You can see what's coming! This will end in scandal and ruin Mike de Blasio! (DAF)
Deal Is Said to Be Near to Expand Bike Sharing in New York
Before New York City’s bike-sharing system was introduced last year, aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg mused about possible program nicknames befitting their boss.
"Mike’s Bikes" had a ring to it, they reasoned. "Bloomberg’s Bikes" might be even better.
Fourteen months later, Mr. Bloomberg’s successor, Bill de Blasio, has been confronted with a more consequential choice: how aggressively to embrace — and reimagine — a program that remains inextricably linked to the last administration.
After months of financial uncertainty surrounding the program, city officials are nearing a final agreement that would reshape the system’s management as it was established under Mr. Bloomberg, and bring the bikes to a wider swath of the city beginning next year, according to people involved with the discussions, who insisted on anonymity because the deal had not been completed.
The program — known by its sponsored name, Citi Bike, because the mayoral nicknames never stuck — could use the lift. Amid still-flailing software and an often overtaxed customer service operation, much of the excitement surrounding the system’s introduction last May has been dulled.
As the first anniversary arrived in May, a spate of annual members did not renew their passes. According to internal reports for Citi Bike, there were 96,318 annual members in June, down from 105,355 in May.
In the eyes of cyclists who cheered the city’s biking policies under Mr. Bloomberg, the de Blasio administration has been presented with an opportunity, one it appears poised to seize.
"He’s putting his own mark on something that the previous mayor innovated," said Charles Komanoff, a transportation economist and cycling advocate, adding, "If I weren’t pleased, I’d really be kind of a jerk."
If the deal is completed, the New York system’s new operators are expected to raise the annual membership fees to as high as $155, from $95, and use the revenue in part to improve the system’s software and to address other customer service issues, people involved with the plans said.
Expansion would follow, with a goal of roughly doubling the size of the program, to 12,000 bikes. This is expected to begin next year and be completed by the end of 2017.
The system would extend into Queens for the first time, and move deeper east into Brooklyn and farther north in Manhattan. The current system includes about 6,200 bikes and 330 stations. There are currently no stations north of 60th Street in Manhattan or east of Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn.
The arrangement would wrest control from Alta, the company, based in Portland, Ore., that has partnered with the city to date, and give it to REQX, a joint venture of the real estate firm Related and the fitness chain Equinox. REQX would also assume a majority stake in Alta’s other systems, in cities like Boston, Washington and Melbourne, Australia. The agreement could be announced as early as this week, though officials cautioned that a deal had not been completed.
Some system officials had hoped to complete a deal, with a corresponding rate increase, before a significant portion of annual memberships came up for renewal in May and June. Those who did renew, after signing up in the first two months of the program last year, are now locked into the old rate until the middle of next year.
In a statement, Mr. de Blasio’s office said that Citi Bike "has become part of our public transportation system, and there is a lot riding on its success."
The program has strained to recover from an introductory year marked by misguided rider estimates, shoddy software and a frigid winter. Daily and weekly passes, which were seen as potential moneymakers for the system, have failed to generate as much interest as hoped. And the system’s popularity with annual members, who tend to ride frequently, has brought unexpected wear and tear to bikes and stations.
On a Facebook page for the program, reviews have been unkind.
"Very disappointed," one rider wrote last week.
"I’m beginning to feel that this is futile, but FIX YOUR DOCKS," said another.
"The infrastructure for Citi Bike is becoming a bizarre vaudeville, alternating between comedy and tragedy," a third user wrote. "How will it all end?"
Though Mr. de Blasio was criticized before taking office for occasionally tepid comments about the bike lanes and pedestrian plazas that proliferated under Mr. Bloomberg, he said as a candidate that he hoped to expand the bike-sharing program. The position helped earn him the endorsement of a fledging political group, StreetsPAC, which is dedicated to cycling and pedestrian issues.
Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, has expressed gratitude that her hard-charging predecessor, Janette Sadik-Khan, "broke a lot of eggs" during the years when debates over cycling were particularly spirited.
Mr. de Blasio’s impending embrace of bikes, and bike sharing in particular, arrives at a different kind of moment. His transportation policy is pinned to his "Vision Zero" plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, and officials have cast cycling as an extension of that agenda.
No one has been killed on a Citi Bike to date. Transportation officials have also cited a "safety in numbers" effect, arguing that cycling on private bicycles has also become safer in areas with bike sharing.
While traffic deaths fell by about 30 percent under Mr. Bloomberg, his administration more often described the bike-share program as a hallmark of a world-class city, with safety and environmental benefits as well.
"It’s interesting to think about the rationale for policies which are in some ways really identical," said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group. "In politics and in policy, the frame is all-important."
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