Streetsblog New York City

The line-up at today's bike-share presser: Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, Alta Bikeshare CEO Alison Cohen, NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. Photo: Noah Kazis

The largest bike-share system in North America will be sponsored by one of the world’s largest financial institutions. At City Hall today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $41 million, five-year sponsorship arrangement with Citigroup that will fund most of the cost of implementing NYC’s bike-share network. The system will go by the name “Citi Bike,” and its distinctive blue bikes will be available in late July, with the full 10,000-bike, 600-station network in place by spring 2013.

MasterCard, putting in $6.5 million, will be the secondary sponsor. Its logo will appear on all the station kiosks, where bike-share users can sign up by swiping their credit cards. The sponsorship announcement clears up the last big unknown about how the system would be funded. After the initial capital investment in setting up the system, the city and operator Alta Bikeshare expect Citi Bike to turn an operational profit.

It was also an occasion to see how much it pleased the chiefs of two large multi-national corporations to associate their brands with bike-share. “We could not do what we do” without New York City’s infrastructure, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told the assembled reporters, calling bike-share “an innovative option, kind of like ZipCar,” but “better for the environment and it’s also good exercise.” Said MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, ”The bike-share program is just another way to continue that ‘priceless’ New York feeling.”

Announcing that the timetable for launching the full 10,000-bike system will extend into spring 2013, Bloomberg said, “You’re getting an entirely new transportation system without spending any taxpayer dollars.”

About two-thirds of the system — 420 stations — will be available soon after the July launch, according to the Citi Bike website, with “parts of the Upper West and East Sides, and Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights” getting stations by next spring. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that Long Island City, Queens will also be included in the system. “It’s going to be a phased deployment,” she said.

The full system map will be available later this week, Bloomberg said, the result of copious online feedback and 250 meetings with community boards, BIDs, and other stakeholders. If any location doesn’t work out at first, he added, the solar-powered kiosks are easy to pick up and move elsewhere without construction.

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Photo: Ben Fried

Banking giant Citi will be the primary sponsor of New York’s bike-share system, set to launch this summer with 600 stations and 10,000 bikes in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Mayor Bloomberg and NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan made the announcement a short while ago at City Hall, where bikes and a logo-adorned station are temporarily on display.

We’ll have more on this morning’s event later today. For now, enjoy the photos — and congratulations to reader Mike, who called it.

Photo: Ben Fried

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From the mayor’s press schedule:

*11:00 AM Announces Sponsor of Bike Share Program with Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan

City Hall Plaza

MANHATTAN

*Q & A to follow. A Bike Share station with the sponsor’s decals will be temporarily located in City Hall plaza for the announcement.

So the biggest piece of the funding puzzle for launching New York City bike-share is in place, and we’ll get a good look this morning at how the bikes and stations will appear. Any guesses who’ll have their logo on the system’s 600 stations?

The general shape of the pricing scheme for New York’s bike-share system – an annual membership cheaper than a monthly Metrocard, according to the early buzz from DOT – has been floating out there for a while. Now, with the system set to go live in July, the details are starting to get nailed down.

Speaking at the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show last weekend, DOT policy director Jon Orcutt revealed the current thinking on how much it’ll cost to use one of the 10,000 public bicycles soon to appear on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Doug Gordon moderated the discussion, and he’s got the info on his blog:

• An annual membership will cost $95.
• A one-day membership will cost $10.
• The first 45 minutes of any ride will incur no additional charges to annual members beyond the initial subscription fee.
• Lower membership levels, such as one-day and multi-day options, will have a shorter “free” ride limit: 30 minutes.

As Gordon notes, nothing’s set in stone until the system goes into operation. Also, both Washington, D.C. and Boston have offered online deals to price-conscious consumers who passed on the first wave of sign-ups.

New Yorkers anxious for bike-share to move from concept to reality should be getting an even bigger treat shortly. The preliminary map of all 600 station locations is expected to be posted online in the very near future.

New bike lanes are in the process of being striped on ten out of Hoboken's 32 miles of street this year. Image: City of Hoboken

By the end of this year, it’s going to be very, very easy to bike around Hoboken.

Thanks to an ordinance unanimously approved by the Hoboken City Council last year, the city is now at work implementing ten miles of new bike lanes. That number might seem small, until you realize that Hoboken only has 32 miles of streets in total. Throw in the almost two and a half miles of existing bike lanes in the Mile Square City, and just about 40 percent the streets in town will have bike lanes. Include sharrows and approximately 80 percent of the streets in Hoboken will have some kind of cycling designation.

A redesign of Observer Highway, hopefully scheduled for this year, will include a two-way protected bike lane leading cyclists directly to Hoboken's transit hub. Image: City of Hoboken

The marquee bike project, though, is the city’s ongoing redesign of Observer Highway, where a federally funded project will add a 0.34 mile two-way protected bike lane (also known as a cycle track), among other changes. The city wants to rechristen the road, which runs right to Hoboken’s multi-modal transit hub, as “Observer Boulevard.” That project could be completed this year, though if federal approvals lag it will be pushed into 2013, according to city spokesperson Juan Melli.

Most of the cycle tracks built in the United States have been located in large cities — New York City’s protected Ninth Avenue lane helped prove the viability of the treatment — but Hoboken’s plans are part of a new trend as protected lanes start to pop up in smaller cities and towns. Evanston, Illinois is building a cycle track this summer to provide a safe connection to its waterfront path.

On top of the new bike lanes, Hoboken hopes to launch a joint bike-share system this summer, said Melli. The program would be run in conjunction with the Hudson County Transportation Management Association, so that the system can expand into Jersey City, which is also interested in bike-share, and then to other neighboring towns. An RFP is expected this spring.

This impressive commitment to the city’s bike infrastructure is just a part of Hoboken’s larger investment in sustainable transportation. Under Mayor Dawn Zimmer and Transportation Director Ian Sacs, Hoboken has also planned a slew of pedestrian safety improvements, created space for car-sharing across the city, offered a basket of incentives for residents who give up their vehicles, urged drivers to stick below 20 miles per hour and revitalized its shuttle bus service.

Hubway bikes at Boston's South Station. The bike-share stations at Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal will be even larger than this one, and there will be three at each transit hub. Photo: Will Sherman

The Department of Transportation is currently going around to community boards and presenting preliminary maps of bike-share locations. While the map for the full service area isn’t finished yet, the details that have come out so far are pretty exciting.

One of the big questions we had about station siting concerned the bike-transit connection. Namely, how is our bike share system going to handle New York City’s biggest commuter hubs: Penn Station, Grand Central and the Port Authority Bus Terminal? Based on the preliminary presentation made to Manhattan Community Board 4 this week, the answer is that bike-share is going big.

At Penn Station and Port Authority, rather than build a single station big enough to meet the enormous demand, DOT and Alta Bicycle Share have decided to build three stations at each location, with around 50 or 60 docks at each. At Port Authority, the plan is for a total of 140 docks, according to CB 4 transportation committee co-chair Christine Berthet. At Penn Station, there will be 180 docks.

For a little perspective, Capital Bikeshare, currently the nation’s largest bike-share system, only has 23 docks in front of Washington D.C.’s Union Station, with the same number at a station a couple of blocks away. Boston’s North and South Stations only have a single nearby Hubway station each, with about 45 docks at both locations.

In other words, the most important sites in New York City’s bike-share system are, fittingly, super-sized. With the biggest transit system in the country, it’s only appropriate to give those riders the biggest bike-share stations for the last mile of their trip.

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In a few weeks, the bike-share station map that accompanies this legend will be available online. Image: NYC DOT

After several months of public meetings and online feedback on bike-share station siting, NYC DOT is beginning to tour community boards with preliminary station maps in preparation for launching North America’s most expansive bike-share system this July.

Yesterday evening, NYC DOT Policy Director Jon Orcutt walked the transportation and public safety committee of Manhattan Community Board 3 through the current station siting plan for the district, showing roughly a dozen map segments with a handful of stations pinpointed on each. The agency will be making adjustments to the station plan based on feedback from community board members. A preliminary station map of the whole service area will be available online in the next few weeks, Orcutt said, and the system is on track to launch sometime in July.

In the CB 3 district, which encompasses Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the East Village, DOT aimed to put most stations on the street in response to the board’s request to avoid taking up sidewalk space. The committee was pleased with the site selection, with District Manager Susan Stetzer saying the agency did “a good job” of locating stations. Community board members suggested a few places to add stations and one or two sites they’d like to see shifted elsewhere. Overall they seemed pretty jazzed about getting bike-share up and running.

DOT is waiting until they’ve completed the entire system map before posting station locations online, so I don’t have a map to share, but here are a few takeaways from last night’s presentation.

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This is the third in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Previous installments covered pedestrian improvements and the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

An Ecobici station in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. This station was full of bikes, but a nearby station was nearly empty. Photo: Noah Kazis

Mexico City never had much of a reputation as a bicycle city. Traffic is terribly congested and extremely dangerous — drivers don’t even have to take an eye exam to get a license — and until recently, the air was thick with smog no one hoped to inhale too deeply.

Under the leadership of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, however, Mexico City is taking a multi-pronged approach toward becoming bike-friendly, making changes to its streets, its laws and its culture. Most important has been the introduction of a new bike-share system, Ecobici, that’s expanding rapidly.

In 2007, when Ebrard began a concerted effort to improve cycling, half of all trips were less than eight kilometers long, yet only one percent of trips were made by bike. The city resolved to boost cycling to five percent of all trips in just five years. Mexico City has made big strides under Ebrard but will probably need more time to hit the initial five-year target. Today bicycle mode-share is between two and three percent of trips, according to ITDP.

At the center of the city’s effort is Ecobici, which launched two years ago. A public bike-sharing system funded mainly by the government, Ecobici offers 1,200 bikes at 90 stations, making it comparable in scope to Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare but far smaller, for the time being, than systems in London and Paris.

As of today the system can only be found in the trendy Condesa neighborhood, which is often compared to New York City’s Soho. Even limited to one neighborhood, however, demand is sky-high. To ensure quality service for the 30,000 current members, Ecobici has had to set up a waiting list for new subscribers. Otherwise there just wouldn’t be enough bikes to go around, explained Ivan De La Lanza, coordinator of Mexico City’s bicycle mobility strategy. Each bike is already being taken out an average of 10 times per day.

Though Ecobici is only available in a single neighborhood, a full 40 percent of new cyclists in the city use the system, said De La Lanza. It also may be encouraging others to get on their bikes more. According to Good magazine, the use of personal bikes rose 50 percent in the year that Ecobici opened.

A map hanging in Ecobici headquarters shows the current extent of the system along with two expansions planned for this year. Photo: Noah Kazis

This year, the system is set for not one but two major expansions. In June, the service area will spread east, into the Roma neighborhood and Mexico City’s historical downtown. Then in November, Ecobici will move west, surrounding the Bosque Chapultepec — Mexico City’s equivalent of Central Park — and expanding into the business-oriented Polanco area. Membership is expected to skyrocket to between 73,000 and 100,000 users, according to Ecobici official Oscar Montiel.

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This column on the “super-users” of Boston’s Hubway bike-share system was a breath of fresh air after reading some of our local NYC coverage depicting bike-share planning as a raging conflict between car owners, pedestrians, and bike advocates.

Writer Jonathan Simmons does a quick profile of the Hubway customers who use the system more than anyone else:

With Hubway set to reopen next week, I was interested in hearing from the Gold Club riders (the 6 men and women who logged the most trips on Hubway) about their experience with biking around town. Here’s what I learned.

To begin with, none of these Gold Club members are what you’d describe as a “hardcore cyclist.” Typical of the group was Andrew Schwartz, who prior to joining Hubway had not ridden a bike in years. Likewise, Caroline Fridmar (who racked up 166 trips on Hubway last year) is a self-described “casual cyclist” who likes to pedal from her home in the North End to her job as a concierge at the Ritz Carlton. Hubway bikes are so comfortable that she often wore high heels and a dress for her commute.

Here’s the thing about bike-share: Whether you consider yourself a cyclist or not, it provides a convenient way to make trips in a city environment. In fact, the people who get the most out of bike-share are the subscribers who have no bike of their own. You can have an unlimited Metrocard and still get a lot out of bike-share — using it to make trips that start or end where the transit system doesn’t go. You can own a car and still get a lot out of bike-share — making short errands without the hassle of searching for parking.

In some ways, the same goes for bike lanes and bus lanes too. They’re not only for the people who already bike and ride the bus. They’re for the would-be cyclists who need the streets to be safer and the would-be bus riders who need bus trips to be speedier in order to switch modes.

Bike-share is going to make it more obvious that providing new transportation options is not a zero sum game where one interest group has to lose in order for another to gain. Once the system goes live, the biggest winners are going to be New Yorkers who aren’t cyclists.

One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.