Citi Bike: One Month Later

It is hard to believe that Citi Bike has been around for only one month. Between all the love and the hate, it has truly been an exciting ride for the bike share program. Yesterday, Transportation Nation released some Quinnipiac polling data:

The data show that overall “every age, income, party, gender and educational group supports the bike program.” However, there is one special group that has fully embraced a Citi Bike-specific NIMBYism, and that is the 65+ group, with 40% opposed and 37% in favor. This research did not surprise me, and it reminded me of something.

Back in April, as part of NYU Wagner’s Day of Service, a group of transit nerds advocates teamed up with the Wagner Transportation Association (WTA), the Urban Planning Student Association (UPSA), the NYU Bike Share Program and Transportation Alternatives to hit the streets, seeking out bike-friendly businesses and collecting signatures for bike lanes on University Place. The idea was that in building a coalition of local businesses and residents that value the benefits of biking, we could help create a safe and mutually beneficial environment for cyclists in the NYU community.

We split up into two groups – one to engage local businesses and one to engage people on the street. I joined the second group, and was a bit weary of my task at hand. You know exactly what you do when you spot that annoying person on the sidewalk with a silly t-shirt and clipboard – you cross the street, answer a nonexistent phone call – whatever you can do to avoid eye contact. But on that lovely April day, I was that annoying person! And it was really fun. It took me no more than 30 seconds to get into full character.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that most passers-by were more than willing to sign the petition. I was less than pleasantly surprised to find that members of an older cohort hated me. Like, really hated me. One woman in particular, who I would place in her late 70s to early 80s, decided to tell me exactly what she thought about bike lanes, bikes, totalitarian governments, people like me, and some other stuff that I can’t remember. To paraphrase, she was not a fan. Now that I think of it, she reminded me a lot of Dorothy Rabinowitz in this excellent video.

One month in, the data are clear. Sorry, Dorothy, looks like you do not “represent the majority of citizens” of this city after all.

The Queens That Could

I came across a tweet the other day from @SecondAveSagas:

From Queens, ideas for an expanded subway system 2avesag.as/11IG4yB

— Second Ave. Sagas (@SecondAveSagas) June 7, 2013

I may live in Manhattan now, but the Queens girl inside of me could not click fast enough.

The recycled idea for subway expansion comes from Councilman Leroy Comrie, who has recently announced his run for Queens Borough President. According to a Daily News article, its incredible cost alone makes Comrie’s proposal about as likely as the Mets winning the World Series this year, which as a fan of the Mets and New York City transit, I am both insulted and disappointed. The truth is, the chances of Comrie winning this election are probably equally as good, but I am glad that he brought it up. Promises of the Second Avenue Subway were made ages ago, and who ever thought the No. 7 would ever leave Times Square? The conversation has to start somewhere.

As far as the details that will never come to fruition go, Comrie cites the congestion on the E and F lines as reasons for subway expansion in the borough. Sure, those lines are crowded, but mostly because those riders are trying to reach the closest buses that will get them home. Queens has always been about the bus, but that’s only because for most of its residents, that has been the only option! The Long Island Railroad’s network is a bit more extensive in the borough, but its high ticket prices leave out a solid chunk of the population.

Residents of Staten Island may consider themselves members of the forgotten borough, but did you know that if each NYC borough were an independent city, Queens would rank as America’s fourth most populous city? Don’t you think those residents in Fresh Meadows and Bayside deserve some subway love? I certainly do. Perhaps the hundreds of workers employed in Maspeth factories churning out Made In New York products would like a little help too. And what about our airports? JFK got the AirTrain, but it looks like we forgot about its little cousin La Guardia. There are serious opportunities here that need to be given serious attention.

Maybe it’s the ludicrously hopeful Mets fan in me, but maybe there is hope for such a plan. Maybe one day in the future, Queens residents will look back and wonder how a borough with such an incredible baseball team once had such bad subway service.

Citi Bikes Hit the Streets!

“When will smiling at Citi Bikers become creepy?” I asked myself yesterday as I walked downtown. Between Midtown West and the East Village, I spotted about a dozen Citi Bikers and smiled at all of them. I might have even given one of them a thumbs up, I can’t remember. With over 6,000 trips made in its inaugural day, spotting the blue bikes around town was very exciting, and opening up the program to annual members first was a great idea. Hopefully with enough feedback, Citi Bike can work out some of its hiccups before the less experienced riders (read: tourists) take to the streets.

Memorial Day Weekend in the city proved to be wonderfully empty, and therefore perfect for kicking off the program. Citi Bikers rode through the streets with relative ease, which made riding without a helmet a lot less scary than it should be. Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan believes that “bike helmets will be as common a New York City accessory as an umbrella or sunglasses,” but of all the riders I saw, only one was wearing one. I know, I know – the research proves that successful programs around the world do not require helmets, but New York City is a unique ecosystem, and I could not help but think about the awful possible issues (and lawsuits) that might arise from non-helmeted riders in the future.

I have yet to sign up for the program because as an outer borough kid, accustomed to the relatively quiet streets of Queens, quite frankly I am terrified to ride in Manhattan. I am excited though, for my 24-hour test drive, when I will finally be able to gauge my fears. I will be wearing my helmet, riding very slowly and accepting any and all smiles that come my way.

Bike Share? There’s an App for That

Reblogged from Open Transportation, May 9, 2013:

A recent Community Board 2 meeting proved that bike share is not for everyone. Sorry for the convenience, residents of SoHo, NoHo, and the Village. But for those of us who are upset that we (I) have to walk a whole block and a half to get to the nearest Citi Bike station, there’s good news! None of the program’s bikes are actually installed, but there is already an app for it!

Citi Bike is going to be the nation’s largest bike share program. Hoping to feed off of the success from other cities like Washington, DC and Miami, the 330 docking stations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn will be up and running before you know it. While thousands have signed up for the program, not a single bike has been installed. Tom Claes of the Belgian mobile app company WebComrades knows that and has released the first bike share app anyway. His app, that will be available for iPhone and Android users, will plot users on a map and alert them to the nearest docking station. Based on the version he created for the city of Antwerp, which is one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities, the app will offer a bit more than Citi Bike’s official app, which is already available for download and will begin working when the program actually launches.

Perhaps the coolest function of Claes’ app is that users will be able to save their favorite stations and have the app tell them which are full and which are empty. This feature will alleviate the fear of many New Yorkers who have yet to sign up, and with the program already attracting a younger and more tech-savvy group of customers, this app is likely to be very popular.

So how did Claes make this app, you ask? According to Transportation Nation, “Using some clever data-scraping of the bare bones information on the Citi Bike NYC website, Claes pulls in the information about the docking stations and saves it to a constantly updating WebComrades server.” Apparently he has also been in touch with Citi Bike and plans to use their officially released data once it is made available. As we patiently await the bikes to be installed, we can be grateful for the city’s commitment to open data, and look forward to more, better, smarter apps that will help us navigate our newly shared streets.

Service in the City

Wi-Fi and cell phone service on the subway platform? In a system built over 100 years ago? Get outta town.

No actually, stay where you are, because this is really exciting news. And it’s not only exciting for someone who wants to let their friends know that they’ll be late because they’ve been waiting for the C train FOR TWENTY FIVE MINUTES – for example – it will also prove to be crucial to transit employees, first responders and lone straphangers everywhere. Newly appointed MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast praised the initiative for making the subway system “significantly safer and more secure,” and if I may speak for all the ladies of NYC just trying to get home on a quiet weeknight, that connection to the world upstairs is invaluable. Now in 36 stations, Prendergast hopes to provide service to all 277 stations by 2017.

While I am somewhat of a romantic when it comes to the subways, a fan of missed connections and general happenstances devoid of technology, I have to admit it was pretty fun watching my phone pop into service at almost every station on my ride uptown the other night. I have yet to try an actual voice-on-voice phone conversation – because I’m not a jerk – but I did have enough bar-age on the platform for some solid texting, so I’m guessing that, like most things in NYC, anything is possible.

Bike Share Springs into NYC

Spring is here! And before you know it, Citi Bike will be too. Registration opened this week, and according to Transportation Nation, had gained 5,000 new members in the first 48 hours. That’s more than DC was able to get in an entire month boosted by a Living Social deal. Annual memberships will cost you $95 + tax, but for those with a fear of commitment, there’s options for you too! With a weekly pass at $25 + tax and daily pass at $9.95 + tax, you can’t go wrong.

But what many New Yorkers do not know is that Citi Bike is not meant for leisurely rides with your pals, it is meant to fill in gaps in the existing public transportation system. Your annual membership gives you 45 minutes for each ride, between pick up and docking, while the other options give you 30 minutes (before overtime fees kick in); that might get you a few laps around Central Park, but that’s not the point. Say you are traveling from TriBeCa to the Upper East Side – your journey will certainly involve at least a couple of subway lines and maybe a crosstown bus. With Citi Bike, you can hop on a bike, take a quick ride across town and get on the 6. Easy peasy! That is of course if you are healthy enough to ride a bike, it is not totally freezing, raining or snowing, and you have a Citi Bike membership. Minor details.

Will NYC ever look like Amsterdam, where cars are the minority and riders are so comfortable on their bikes that they can drink a cappuccino, send a text and transport their children to school all at the same time? With more bikes on the road, will rules become more or less strict? Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan envisions a bike-friendly NYC where helmets “will be as common a New York City accessory as an umbrella or sunglasses.” (Helmets will actually not be mandated, only encouraged.) But in a city where pedestrians already ignore traffic signs and lights while navigating sidewalks and streets, are we in for more of the same thing, or will it all somehow work itself out?

To Sit or Not to Sit, That is the Question

You’ve been there. You’re sitting in a crowded subway car, when a seat across from you opens up and the person sitting next to you bolts to fill it. “Was I leaning?” You ask yourself. “Do I smell?”

No, you were not leaning and you do not smell. The science behind subway seating is actually quite intricate and the latest research gives us a glimpse into why we make the subway seating decisions that we do. In a recent New York Times article, the research conducted by the MTA over the course of three weeks last winter draws “a transit landscape of convenience, game theory and occasional altruism, where often every movement is executed with purpose.” The study came up with a few interesting findings, particularly concerning our decision to sit in the doorway area, a space passengers favor because it saves them a few seconds when exiting the train, and offers some additional leaning space. But perhaps the most New York reason for why straphangers love to sit in those coveted side seats is because it is the space to avoid accidental eye contact with other passengers. Now that’s funny and true.

Personally, I like to stand whenever possible. I never know how old is too old to offer someone my seat and I have had the is she pregnant or did she just come from Chipotle conversation with myself a few too many times. To most non-New Yorkers, this entire dialogue probably sounds ludicrous. But for the rest of us who feel like the subway is our second home, this all makes almost too much sense.

Cluster 2.0

Reblogged from CityRegionGlobe, April 8, 2013:

In New York City, no one is immune to interaction. New Yorkers walk, talk and work fast, and with a density of over twenty-six thousand people per square mile, the city’s natural state of cluster is what creates the raw energy that keeps it moving. With technology companies taking over the Flatiron District, DUMBO and Long Island City, Mayor Bloomberg has set his sights on expanding this growth to a tiny sliver of land just beneath the Queensborough Bridge.

Roosevelt Island has had an interesting history; sporting nicknames like Blackwell’s and Welfare Island, the 2-mile long area can certainly benefit from an upgrade, and that is exactly what it is about to get. Nancy Scola’s “Tech & the City” questions Bloomberg’s Cornell-Technion brainchild, and wonders whether or not New York City can truly engineer and sustain an innovation economy rooted in such an experiment. As the smoke clears from Marissa Mayer’s work-from-home ban at Yahoo!, and its resulting mixed reviews, people and industries around the globe are beginning to wonder if they should be doing what NYC has been doing all along – making the cluster work for them.

Roosevelt Island is a great choice for this project for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly for its location (location, location). New Yorkers can access the island either by tram, bus, subway or car, as its geography is an experiment in innovation itself. Mimicking the explosion of coworking habitats around the city, the new campus will be shaped – physically and abstractly – to foster creativity, and not just on the island itself. Scola explains:

Campus planners also expect to see a reinforcing of the clustering of tech companies already happening west along the F train line that runs up Sixth Avenue in lower Manhattan and through DUMBO and elsewhere in Brooklyn. The school is working on creating landing pads.

NYC is not only an innovation hub because people cannot help but bump into each other, chat, discover and build; it is also the city’s environment of acceptance that breeds a sense of community unlike any other city in the world. The city’s social system attracts better, faster and more motivated labor, and its products are the proof. Sure, the city can be loud, dirty and at times totally overwhelming, but as the entrepreneur and Branch founder Joshua Miller put it when moving his company back to NYC for its grit and grime, realness and rawness, “the commotion of the city is contagious” – and that’s one bug everyone seems to be trying to catch.

Collaboration Station

Reblogged from Open Transportation, April 1, 2013:

Last year, the MTA took an impressive leap when it opened up its real-time arrival information data for seven of the city’s subway lines. Last week, Google Maps updated its online and mobile apps to include that data.

In a partnership between Google Maps and the MTA, straphangers of the numbered subway lines and the Times Square shuttle can now view live departure times from their mobile apps and plan their trips with a little more ease. Google Maps is also partnering with transit systems in cities like Salt Lake City and Washington, DC, but from the numbers alone, this collaboration is bound to have the largest impact in NYC. Especially for the stragglers trying to get home at 3am, for whom even if the next train is 27 minutes away, just knowing that can make the wait a whole lot more tolerable.

Google and the MTA are not the only ones doing the collaboration dance. The MTA has already been taking serious strides to make its data available to developers who have already created apps like Roadify, SchedNYC and the MTA’s very own Subway Time. The mission to get riders from A to B more quickly and easily is a group effort, as more data is released and more people and agencies take advantage of it.

Among the many mysteries this city affords us, trip planning is no longer one of them. I doubt the upgrade will encourage non-subway users to start using public transportation, but it will certainly make existing riders a lot happier. Unfortunately due to older technologies, the remaining subway lines are probably many years and many dollars away from getting that same upgrade, but here’s to a valiant start!

A Touch of the Future

photo: fastcodesign.com

The future has arrived! The MTA is finally bringing us the touch screen subway maps we have all been waiting for. These On the Go! kiosks provide an unprecedented amount of information to subway and commuter rail riders (including news and weather!) and after a successful pilot program with 13 kiosks back in 2011, the new plan will roll out a total of 90 throughout the city, although specific dates are not confirmed.

According the MTA website:

The sleek, stainless steel enclosure supports a large screen with a colorful display, offering customers information about their entire trip, from planning with Trip Planner, real-time service status, escalator & elevator status and local neighborhood maps. In addition, the MTA has partnered with third party developers to include applications which provide additional information, such as local history, shopping and dining options nearby provided by third-party applications Zagat, myCitiapp, and History Bus.

Last night Jimmy Fallon quipped that the new touch screen maps are what would happen if “the iPhone and the flu had a giant baby.” Which when you think about it, is equal parts disgusting and accurate. But germs shmerms, remember payphones? You use your entire hand for that, these screens only require the touch of one finger.

While the direction assistance and real-time status updates will no doubt be helpful to the everyday rider, the local attraction features will be most useful to tourists, who occupy most of the space in front of already existing maps. It is likely that at stations serving heavy tourist crowds like Times Square and Rockefeller Center, it’s the tourists who will benefit the most. Less confused tourists will mean less annoying tourists, which will mean less annoyed New Yorkers. Now that’s an investment worth making!