It is finally here: a revolutionary new program called Citi Bike is coming to New York. You may be wondering to yourself, what is this new program all about? Citi Bike is a bike sharing system with which people can borrow a bicycle, ride it to wherever they need to get to, and then return it to different stations in the city. Projects similar to this have already been implemented in cities like Paris, Washington D.C., and even smaller cities like Salem, Mass. The program, which is scheduled to become available this summer, is a part of the Bloomberg administration and the Department of Transportation’s plans to bring bicycling to the forefront alternative modes of transportation in the city.
Roughly forty percent of every trip made in New York City is under a mile, an easy distance to bike. Using this program can cut down the average trip to school, to Best Buy, to Old Navy, or anywhere else you need to go. I know what you are thinking. This is New York; the program is going to be too expensive for people to use. But what if I told you that an annual membership would be cheaper than a monthly subway card. The membership price listed on the Citi Bike website is ninety-six dollars, which comes out to only twenty-six cents per day. So just where are all of these stations going to go? Well, this is my favorite part of the whole thing – Citi Bike website, http://citibikenyc.com/home – you can suggest where you would like to see a station! Of course there will be quite a few by Grand Central, but I did my part to suggest one relatively close to my own home.
Although many people that would normally take public transportation could potentially use these bikes, the city wants to bring the two together so that both can be used to move easily throughout the city. Instead of taking two trains to get to work, I ride the Citi Bike to the second train and ride only one train to work. I would save time getting to work and still not be sweaty when I get there. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait for the first bikes to roll out and onto our New York City concrete.
Posted by Alex Ritscher
on June 8, 2012. Filed under FAMILY,NEWS,Sports,Times Square Community.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
You must be logged in to post a comment Login