Perspective
I Chased Down the Only Electric Citi Bike in Manhattan
Seeing a single bike bounce around so often over my lunch break highlighted the value of bikeshare in a way that ridership statistics can't, writes an MTA analyst.
On Monday morning, Citi Bike set 200 pedal-assist electric bikes free on the streets of New York. Another 1,000 are set to be distributed in preparation for the L train shutdown in April 2019. By then, North America’s largest bikeshare operator hopes to have enough vehicles to support some of that displaced mobility demand—and to give New York’s biking landscape the power boost it needs.
But if the city’s new enthusiasm for e-bikes on Monday afternoon was any indication, we’re probably going to need a lot more. I know this because I spent my lunch hour tracking down the single electric bike left zipping around lower Manhattan that day.