Freak out. New York City bike share program, Citi Bike, has arrived at last, to much ado. It's being lauded as eco-friendly, good for personal health, the next advance in the country's most robust public transit system, and more evidence of the rise of the sharing economy.
This is all true, to some degree. But lest we forget, ever since the Dutch started selling beaver fur here in the early 1600s, New York City has been motivated by and large by one thing: making a buck. In this spirit of capitalist realism, here's whose pockets are getting lined by NYC’s bike invasion.
CITIGROUP
Surprise. A bank. Citi bought itself naming rights with a $41 million investment in the bike share program (MasterCard is throwing in another $6.5 million in sponsorship), sparing taxpayers from shouldering the expense. It’s a lot of money, and it’s a LOT of branding. Citi’s logo is splashed in two prominent locations on 6,000 bright blue bikes in 300 locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn, with plans to nearly double those numbers as the program expands.
NEW YORK CITY
This corporate investment means the bike program is actually expected to turn a profit (this is New York, people!) from the fees it charges users. Non-sponsored models, like Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., are struggling to generate any revenue (thanks to expensive operating costs you don’t think about, like redistributing the bikes at the end of the day). Already 15,000 people have signed up for Citi Bike, whose pricing model targets tourists and locals alike:
$95 for annual membership (the subway is $104 per month); unlimited 45-minute rides
$25 for a week; unlimited 30-minute rides
$9.95 for a day; unlimited 30-minute rides
$1,000 fee if you keep the bike over 24 hours or it's lost or stolen
Then there are the jobs. The NYC Department of Transportation predicts the program will create 170 “green-collar” jobs that will boost the local economy to the tune of $36 million a year.
TECH STARTUPS
Apps! The new program throws the doors open for the next transit app micro-industry. I mean, the apps started rolling in before the bikes did. As WYNC's Transportation Nation wrote early this month, "A Belgian company has released the first 'live' mobile app for NYC bike share users, before there are any users." Likewise, the official Citi Bike app was out four days before the program launched.
We can surely expect the coming months and years to follow the MTA’s lead, which has been encouraging the development of creative web and mobile apps to make riding the subway more enjoyable, even hosting hackathons to breed ideas.
MAYBE LOCAL BUSINESSES, BUT DEFINITELY NOT BIKE RENTAL SHOPS
As of this writing, local merchants are mostly hating on the Citi Bike scheme, despite a recent study finding that more bike lanes boosts local business by increasing foot traffic to the area. Mayor Bloomberg’s administration added hundreds of miles of bike lanes around town leading up to the arrival of Mike’s bikes (are we calling them that yet?), so you'd think this is a positive thing. But, there's the key detail that Citi Bikes don't come with locks and really aren’t designed for joy riding all day, putting around shopping districts and balancing oversized bags on handlebars. The bikes are intended for short distances, for commuters, to fill the transit gaps between point A and B and encourage people to get out of the car.
Merchants are also griping that the Citi Bike dock stations block the entrance to their shop or take up space for parking actual cars. Street vendors are protesting having to share New York's busy streets with yet another thing. The biggest kick in the face? This long-time Lower East Side bike rental shop owner, who woke up to find a Citi Bike rack outside his storefront. Zing.
THE ALREADY RICH
If Citi Bike is a successful economic driver, it will likely only be so in areas that are already affluent. Capital Bikeshare, a couple years up-and-running now, has been criticized for being used mostly by rich white dudes. Rich white dudes love bikes. Par for the course, Citi Bike docks are located throughout the commercially saturated section of Manhattan between Central Park and Wall Street, and in the relatively posh Fort Greene, DUMBO, and Williamsburg neighborhoods in Brooklyn—not so much in Bed Stuy or Harlem or the boroughs further down on the socioeconomic ladder. Do they not have the environment there, too?