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Check Out Your New Ride in New York City: Citi Bike

May 7, 2012 at 4:40 PM | by | Comments (0)

It's finally happening, you guys. New York City is getting up off its butt and getting on the bike sharing bandwagon. What's that saying? "Better late than never." Yes, that saying. It very much applies in this case, as New York is way behind a slew of world cities who have had their bike sharing programs up for several years already.

The announcement of the NYC program and debut of the bikes came today, presided over by Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Thanks to a $41 million dollar cash infusion from CitiBank, the program won't rely on tax dollars, but will be named "Citi Bike." London's "Barclays Cycle Hire" is the same idea, except that's been around for nearly two years.

So enough about how late to the party the Big Apple is. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty details of using Citi Bike:

· The first bikes and bike rental stations will be available in July in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
· Eventually the program will consist of 10,000 bikes at 600 locations in the five boroughs.
· The exclusive payment sponsor is Mastercard, which already means we won't be able to use them (and we're not signing up for a Mastercard just for this).
· The locations of the solar-powered, wireless docking stations for the bikes haven't been released, but will be soon.
· The annual membership will be $95, with graduated pricing depending on length of use (not on distance traveled).
· Usage under 30 minutes is free.
· All other pricing under time tiers is here.
· Each bike is equipped with a bell and reflectors. It's BYO helmet and lock, however (each lost bike will cost you $1,000).

All of that sounds well and good with one major exception: the front baskets will not be large enough to hold anything like a six-pack of beer (kudos to Miami's DecoBike for thinking of that. Wine bottles? We'll just have to see...

[Photo: CitiBike on Facebook]

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