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Citi Bike by the Numbers: Over 1.5 Million Miles Traveled in Nearly 650,000 Trips

By Ray Hu - July 3, 2013

in Cars

Well, now that the initial backlash has blown over, it's worth taking stock of New York City's fledgling bicycle-sharing program, Citi Bike. After several delays, the privately-funded public bikes launched just over five weeks ago, over Memorial Day weekend, and are widely regarded as a success thus far. Leonardo DiCaprio is just one of 125,000+ folks who have used the system at this point.

Image via Fan-Girl.org; the Daily Mail has the snarky commentary

Image via Fan-Girl.org; the Daily Mail has the snarky commentary

The NYC DOT's One Month Report Card turned up on Mayor Bloomberg's site last week, aggregating Citi Bike's daily-ish stats into a handy infographic.Citi Bike launched on May 27 to annual members and June 2 to users purchasing daily and weekly passes in the initial service area, including Manhattan below 59th Street and in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and DUMBO, with bike share stations located every few blocks. Citi Bike is the nation's largest bike share system and is funded by a $41 million sponsorship from Citi, one of the world's leading global banks, and without City subsidy.

Click for full infographic

Click for full infographicMeanwhile, Animal crunched the latest numbers (as of June 30), which indicate an appreciable spike in both the total number of trips taken and the mileage traveled: ostensibly 250,000+ miles in about 118,000 trips over the course of just four days.

Click for the full infographic

Click for the full infographic

Although I must admit that I am not a member myself, several of my diehard-cyclist friends who were born and raised in Manhattan are quite keen on the system, which is perhaps the surest sign that it's only a matter of time before having a Citi Bike membership is as commonplace as having a Metrocard. So too have NYC-based makers from filmmaker Casey Neistat to adafruit's Becky Stern—hardcore DIYers both—embraced Citi Bike as a blank canvas for creativity:

A friendly tip of the cycling cap to PSFK and Animal

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Bruce

11 years ago

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What's with the philosophy that things have to be ugly in order to indicate, "I'm different?" That's an ugly bike. The Prius is an ugly car, as is the Leaf (Tesla and Fisker are exceptions).
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Bob Shindel

11 years ago

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The NYPD does not seem to share our enthusiasm for the Bike Share program.
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Bill

11 years ago

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As a citibike user for a weekend - going all over NYC in 30 minute spurts - it's not a bad concept. It would be even better if more of the bases would work! So many problems with credit card reading, bikes not checking out or problems checking in, etc. It certainly has a lot of bugs that still need to be solved. As of end-June if this system is used a lot at this time you need to expect to spend as much time trying to find one that works as on a bike - which cuts way down on the practicality. Also, the 30 minute timespan between checking out/in is too short, even more so with so many bases not working. I hope with increased use they'll get these bugs worked out soon. I'm a huge fan of the idea. I just wish it worked better in practice.
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