Citi Bike: Bike-sharing in New York

[Riding across the Brooklyn Bridge, summer of 2010. Highly recommended; just be sure to have a good bell!]

At the end of this month, New York City is set to unveil a massive bike-sharing program. Many other cities around the world have such programs (Paris, Barcelona, Montreal, and Minneapolis, to name a few), and I’m so excited to see New York join the list.

David Byrne (the musician/artist who recently wrote The Bicycle Diaries) contributed an article to the Sunday Times about the new transportation program, Citi Bike, and has made me look forward to the development that much more. It really is thrilling to see New Yorkers once again reimagining the ways they navigate the city, be it on the water (with new ferry routes), underground (with a new subway line), or on land (with miles and miles of new bike lanes and now a whole new way to commute). This is intended to be for commuting: Monthly riders will incur overage charges if they use a single bike for longer than 45 minutes at a time. Daily and weekly riders can check out one bike for 30 minutes at most before paying additional fees.

The informational sessions have begun and I do hope that the introduction goes smoothly. Apparently they’ll be available for use July 31st–so I’m hoping Aron and I can just fit in a test-run before we leave.

Read David Byrne’s article about bike-sharing in New York, here. And a recent feature in NY Mag with a helpful Q-and-A here.
(Also, Jordan Ferney talks about Paris’ public bike-share program and its appeal to her on Oh Happy Day.)

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