Bike thieves, rejoice

Matt Fliegenheimer has an article in The New York Times about the city's newest program:

By midafternoon, the passing flickers of blue were already ubiquitous: negotiating light taxi traffic in the West Village, hurtling through the protected lanes of Midtown, drifting toward the Brooklyn waterfront. For the first time, under cooperatively clear skies, New Yorkers sat astride the City’s first new wide-scale public transportation in more than 75 years: a fleet of six thousand bicycles, part of a system known as Citi Bike, scattered across more than three hundred stations in Manhattan below 59th Street, and parts of Brooklyn.
There were kinks in the system’s early hours. A bike was swiped on Sunday as crews worked at the last minute to fill the stations. A mail delivery snag left as many as two hundred members without access to the system. Some tourists dipped credit cards in vain for minutes, unaware that the program was initially open only to annual subscribers.
But the riders were, by definition, an eager and forgiving cross section: founding members who registered for a yearly pass for $95, allowing them to ride between stations for as long as 45 minutes with no added charge.
“It’s changing the city,” Anna Diaz, 36, from the Financial District, said as she slid a bike into a station near 17th Street and Broadway. “Taxis are too expensive. And I don’t take the bus.”
After almost a year of delays, the bike-sharing system— faster than a car-bound slog through crosstown traffic and potentially cheaper than the subway, at least for annual subscribers— has been greeted with a mixture of hope and trepidation.
It is the crowning, valedictory piece of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s extensive investment in cycling, for which the city has added more than 350 miles of bike lanes in recent years under the stewardship of Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner. “Are we ready?” Bloomberg asked at a news conference held beside a bike station near City Hall. Bell-ringing followed. Sadik-Khan said the city had not added a major public transportation option since Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia secured a fleet of motor buses to replace electric trolleys. “We have the A train, and we have yellow cabs, and we have the Staten Island Ferry,” Sadik-Khan said at the news conference. “And today, Citi Bike joins the ranks of the transportation icon family in New York City.”
New York City’s is already the largest bike-sharing system in the country, with plans to expand into Queens, the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan, and farther into Brooklyn.
While the system may alter some commuting habits, the first day was largely an exception. The city chose to unlock the bikes to annual members on a holiday, when there would be relatively light car and truck traffic. Only members can use the bikes until Sunday, when weekly ($25) and daily ($9.95) passes will become available.
But, even with few pressing destinations, riders seemed to appear on every street, blending in with varying success— the woman teetering, helmetless, onto Broadway from Park Place, then steadying herself; the father and son on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, the child riding his own bike, not yet old enough to rent one of the blue ones.
At an intersection on 29th Street, a man walking with a cane shouted at a passing rider as a car’s horn blared. “You got to be careful riding a bike in New York City if you’re not used to it!” the man said. “The taxicabs will hit you in the rear!”
Some New Yorkers have taken to resting on the backs of station docks— a maneuver, for all the grievances over parking spaces lost to bikes, unlikely to be tried aboard the hood of a private car.
Devin O’Malley, 27, and Sarita Mohanty, 25, who live a short walk from Washington Square Park, decided to ride into the East Village for lunch. They returned to a largely empty station on Macdougal Street shortly before 1 pm. “I need a helmet,” Mohanty said upon her return. “I haven’t ridden a bike in years.” “It’s like riding a bike,” O’Malley replied. A taxi driver, stopped in traffic, admired their station through his open window. “Nice”, he said, before driving off.
John Braut, 43, from Midtown, conducted a trial run from West 49th Street to West 41st, though he had some difficulty checking the bike back into the station. After a few false starts, he found a working dock.
Moments later, Chris Pennington and his twelve-year-old son, Hugo, who live near Sydney, Australia, and were visiting New York City on vacation, approached the station. Pennington inserted his credit card, but the bikes would not budge. After a few moments, Pennington was told that only annual members could ride. “We’ve got an hour to kill before we get to the flight,” he said, adding that his wife and daughter were at a nearby Victoria’s Secret. “Now we’re going to have to go to a lingerie shop and wait on a bench.”
Several of those interviewed suggested that their typical transit commutes could be abandoned. O’Malley said he hoped to shift from a thirty-day MetroCard to a pay-per-ride card once he began regularly using Citi Bike.
Jeff Genshaft, 54, from Park Slope, said he planned to use the program to shorten his commute, partly by bus, to the Far West Side of Manhattan. “I’m opting out of the M42,” he said, after returning a bike to Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn.
The City has said the bikes are intended to complement subway and bus service. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would study the bikes’ effect on ridership but did not expect to see an immediate change.
Many New Yorkers remain opposed to the program, chafing at station locations and the aesthetics of the kiosks. One group protested the placement of a station in Petrosino Square, beside Lafayette Street, arguing that a hub was placed in a space dedicated for public art. Fliers were taped to some of the bikes: “Boycott this Citi Bike station until DOT moves it from our park to the street.”
Though Bloomberg acknowledged that “teething pains” would probably crop up in the program’s early days, he dismissed much of the criticism about the system. “Bike racks do take up space,” he said. “But the parked cars that they replaced took up a lot more space.”
He was also questioned about the stolen bike, which officials said they recovered after it was taken from a Manhattan site on Sunday. “I’m sure that’s the first bicycle that’s been stolen in this city,” the mayor joked. Bloomberg did not ride a bike himself but did pose with one for photographs.
For the past year, the transportation deities have not always smiled on New York City’s bike sharing. Intended to begin last summer, the program was pushed to 2013 after organizers were unable to tame faulty software in time. Then in October, Hurricane Sandy delivered floodwaters to the bike-sharing system’s warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, forcing another delay.
But perhaps the debut carried a good omen. It was sunny, with temperatures in the 70s most of the day.

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