May 30, 2013 at 03:05 AM
I plopped down the cash for the citi bike annual membership. My fob arrived yesterday and I had a series of meetings in Manhattan & Brooklyn today. I would have taken 4 subway trips ($10 worth of MTA mess), or ride my bike all over and have to deal with locking it up in several locations, or take one of the citi bike that are down the street from my building.
Those things are tanks. 45lbs of steel and super thick rubber. These things are designed to be ridden hard and need very little repair. The 3 speed gear ratio is strangely spaced, I would describe them as glacial, pokey and cruisy. These things are not for going any faster than an easy cruise. They're stable and not too sluggish in their responsiveness, I was able to maneuver around traffic quite effectively, just not at any thing like a rapid pace.
The stations are with lots of spots, but they're not quite the right density. Maybe if they were 3-5 blocks away from each other rather than 10, but only 10-15 docks rather than 30 docks apiece, this would be super-easy no-brainer, but you have to plan your route and your destination carefully (rather than just riding from A to B then finding a station). I had one station that wouldn't release any bikes to me. I called it in, and then walked the 6 blocks to my next meeting.
I also spent more than 20 minutes today explaining how the system works to total strangers who came up to me with questions. Including tourists from Germany who were happy to see it here. I think there is a ton of curiosity and lots of interest.
The first week with only 11K users is a good "soft launch" but what is clear is that there are more than enough bikes for the launch users, and going from the launch users to ~8M potential users is going to be steep step in usage. I bet less than half the bikes have been used, so far. Many bikes at the station on my corner haven't moved since being installed on Sunday.
