Civic Center; and Cadman Plaza West and Montague Street, Civic Center.

We looked at data for about 180 rides and found several consistent patterns. In general, people are using Citi Bike the way its founders intended — to go short distances in their neighborhood or nearby. For example, riders might cycle from Brooklyn Heights to Downtown Brooklyn or Fort Greene. Only one person returned the bike at the same place they picked it up — clearly, Citi Bike is rarely for the novice biker who only wants to ride two or three times around the block.

Even though most people rode within Brooklyn, a substantial minority of bicyclists used their Citi Bikes to ride to Manhattan — almost always to Lower Manhattan neighborhoods such as Chinatown or the Lower East Side.  The number of Manhattan-bound riders was largest at Johnson and Gold streets and York and Jay streets. There’s a simple explanation — both of these locations are close to the approach to the Manhattan Bridge.

One finding was fairly surprising. The male riders far outnumbered the female riders. In their 1960s hit song “Surf City,” Jan and Dean bragged about “two girls for every boy,” but here, it’s five men to every woman. Possible explanations include a greater concern for safety among women and that women are more likely to own their own bikes.

As far as age is concerned, the majority of bicyclists whose rides we surveyed were under 40 years of age, reflective of a generation that thinks of bicycling as transportation, not recreation. However, there were also a significant number of bicyclists who were born in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. We also found one hardy biker who was born in 1941 (who used the Clark Street location) and one born in 1947 (who used the Cadman Plaza West location).  By and large, the older bikers rode the same distances as the younger ones — these are probably people who have been riding for many years.

Finally, the number of riders at the six sites who are “subscribers,” paying a yearly fee to Citi Bike, far outnumbered the “customers,” who only signed up for short-term use. A look at the figures for July 2014 shows that the number of riders who are customers was greater in the summer — clearly, fair-weather bike riders aren’t that interested in pedaling around in the winter months.

All in all, we’re glad to see that Citi Bike is working. Hopefully, they’ll get busy with their expansion into Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Crown Heights and elsewhere.

Raanan Geberer, a freelance writer, recently retired as Managing Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He had been Managing Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Bulletin until 1996, when the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was revived and merged with the Bulletin.

 

Subscribe to our newsletters


Leave a Comment


Leave a Comment