Dear New Yorkers,  

Ever taken a ride on one of these?

If so, you're one of the millions of New Yorkers who ride Citi Bike every month. 

Over the past decade, Citi Bike has become a vital part of New York City’s transportation landscape. It's the largest bikeshare system in the nation, with a network of over 1,800 stations and 26,000 bikes. Riders took 30 million trips on Citi Bike in 2022 – five times as many as when it launched in 2013! 

But for all its wear, there is significant tear on our bikeshare system. The possible sale of Citi Bike from owner Lyft to a new operator, along with steep maintenance costs and patterns of poor system performance, jeopardizes the system’s long-term stability. 

My office's latest policy report finds that Citi Bike service is "wheely" unreliable—especially in Black and Latino neighborhoods on the outer edges of the city.

Road Bumps

As Citi Bike’s fleet and network have grown, so have the system’s operational needs. Rebalancing, or the relocation of bikes between stations, is an essential maintenance action. Despite contractual obligations to ensure the consistent availability of both bikes and docks throughout its service area, Lyft moves bikes around the system 80% less frequently today than the system’s original operator did in 2014.. 

Most stations have bikes and docks available most of the time. But riders in neighborhoods at the edges of the Citi Bike system are more likely to encounter a scenario where all nearby stations have no bikes or docks available, as you can see in the map below. 

In fact, Citi Bike users in the Bronx are 89% more likely to encounter an unusable station than they would in the other three boroughs where Citi Bike operates.

On average, stations remain empty more than twice as long in the Bronx than in Manhattan. This disproportionately affects Black, Latino, and low-income New Yorkers. 

Riding Forward

Citi Bike is an essential transportation service. We must take action to ensure reliable and equitable Citi Bike service equitably for all New Yorkers, and that means the City must overhaul its Citi Bike contract as my office suggests in a full series of recommendations here. 

We should start by creating neighborhood-level performance standards, expanding eligibility for Citi Bike’s existing discounted membership program to reach more low-income New Yorkers, and improving transparency through enhanced public reporting on Citi Bike’s operations. 

This strategic mix of performance standards, attention to equitable service, and incentives will enable Citi Bike to thrive as a key element of the transportation network – whether under Lyft or a new operator. 

Read the Office of the Comptroller’s full policy report on Citi Bikes. 

Ride on, 

Brad