Hipster Girls And The Black Hat Hole

“Very well then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes)”

Walt Whitman may have given us one of the best definitions of good mental health. A corollary to that might be that maturity is understanding that we all have our contradictions:  After all, who tries to live by any book or idea, to the letter, once he or she has had to hold down a job

Anyway, I won’t try to assess whether, or how well, some Hasidic men in Brooklyn understand their own internal (and sometimes external) juxtapositions.  I do, however, find it interesting that when Citibike went online just over a decade ago, the Ultra-Orthodox community of South Williamsburg included some of the bike-share program’s most enthusiastic users—and some of its fiercest opponents.

While “Williamsburg” became synonymous with “hipster” and “gentrification,” the area south of the eponymous bridge to Manhattan remained one of this city’s two major Hasidic enclaves. (Borough Park is the other. East Williamsburg is, arguably, the heart of the Big Apple’s Puerto Rican community.) One notable difference between Hasidim and the hipsters and Nuyoricans is family size.  That leaves little, if any room, for a bicycle in their living quarters.

Another visible difference is that from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, streets on Hasidic neighborhoods are deserted, except when people are walking to or from shul. And, of course, there is sartorial style: It, shall we say, leaves much to the imagination.

That last point was an argument against installing Citibike ports in the neighborhood. Some Hasidic rabbis and other community leaders complained that those blue bikes streamed “immodest” riders—or, in thr words of one Reddit commenter “sexy ass hipster girls” —down their neighborhood’s streets.

A result of this tension was the “Hasidic hole” or, as one wag put it, “black hat hole” of Citibike availability. Hasidim were walking as much as a mile to access the bikes.

The map on the left reflects Citi Bike last year. The map on the right is the current coverage. (The green zone is the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is not a public area)

Recently, freshman City Council member Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish but not Hasidic or even Orthodox, has been doing what his predecessor Stephen Levin (also Jewish but not Orthodox) couldn’t. He has negotiated with Hasidic leaders to shrink that “hole” and make Citibike—which now includes eBikes—more accessible. He is also working to bring more bicycle infrastructure to a part of the city that is better-served than most.

His efforts might allow a community to accept its contradictions:  People might profess shock and dismay over “sexy ass Hipster girls” (who, I assure them, don’t include me!) but they appreciate the convenience and fun of cycling.

Nobody Uses Citibike Anymore Because Too Many People Use It

 When discussing bicycle- or "micro-mobility"-related issues, some people can't keep a metaphor or a story straight, let alone construct a cogent argument.

On Monday, I pointed out the malapropisms and simple lack of sense of a Manhattan community board member's objection to a bill that would require, among other things, licensing eBikes--even though I agreed, in principle, that it's not a good bill.  Likewise, while I and many other New Yorkers can point to problems with Citibike's service and equipment, the City Comptroller's review of it seems to be guided, as Streetsblog suggested, by Yogi Berra's observation about a restaurant:  "Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded."

On one hand, the report from Brad Lander--who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Eric Adams as this city's mayor--says that Lyft, the ride-share service that now operates the bike-share program, is no longer providing "reliable and equitable service."  On the other, it acknowledges that "Citibike enables millions of trips each month" and that in 2022, there were 30 million trips: "five times as many as when the city first launched in 2013."  Moreover, the report went on to say that preserving (Italics mine) Citibike as a "high-quality transportation service is essential."

Photo by Lindsey Nicholson 

 

So why did I italicize "preserving?"  Well, it's notable that  esteemed Comptroller used that word, and not "restoring" or some synonym for it.  While it's far from perfect, I would say--and the phrase at the end of my previous paragraph would indicate--that Citibike is at least pretty good at what it does.  Of course, my experience with it is very limited, but on the occasions when I used it, I could find a bike that worked reasonably well (not like my own, but that's a pretty high bar, if I say so myself) and a port in which I could leave and lock it without too much trouble.  Now, I only used Citibikes between my bike-rich neighborhood of Astoria and central locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. So, perhaps, I never had to experience what elicits the program's sharpest criticisms, to which the report alludes:  that Citibike doesn't serve low-income neighborhoods and communities of color--or, for that matter, the borough of Staten Island.

Aside from the ways the report contradicts itself, Gersh Kuntzman of Streetsblog points out that it has another problem:  the report is based on only two months--June and July of 2023, when Lyft admitted that it was experiencing problems, especially in certain areas (mainly in the Bronx) and with theft--out of nearly five years of the company's operating the service.

Bike Share Program Comes To The Valley

 In the 1960s, anarchists painted bicycles white (Witte Fietsen) and left them on Amsterdam streets for anyone to ride. Some see it as the first public bike-share system.  Others argue that the French city of La Rochelle, during the following decade, started the bike-share movement when it made 350 yellow bicycles available for anyone who wanted to use them.  The contention that the La Rochelle's program was "first" is based on the fact that it was offered by the city government and thus the first to be sanctioned by any organized official body.

Anyway, the movement to make bicycles available to everyone at a nominal fee really took hold from about 2005 to 2015, when cities like Paris, Barcelona, Mexico City and New York started their schemes.  Since then, it has come to be associated mainly with such large metropoli. Lately, however, smaller municipalities have seen the benefits of making bicycles (and scooters) available and have begun, or are exploring, share programs of their own. 

 As an example, the Westchester County city of New Rochelle (which is named for the La Rochelle natives who settled there after fleeing the French religious wars) has had such a program for several years. Although much smaller in size and population, it shares some of the problems of New York City, about 18 miles to the south:  Its narrow streets and compact (some would say claustrophobic) downtown simply can't accommodate any more cars or trucks than already use it.  

I am very familiar with this landscape, if you will, because I cycle through New Rochelle whenever I ride to Connecticut or any point north of NYC on the east side of the Hudson River.  I am also somewhat familiar with Passaic, a New Jersey city I have ridden a few times.  Located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of New York and about the same distance north of Newark, it has roughly the same population as La or New Rochelle and an old (for the US, anyway) downtown district and infrastructure first developed before automobiles. 

So, perhaps, it's not surprising that the city is also exploring a bike share program* which, they say, will be modeled at least in part on New York's Citibike (which has expanded into Jersey City and Hoboken). Passaic, named after the river that forms part of its valley, has been mainly a working-class industrial city:  It saw what was, at the time, one of the largest labor strikes in history when textile workers walked off their jobs in 1926.  The city--whose name means "valley"--also was the corporate headquarters and main manufacturing facility for Okonite, which made the some of the first telegraph cables and the wiring for Thomas Edison's first power generating plant (on Pearl Street in NYC).  And it has been called "the birthplace of television" as the experimental station W2XCD transmitted its first signal, in 1931, from the DeForest Radio Station in the city. Its chief engineer, Allen DuMont, left the station a few years later to start the pioneering television manufacturer and the first commercial television network:  DuMont Laboratories and the DuMont Television Network.

So, one might say that bike share programs are like the tech industry:  they're not just in the city (e.g., San Francisco); they're also in the valley.

*--I have tried to link an article about this, but it's behind a paywall: 

 https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/passaic/passaic-city/2023/10/25/passaic-explores-bike-sharing-system-to-help-ease-parking-shortage/71300087007/

A Thief’s Trail Ends Next Door

 On my way out for a ride, I encountered this in front of a neighbor’s house:

That both tires were flat and the chain was rusted and “pretzeled” were signs of what I suspected.

Two other things clued me in.

Not only was the serial number, except for the first digit, removed; so was another unique (for Citibikes and other share bikes):

The mechanism that locks the bike into the dock was removed.  Here is what the front of a normal Citibike looks like:

I called Citibike and brought the pilfered (and probably joy-ridden) bike to the port down the street from my apartment.

A Ride From Astoria To Denmark, Via Atlanta

I have a confession:  I rode a bike-share bike the other night.

No, I wasn't in some faraway place without one of my bikes.  I was in my home city--New York, where I live with almost as many bikes (and Marlee) as I lived with family members when I was growing up.

So what was I doing on a CitiBike?

Well, I went to some place where I wasn't sure I could park any of my bikes safely.  A phone call confirmed that there is no on-premises bike parking. And, while there are on-street bike racks-- in addition to sign posts, railings and such--I didn't want to lock up my bike for the three hours or more I expected to be at my destination.

This image will give you an idea of what the neighborhood is like:

All right, the whole neighborhood isn't like that.  It's actually one of the more affluent areas of the city.  The crime rate is lower than in most other neighborhoods but, as in similar neighborhoods, a fair amount of that crime consists of bike theft.

That semi-submerged house is, as you may have surmised, a prop on a stage--specifically, in the Delacorte Theatre, the home of Shakespeare In The Park.

There I saw a very interesting production of Hamlet.  All of the major soliloquies (speeches), and most of the original language, was intact. But it was set in suburban Atlanta, and some liberties were taken with the chronology.  

Whenever I've assigned the play, I've told students that there are really two Hamlets in the play. The one who delivers "To be or not to be" and those other immortal lines is really Hamlet Jr. or Hamlet II, and he is brooding the death of his father--Hamlet Sr, if you will.  In this production, he becomes the patriarch of a mixed-race family. The play opens with his funeral, which includes soul and gospel songs and dance. 

For me, the cast (Ato Blankson-Wood is one of my favorite Hamlets!) helped me to see something that has been in the play all along but what is seldom emphasized:  what we now call "intergenerational trauma."  It also conveys the effect of murder and other kinds of violence on families and communities.  And some of the "tweaks" to the original dialogue--such as "Denmark's a prison" becoming "this country is a prison" (so powerfully delivered by Blankson-Wood)--makes the play almost scarily relevant.

Those who insist traditional, period-correct productions may not like this one.  And I'll admit that some attempts to transpose a contemporary Black/mixed-race American milieu with medieval Denmark don't always work.  But this production "hit" far more often than it "missed" for me, and I recommend it. Oh, and if you need an excuse to ride a Citibike even if you have a few bikes of your own, here it is.

Citibike at 10. What’s Its Future

Leonardo di Caprio with Polish model Ela Kawalec

 Citibike—the bike-share program in my hometown, New York—turns ten years old tomorrow.

When it started, journalists, policy-makers and casual observers predicted its rapid demise.  They cited problems, including vandalism, theft, software glitches, in other cities’ bike share programs.  Some complained about docking stations taking up “their” parking spots or detracting from the aesthetics of their buildings and blocks. Oh, and some drivers were simply hostile to the idea of more bikes and cyclists on the streets.

But, as the saying goes, rumors of the program’s death were wildly exaggerated.  Moreover, the blue bikes gained unexpected popularity among people and communities—like the Hasidim—not known for cycling. (An explanation why so many ultra-Orthodox Jews took to them is that many could not keep bikes in their apartments or houses because their large families gave them little space.) And the actual and perceived problems with mass transit—some of which preceded the pandemic—made the bikes and, as they were added to the program, eBikes, real alternatives for commuters.

But now there is a new threat: finances.  

Five years ago, Lyft—the ride-share company—bought Citibike operator Motivate. Like other tech companies, Lyft is experiencing changes in its leadership and has laid off a significant portion of its workforce.  Nobody knows what the company’s new direction might be. 

Even though Citibike is the largest share program, by ridership and revenue, in North America, it’s actually a small part of Lyft’s operations.  So it might be one of the first things to go when shareholders demand that the company become “meaner and leaner.”

One way Citibike differs from other share programs (except for those in China) is that it operates with almost no public funding.  Therefore, some—including Streetsblog contributor David Meyer—have proposed the city or state allocating money or, possibly, making Citibike part of the MTA, DOT or some other city or state agency.  In other words  they’re saying  Citibike should be a city or state service.

For Once, Don't Listen To The Talking Heads!

Six years ago, Paris drained its Canal Saint-Martin to clean it, as the city does every fifteen years or so. Although the canal now bisects fashionable streets with chic cafes and shops, it was once bisected a rather gritty working-class area.  But, perhaps to no-one's surprise, the most commonly-found objects found in every canal-draining were wine bottles.

And the second-most common?  Bicycles.  The only difference is that in the most recent cleaning, many of the bikes came from Velib, the City of Light's share program.

Bicycle uncovered during most recent draining of the Canal Saint-Martin.  Photo by Yoan Valat for EPA.

The company that ran Rome's bike-share program abruptly ended its contract because so many of the bikes ended up in the Tiber.  Not exactly what Remus and Romulus had in mind, is it?

Amsterdam has had to resort to "fietsen vissen"--bicycle fishing--because bikes were piled so high in the city's canals that they scraped the flat-bottomed boats.  At one time, freelance scavengers picked them up on poles and sold them for scrap.  In the 1960's, the city's water agency assumed responsibility for the "harvest."  Now a corps of municipal workers trawl for the submerged bikes on boats equipped with cranes attached to hydraulic claw grapples.  The bikes are hauled  to scrapyards for recycling where, according to urban legend, they become beer cans. (Think about that the next time you grab a Heineken or Amstel!)

The phenomenon of bikes "sleeping with the fishes" (I grew up in a Mafia neighborhood. Gotta problem widdat?)  isn't limited to European cities.  In Tokyo, officials decided to drain a large pond in the middle of Inokashira Park to rid it of a non-native species of fish that was causing environmental damage. Their work uncovered another species that wasn't native to the pond:  bicycles.  And, in February 2019, a Citibike appeared--covered with barnacles and blisters--appeared overnight in an Upper West Side docking station. A Hudson River conservancy group expert estimated that evidence--including "oysters on the handlebars" (Upper West Siders pay good money for such things!)--indicated that the machine met its fate in the Hudson the pervious August, or possibly June.

Jody Rosen has just written an article on this phenomenon for the Guardian. It speculates on some of the reasons why so many bikes end up in waterways.  Some are dumped when by fleeing criminals--who are as likely as not to have stolen the bike they're drowning.  Others are tossed or accidentally ridden into the water by drunken revelers.  (Could recycling be contributing, if unintentionally, to bikes ending up in Amsterdam's canals?)  And there are a few instances of folks who "ended it all" by riding into murky waters, as one woman did after handcuffing herself to her machine.

But, as Rosen points out, a bicycle--especially one whose owner is unknown or a corporate entity--is an easy target for people taking out their frustrations.  I suspect that at least a few share bikes were tossed into canals, rivers, lakes and other bodies of water by folks--more than likely, young--who feel lost, alienated, abandoned or simply ignored by their societies, cultures or institutions that control their lives, and over which they feel they have no control.

As a lifelong cyclist, I cannot imagine myself tossing a bike that did nothing wrong to me into the water.  And, as an environmentally-conscious person, I cannot condone throwing anything into a body of water that its native species can't eat.  But, as we've seen, these days, where there are bikes, there are e-bikes.  That, unfortunately, includes waterways, where e-bikes and mopeds are even more of a hazard because of the rare metals and chemicals used in batteries and other components.  

So, if you have a bike, e-bike, moped or scooter you want to get rid of, sell it or donate it. But please don't follow the advice of a Talking Heads song!

Would Tires Make A Difference?

In the early hours of this morning, we had our first significant snowfall of the season.  Here in NYC, we've had a couple of bouts of flurries.  But this storm resulted in five to eight inches of accumulated white stuff.

Not surprisingly, few people are cycling.  Seeing the Citibike port got me to wondering whether more people would ride on a day like this if Citibikes had snow tires.  Are the share bikes in cities that get more snow--say, Montreal--so equipped?

Then again, I wonder whether Citibikes would get more use on a day like this if their tires had studs.  I don't know whether anyone has studied the matter, but from my observations, I would guess that Citibikes are ridden mainly on bike lanes or streets that are plowed early.  And many are ridden by tourists who, unless they're really dedicated riders or come from colder climates, aren't going to ride on a day like today. 

Where Are The Bikes—And Docks?

 I’ve ridden Citibikes a few times, always for the same reasons:  I could ride there, but not back (like the time I pedaled to a procedure that involved anaesthesia) or I went to pick up one of my own bikes.

Photo by Christopher Lee for the New York Times

On the whole, it’s a good system, given its inherent limitations.  The main non-inherent limitation is that it still isn’t available to about half of this city’s residents:  Nearly all of the bikes and docks are in Manhattan or nearby neighborhoods (like mine) in western Queens and northern Brooklyn. 

Of the inherent limitations, perhaps the most significant is the mismatch between the availability of bikes and ports at any given moment.  As an example, on one of my trips, I had to go to three different docking station before I found an empty port where I could leave the bike.  That left me about half a kilometer from my destination.  The nearest docking station was only a block from where I needed to go.

Sometimes people encounter the opposite problem:  no bikes at the docking station. This typically happens at times and in areas where many people are leaving, or leaving for, their jobs or schools.

As much as I liked Curtis Sliwa’s position on animal rights, I voted for Eric Adams to become our next mayor because of just about everything else—including his mention of expanding Citibike to areas not yet served by it—and, too often, un- and under-served in so many other ways.

Disrupting Mass Transit--With A Citibike

For me, it was the kind of story that I couldn't believe when I first heard it, three nights ago.  But once it "sank in," I wasn't surprised.

After all, bikes from share programs have ended up in exotic faraway places, at the bottoms of rivers and canals or in "chop shops."  Theft and vandalism killed the bike share program in Rome and nearly did so in other cities.

But the way a Citibike in my home town met its demise--and disrupted transit service in my neighborhood--took aggression against public bike programs to a new level.

At the Steinway Street station--which is the second-closest subway stop to my apartment--someone tossed one of the blue share bikes onto the tracks.

It just happened that two trains, traveling in opposite directions, entered the station.  Whether or not it was the vandal's intention, the bike landed in just the right spot for both trains to hit it, or parts of it.    

Here's the result:

Was the vandal's intention to "blow up" Citibike--or the subway system?   

What Makes A Bike Share Program Work?

Yesterday, I wrote about something that might encourage more people to cycle:  more safe and convenient bicycle parking.

Ironically, some planners and entrepreneurs thought that eliminating bicycle parking--or, more precisely, the need for it-- would make bicycle-share programs more convenient and popular.  Too often, though, dockless share systems resulted in bikes abandoned on sidewalks, in stairwells or wherever else the rider stopped riding it.  That was not only an inconvenience; for people with limited mobility, a bike lying on its side in the middle of a sidewalk or path can be an obstacle or even a hazard.

In some Chinese cities, the bikes filled not only sidewalks and other public spaces, but also parking pens, fields and landfills.  One reason is that in those cities, where some of the first dockless share systems were launched, they were run by private companies like Ofo (which also ran some programs in the US and other countries) with little or no communication with, let alone oversight from, local or regional government agencies.  

According to a "Future Planet" article on the BBC website, the Chinese bike share saga can serve as a lesson on what makes for at least one part of a successful bike share program.  Once, when I was very young (which, believe it or not, I once was), I believed that simply allowing innovators and entrepreneurs to "slug it out" would result in the best possible goods and services at the lowest possible prices.  Perhaps it wouldn't surprise you to know that at that point of my life, I had immersed myself in Atlas Shrugged and other Ayn Rand works, in addition to other fantasies.

One  problem with allowing what is, essentially, anarcho-capitalism, is that the businesses in question have no incentive to deal with the consequences of their work.  Think of the pollution and other environmental consequences of unchecked industrial development.  

Another problem is one that I see in, interestingly, the subway (metro) system of New York, my hometown.  Different parts of the city's rapid transit system were developed by individual companies.  As a result, stations are clustered in relatively few areas while other parts of the city are transportation "deserts."  For instance, on the "Q" line in Brooklyn, the distance between the Beverly Road and Cortelyou Road stations is so short that when the front of a train enters one station, the rear is still in the other!  The distance between the 14th and 18th Street stations on the #1 line in Manhattan isn't much greater.  But Floyd Bennett Field, where I sometimes ride (and a very interesting place), is about seven kilometers from the nearest subway station.  Compare that to, say, Paris, where no point in the city is more than 500 meters from a Metro station and where correspondance (transfer points) are convenient.

From the BBC site, credit to Getty Images

How does that relate to bike share programs?  Well, according to the article, another problem with allowing unregulated companies to run bike share programs is that they generally do little or nothing to integrate their systems with bike lanes or other bicycle infrastructure--or with existing transit systems.  Most people won't ride to school or work if it's more than half an hour's ride from their homes, but they might ride to a train, bus, ferry or other mode of transportation if they can park their bikes--or if bikes were allowed on mass transit.  

(Cities in Africa and Asia that are densely populated but where few own cars could be developed to accommodate cyclists and would be good opportunities for bike share programs.  They could avoid the problems experienced by, say, Chinese cities that rapidly switched from bikes to cars.)

The BBC article points to some other factors that make for successful bike share programs.  One is topography:  Most popular bike shares are in relatively flat cities.  (That is a reason why Citibike has been so widely used in New York, a city with relatively little bike infrastructure or integration with other forms of transportation.)  One way to make bike shares work in less horizontal locales is to offer incentives for leaving bikes on tops of hills.  

Also, bike shares have been most successful in cities that are compact: Again, Paris comes to mind, along with places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.  This fact could also

In brief, bike share programs are not "one size fits all" propositions:  They have to be integrated with other forms of bicycle infrastructure as well as other transportation systems, and have to be tailored to their locales in various other ways.  And share operators need support and oversight from local officials.  But, as the experience of successful programs has shown, bike shares can be an integral part of a city's transportation structure, and can enhance its quality of life.

A First Time In Blue

This is one sure sign of Middle Age, with the Capital M and Capital A:  going for a colonoscopy. 

I last had one ten years ago, just nine months(!) after my gender reaffirmation surgery.  The procedure hasn't changed much (at least from what I can recall):  They knock you out for a few minutes and look for polyps

The good doctor didn't find any.  A week and a half ago, during our preliminary appointment, he told me I'd need a ride home, as the anesthetic would take a few hours to wear off.  

But he said nothing about getting there: a few blocks from the Intrepid Air and Space Museum.  That's about 7 kilometers from my apartment.  Despite the MTA's assurances, I still don't want to take the subway or a bus.  So, I did something that, in all of my years of living in New York, I had never before done.

No, I didn't visit the Statue of Liberty.  Rather, I rode a Citibike.  

The irony of that is that in addition to living in New York, I've visited several cities with bike share programs.  In those places, however, I rented bikes from shops and when I'm at home, I ride my own bikes.  Also, I repaired and assembled Citibikes a few weeks after the program started.  But I'd never ridden my handiwork, if you will.

The bike was about what I'd expected:  very comfortable but not very fast or maneuverable.  That, of course, is how they're built: to take the pounding of day-to-day use on city streets.  

In all, it wasn't bad.  The hard part, for me, was buying the pass and unlocking the bike, which I did via a Lyft app.  I don't think the problem was the system, as lots of other people seem to use it easily.  Rather, I am a bit of a techno-ditz:  Any time I use a new app or program, it's as if I'm re-inventing the wheel (pun intended).  Also, when I arrived, some of the docks at the nearest station weren't working properly (or was I not using them properly)?  I had to try a few before I heard the "click" and the green light flashed.

Although I don't expect to be a regular Citibike user, understand why it's popular, and I wouldn't dissuade anyone who doesn't have his or own bike (or a safe place to park it) from using those blue two-wheelers.

(Another bit of good news came out of today's procedure--or, more precisely, the screening:  My weight is the lowest it's been since I took my bike tour of the French and Italian Alps in 2001.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised:  For the past few months, I've cycled or walked just about everywhere I've gone, and one unanticipated, but welcome, side-effect of not going into the college is that I'm eating healthier food.)

Citibike Expands To Essential Neighborhoods

I have never ridden bikes from share programs. But I am glad such programs exist.

Blue Citibikes have been rolling along the street of my hometown, New York, for seven years.  That makes it one of the older share programs.  When it began, its organizers had the benefit of the experience of other cities' experience with programs.  While Citibike provides a useful and reasonably-priced service, it is not without its flaws.

Perhaps the most legitimate criticism of Citibike is that, even with its relative low cost and its offer of free or reduced-price memberships for people on various government assistance programs, the service is still out of reach for many of this city's residence.  Even if they can afford to use a Citibike, it's not available where they live.

It just so happens that they live in communities such  as Washington Heights, Mott Haven, East New York, Melrose and South Jamaica.  What they have in common is that they are, shall we say, not hipster havens.  In other words, they are--you guessed it--darker (in residents' skin tones) and poorer than places like Greenwich Village, Williamsburg and Astoria-Long Island City, where Citibike ports are plentiful.

It also happens that the neighborhoods that haven't had access to Citibike are home to many workers that have been deemed essential.  They are doing the jobs that can't be done in their rooms or apartments:  they have to get to the stores, nursing homes, hospitals, transit yards and other workplaces when subways and buses are on greatly reduced schedules.

Now, Citibike has announced that, starting on Monday the 4th, it will begin to install new docking stations in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.  Included will be new stations in Harlem Hospital, located in its namesake neighborhood, and Lincoln Hospital, in the middle of "Asthma Alley" and the heart of the poorest Congressional district in the United States.  

There is little doubt that the nurses' aides, orderlies, maintenance workers and others who work at Lincoln and Harlem and other hospitals need those bikes for transportation.  One can also hope that some of the area's residents might use the Citibikes for recreation or other kinds of riding:  One reason why the neighborhood surrounding Lincoln has the highest rates of asthma, diabetes and other health problems is the lack of outdoor recreational opportunities.

So, the timing of Citibike's latest expansion is good.  Let's hope that the benefits continue after the virus is gone.

Citibikes Are Nice, But We Need More Bike Racks

In New York City, my hometown, 460,000 daily trips were made by bicycle.  That is up from 270,000 trips in 2011--a 70 percent increase.

Some of that, of course, has to do with the Citibike share program, which launched in 2013.  The operative word here is "some":  Many more cyclists are riding to work on their own bicycles.

During the past four fiscal years, the city has set up an average of 1633 new racks.  Now, what do you think the average was during the previous four years?

2808.  In other words, 42 percent fewer racks have been installed during the past four years, which have fallen squarely in Bill de Blasio's administration, than in the previous four, which were mainly under Mike Bloomberg's administration.

What that means is that the city lacks "essential infrastructure" needed if bicycling is truly to become a transportation option, according to Bike New York spokesman Jon Orcutt.  "Everybody's talking about Citibikes and scooters, but it's the humble rack that needs more attention," added Orcutt, who served as the city's Department of Transportation policy director under Bloomberg.

Citibikes are fine for commuting if there's a bike port near your home and another near your workplace--that is, if there are available bikes when you leave for work and if there's an available space in the dock when you get to your job.  

You can ride your own bike, but there might not be a dedicated bike rack or other safe facility at your destination. Or, if there is such a facility, there might not be any space available when you arrive--or it might simply be unusable for whatever reason.

So, you look for a signpost, lamppost or other seemingly immovable object--which aren't as impervious to bike thieves as they seem.  And they might be full, too. Then, you lock to fencing, scaffolding or even a waste basket.  I've even seen a bike locked to the chain that holds the cap to a fire hydrant.

Those things, of course, are easy work for a thief who has the time you spend in your workplace or classroom.  Rose Uscianowski, an organizer for Transportation Alternatives, learned that the hard way when she locked her bike to scaffolding in front of a building on John Street, in the city's financial district.  "I came out of my office and found a bar of scaffolding on the floor and my bike missing," she lamented.  "The only reason I locked up to scaffolding is that there are only a few racks on John Street, and they're always taken up."

Even scarcer are racks by subway stations or other public transportation facilities.  For people who live in areas that are a mile or more from the nearest subway or bus station--which is the case for people in the outlying areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and for nearly everybody in Staten Island--truly having the option of riding to transit and feeling more or less certain that your bike will be there when you return might do as much, or more than, congestion pricing or other proposed methods to reduce traffic.

Plus, I think that making bike-parking facilities available at public transportation stations will help the public to see that cycling is a transportation alternative for people from all walks (pardon the pun) of life rather than the plaything of the young and privileged, and tourists.

From The Water To The Port

Three years ago, the Canal St. Martin was drained.  The City of Paris does that about every ten or fifteen years.

In dredgings past (sounds like a series of old therapy sessions!), the "treasures" at the bottom of the Canal included home furnishings, street signs, gold coins(!), World War I shells and even a car.  But the most recent drainage served as a sort of geological record of changes in the neighborhood around the canal--mostly the 10th Arrondissement--and in the City of Light itself.

The streets around the waterway have become the sites of bars, restaurants and clubs.  (The Bataclan, site of a mass shooting during a November 2015 concert, stands literally steps from the canal.)  The area is home to "Bobos"--a term combining "bohemian" and "bourgeois".  They are probably the Parisian equivalent of hipsters. At any rate, they share many of the same tastes with their Brooklyn counterparts.  

They include a thirst for craft beers (French as well as American) and wines.  Empty bottles and cans bearing those labels littered the bottom of the canal when it was dredged. So did another passion of that evanescent group:  bicycles--specifically, those from Velib, the city's bike-share service.

As far as I know, neither of the city's two canals--the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Gowanus Canal--has ever been drained.  Interestingly, the Gowanus--one of the most toxic waterways in the United States--flows, like the St. Martin, through a hipsterizing (Think of it as the hipster equivalent of gentrifying.) neighborhood.  According to an urban legend, the Mafia used to dump their "hits" in the Gowanus because the bodies would dissolve.  

Which brings me to this question:  Could a Citibike survive a dive into a city canal?

Somehow I doubt it would be even as intact as the bike in the photo.  That Citibike, missing since September 2017, showed up in the bike-share service's port at 73rd Street and Riverside Drive, where filmmaker Ted Geoghegan found it.  Its coating of barnacles and mud indicates that it spent time in the Hudson River--which, at that point, is actually an estuary.  

No one, it seems, can explain how it got from the river (or wherever it was) to the bike dock?  Did a thief take it, dump it, feel guilty and dive into the water to fetch it?  That seems unlikely because, well, that's not what thieves usually do, but also because if the thief did indeed dump the bike in the river, he or she wouldn't have found it in the same spot, or anywhere nearby.  The more likely scenario is that some boater or fisher found it and, not knowing what else to do, quietly brought it to the bike port.

That bike is more than likely beyond repair.  Spending almost any amount of time in the water would have destroyed the bike's electronics, and the growth on the rest of the bike indicates that the brackish water has corroded the rest of the bike so that it's structurally unsound, and its moving parts are probably irreparable. 

(Interesting aside:  The Gowanus and Harlem Ship are the only two canals in New York City today. In the 17th Century, however, lower Manhattan was laced with canals. That's not surprising when you realize the area was then called Nieuw Amsterdam, and the Dutch settlers were following a model of urban planning for which their capital is famous.)

On Google, You Can Find Everything...Except Their Bikes!

Which will come first:  a perpetual motion machine, or Donald Trump not taking credit for something?

Or a bike share program without theft or vandalism?

A little more than two years ago, I found a Citibike that someone attempted to camouflage with gold rattle-can paint.   That bike was one of hundreds that have been stolen from New York's bike-share program during its four and a half years of operation. Most other large-city share programs have had to deal with prodigious pilferage; some, such as the one Rome had, ended because of it.

Turns out, municipal bike share programs aren't the only ones whose bikes are swiped.  On its sprawling Mountain View, California campus, Google offers bikes for its employees to use.  The problem,it seems, is that not everyone who avails him or self to that service is an employee--or remains on the campus after grabbing the handlebars.

It seems that some local residents view the bikes as part of "the commons" and "borrow" them in much the same way some folks "borrow" shopping carts from their local supermarkets or "find" milk crates nearby. Some of the bikes have been found on lawns of nearby homes, roofs of hotspots and even in a local TV commercial.  Even Mountain View's mayor has admitted to riding one of Google's bikes to the movies.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Google's bikes are adorned with the Lego hues of its logo.  While this makes them distinctive, it hardly makes them impossible to camouflage.  While Citibike and most other municipal share bikes are shaped differently from most bikes you can buy, Google's frames, with their sloping twin-lateral top tube, have a form similar to that of many European-style city or commuter bikes--including at least one from a certain company located at the other end of Silicon Valley.  Thus, it wouldn't be too difficult to disguise a purloined Google bike.

That might explain why some have been found as far away as Alaska and Mexico, and why one turned up at Burning Man in Nevada while others ended up at the bottom of a local creek.  It also explains why Google is now doing something that, frankly, I'm surprised they didn't do earlier in the program:  They are attaching GPS tracking devices to the bikes.

Hmm...Can you imagine if supermarkets and dairy companies started implanting chips in their carts and crates?

Coming To A Neighborhood Near...Me

We all waited with bated breath.

No, I didn't mis-spell "bated."  If a cat swallows cheese and stands in anticipation of a mouse, he/she can be said to be waiting with "baited" breath.  But "bated" is just a truncated form of "abated":

Shall I bend low, and in a bondsman's key
Wait with 'bated breath, and whispering humbleness

In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Shylock utters those two lines as part of a soliloquy in which he asks Antonio (the merchant) how he can ask for a loan after Antonio and his associates called him a "cur", spit on him and kicked him around.  Antonio's rationale for their behavior is the "usurious" interest on the loans Shylock gave them.  

Now, of course, I was exaggerating just a bit when I said "we all waited with bated breath."  Nobody does that in New York--except, maybe, for a bank (oh, irony of ironies!)--specifically, Citibank.  But we weren't waiting for a loan so we could open up a pet-boarding house.  Instead, we were eagerly anticipating something else that comes from S-itty--I mean, Citi--bank:  Citibike.

Well, all right, I wasn't waiting for it as much as some other folks were.  After all, I have my own bikes.  But I must say that I am glad that Citibike has come to my neighborhood.  In fact, as of the other day, it was on my corner:

Is the arrival of Citibikes a sign that a neighborhood is "hip"--or that it's merely infested with hipsters?  Whatever the case, I'm glad to see the bikes--even though they're in the ugliest shade of blue--just because I'm happy to see anything that encourages people to ride bikes.

A few days ago I wrote about the thefts that have plagued bike share programs.  Citibike has not been immune to such problems.  Baltimore may have come up with a solution--at least for a while.  There are other interesting ideas out there, including one I found in a 99 cent store just down the street from the new Citibike port:

No New Bike Shares In Beijing

It wasn't difficult to see this coming: Beijing has banned all new bike-share bikes.

China's largest city has been bedeviled by the same problems as other municipalities where Ofo, Mobike and other private bike-share companies have set up shop:  bicycles are left haphazardly on sidewalks, around people's houses and even in the middle of intersections--or they've been stolen, vandalized or even destroyed.

It seems that the very advantage those share  companies offered--their chip-implanted bikes could be located with an app and left anywhere, and didn't have to be taken from or returned to docking stations--also made life easy for vandals, thieves and people who are simply inconsiderate of others.

Beijing is not the first Chinese city to ban new share bikes. Since it is the largest, though, it begs the question of whether similar bike share schemes in the rest of the country are doomed.  Moreover, these bans are taking effect just as similar programs are starting in municipalities outside China.     

In particular, I wonder about similar operations in the US:  Just last month, Ofo began operating in Seattle, as an example.  It seems that such private companies appealed to cities like Seattle, where an earlier city-funded bike share program failed, or other American cities that are reluctant to use public funding, or where corporations like Citibank (the sponsor of New York's Citibike) might be reluctant to invest in such a project--or where property or business owners don't want docking stations by their frond doors. 

In cities large and small all over the world, there is certainly a demand for bike share programs.  Now the problem seems to be one of how to make them useful and practical without creating nuisances or hazards.