Officials Announce Citibike Expansion

By ANNA DITUCCI CAPPIELLO

Citibike plans to roll into all five boroughs by spring.

Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg was joined by community leaders under the Queensboro Bridge on Tuesday to announce the expansion of the bike-share program launched last year.

CitiBike also announced a new partnership with Alta Bicycle Share, keeping the program privately funded while still working closely with the city of New York. Alta, a Portland, Oregon-based program that has stations in cities across the U.S. and Australia, will contribute “millions” to CitiBike, officials said. Jay Walder, current CEO of Alta and former CEO of the MTA, said this magnitude of expansion was “unimaginable only a few years ago.”

The popular bike share program was set to expand into parts of Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, as well as adding more stations and bikes in upper Manhattan and  Brooklyn. Organizers said they expected to add 1,000 new bikes by the end of 2015. 2017 will see a grand total of 6,000 bikes on the streets of New York City, according to Walder.  There are now 90,000 New Yorkers with annual memberships.

In addition to more bikes, officials pledged to  fix technological problems that have plagued the program. The docks will be cleared of technological bugs that have made the system frustrating to some riders, including problems with payment options. Over the winter, the program planned to overhaul all of the bikes and make general mechanical repairs to have the bikes ready for spring.

The program also mapped plans to work closely with communities to determine the location of further expansion. A plan to re-instate the defunct “suggest a station” program on NYC.gov was underway, where New Yorkers could place a dot on the map where they think a dock should go.

Councilman Jimmy van Bramer spoke excitedly about the expansion into Queens. “There is no such thing as a citywide program that does not involve Queens,” he said, encouraging riders from all over the city to explore what Queens has to offer.