One of the tricky things about a bike share program is managing the high traffic racks. How do you keep them from emptying out and/or getting over-filled.
Here’s a look at how Citi Bike handles the Penn Station bike racks.
Category: Brooklyn
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1 Million Rides
It took less then 4 weeks to hit 1 million miles. In less than 7 weeks Citi Bikes have gone on more than 1 million rides.
https://twitter.com/CitibikeNYC/status/356401571078225921
It’s getting hard to argue that Citi Bike isn’t a smash hit. Citi Bike locations are even showing up in real estate ads.
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Huge Numbers of Citi Bike Riders Will be Hurt! Also Locusts!
The press (notably, but not exclusively the NY Post) was full of predictions of injuries, death and other calamities from Citi Bike. Some examples below.
The truth?
After 31 days:
- Over 500,000 rides
- Three minor injuries
Three. Uh, we get that many at a typical street fair.
I promised examples of fear mongering:
Mild:
NY Daily News: Bicycle Roulette
Medium:
NY Observer: Citi Bike Floods Streets With Thousands of Uninsured Cyclists
And the NY Post (which just hates Citi Bike):
Well, that was fast! First Citi Bike cycle stolen
New York City bike-share program bans riders who weigh more than 260 pounds
Uneasy riders: City’s bike share off to rocky start
Riding a Citi Bike an uphill battle — as bulky, 45 lb. units not easy to maneuver
I posted this before, but the Venn Diagram of why conservatives hate Citi Bike is the best explanation.
It’s Vaguely French…
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CitiBike is my new iPhone
I’m obviously a CitiBike fan, but check out this article in Business Insider.
I can’t remember something that’s made so many people so happy here in such a short time since the iPhone launched. It’s going to be really interesting to see how the Citi Bike program changes New York.
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Imagine
You are a gay man (I’ve just alienated 95% of my audience). You live in NYC. You meet another man and fall in love. He’s from Columbia. You go through the usual dating motions and decide this is real. This being NYC, you get married because that is now legal.
Oh crap, he’s not a citizen.
New York says you are married, but the feds do not. His visa has expired. Columbia is not one of our favored nations so immigration is tricky.
If he were a she, this would be easy. But he is a he, so it’s not.
He’s about to be deported.
Today happens. DOMA is dead.
This morning our intern, Gabe, ran the 77-page ruling and delivered it the Immigration Court five blocks from our office. It was still warm from the printer.
Can you imagine this? Your husband is about to be deported and a Supreme Court ruling saves the day. We think of these rulings in grand policy terms but sometimes they are very personal.
As Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local”.
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Brooklyn Soccer
Regular readers know that my two nephews are big soccer players. The oldest, Mike, has graduated college but wants to keep playing. He has friends in Brooklyn, so they invited him to play in a Monday night league. You have to love soccer to drive almost two hours each way for a game.
But the setting is fantastic. As part of the continued expansion of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 5 has been built out with three nice turf soccer fields. On a nice summer night, it’s a great place to watch a soccer game.
The fields look like this, with lower Manhattan in the background. Mike was playing on the field farthest to the back:
And the obligatory view of Manhattan from the end of the pier:
Really a great spot and a nice night to watch soccer with family.
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Jay Z Magna Carta
So Jay-Z did a deal with Samsung to make his new album available for free for Samsung Galaxy owners. The app became available today, so as an S3 owner I installed it.
The first thing it asks is to login with Twitter or Facebook. You cannot continue until you do so.
I tried Twitter first. Twitter does a good job of telling you the access the app is asking for. Among other things, it is asking for access to:
- Follow new people (presumably Jay-Z)
- Update your profile (what?)
- Post tweets for you (double what?)
Needless to say, I did not click accept.
I tried the Facebook login. Facebook gives zero warnings about what saying Accept means. Do I think that means I’m giving up less if I use Facebook? Uh, no. I think it means that Twitter is honest and Facebook is not.
But I frankly don’t care a ton about my Facebook account and I think people on Facebook are used to random Facebook updates from apps that aren’t real. So I’m going to try the Facebook login as an experiment.
It’s not like I’m a big Jay-Z fan. My tastes go to Jazz in the 50’s. But my girls do like Jay-Z (and I appreciate him as a Brooklyn guy) so I’ll give it a whirl.
If you follow me on Facebook and get random Jay-Z stuff, you know why…
UPDATE:
After you login to Facebook, it does warn you that you are giving them access to your timeline, friend list and birthday. It did not say it could post for me or update my profile. Creepy enough, but I’m giving it a shot.
Free stuff = give up your privacy.
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One Million Miles
Tomorrow NYC CitiBike will hit one million miles ridden in less than a month.
There have been mild glitches, major complaints, but overall I don’t see how this is anything but a rousing success.
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Salmoning
This week my daughter Danielle is in a summer art camp. We scooter there together in the morning, so I’m not using CitiBike. Which has given me an interesting view into which is better, biking or scootering.
In general, biking is the clear winner. Faster and more comfortable.
But Brooklyn, and Dumbo in particular, have some characteristics that make biking tricky. Lots of one way streets, cobblestone and some hairy intersections traffic-wise. The advantage of the scooter is that you can ride in a bike lane when that is convenient, or move to the sidewalk when that is more convenient. I’ll also go the wrong way on a one way street when that is more convenient (not like I can hurt anyone with my scooter).
So I was amused to see this article in Gothamist, “In Defense of Cyclist Salmoning”. I didn’t even realize riding a bike the wrong way on a one way street had a name. The examples he gives are my exact issues riding to and from work. Point A in this map is the CitiBike rack right outside my office.
This one, right behind my office, is an even better example. There is no biker on the planet who goes from A to B legally in this case:
And while I rarely have to get to this point B, I often scooter that exact route through the park. But I don’t bike it which forces me several blocks out of my way.
So sometimes scootering is more convenient than biking.
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 