The first question anyone who knows me would ask about why I joined the Citi Bike program is, "Um, don't you already OWN a perfectly good bike?" This is true. I'd been using that bike to commute to work for a few months now, ever since the weather started getting nice and I put in the effort to haul the thing from my parents' house to my apartment. It's been working pretty well, except for the fact that for the past few weeks we've been experiencing a curious phenomenon whereby the weather forecast will predict possible thunderstorms NEARLY EVERY DAMNED EVENING. I've had the experience once of having to take my bike through the subway because of rain, and it was an awkward process of circumventing turnstiles and navigating many more stairs than I'd remembered having to climb on foot. In addition to that, taking my bike to work involved having to bring it in around the loading docks and up the World's Slowest Freight Elevator, with it's light fixture dripping a mysterious brown fluid and its tendency to be filled with garbage carts in the evenings. So in short, I applied for a Citi Bike membership because I'm a whiner.
Okay, maybe that's not the ONLY reason. When I heard that New York City was getting a bike share program I felt compelled to support it, both because it encouraged healthy lifestyles and because it might get a few more people out of their cars and off of the ridiculously crowded subways and buses. An annual membership is only $95, and on top of that I was eligible for a discount because I have a Citibank credit card that I haven't gotten around to canceling yet. So about two weeks ago I took the plunge. Of course it was that very evening, after there was no turning back, that I came across an article in the New York Times about the many troubles the bike program was having, with tales of broken kiosks, bikes not locking into racks, annual passes taking forever to ship, and customer service being inundated with complaints.
I experienced the truth of at least one of these statements: the pass I ordered was supposed to ship in 3-5 days, and I found myself waiting just over two weeks until I finally received it last night. I activated it online, and I was off to the races.
...Or so I thought. When I arrived at the kiosk this morning I realized that I hadn't paid close attention to the directions for USING the annual pass: a long rectangular fob on my keychain with a bar code on its side. The kiosk's menu screens didn't say anything about annual passes, and the many scanners and orifices on its front didn't seem designed to accommodate the fob. After a few minutes of fumbling around with the kiosk I finally decided to go over and take a look at the bikes themselves, and sure enough I found that next to each bike there was a slot that the fob fit into perfectly. No screens, no fiddling with the keypad next to each bike, just jam in the fob, wait for the green light, and then out comes the bike. Okay, fair enough.
It took a little time to adjust to the bike, but that's always the case when I ride an unfamiliar model for the first time. It rode well enough, and the tires were probably better suited to the streets than the ones on my regular bike. My only complaint is that the bike just has three gears, and even the highest one isn't terribly powerful. That made for a ride that wasn't terribly fast, although I still managed to pass the occasional slowpoke as I followed the bike lanes along my route (I was still passed by a great many more bikers, but that isn't unusual---I can't bike nearly as well as I run, though part of that may be that I haven't fully readapted to the practice yet).
When I got to the bike stand outside my office, I was able to lock the bike into place after just a couple of tries, which was a relief. Then I headed over to the clean, normal person's elevator, and headed up to start my day.
So to sum up, I still may take my normal bike in with me on days when the weather's more reliable (and if I'm going long distances---Citi Bikes start charging extra after 45 minutes of use), but Citi Bikes do come in handy for less predictable situations, which in this city are always just around the corner.
Okay, maybe that's not the ONLY reason. When I heard that New York City was getting a bike share program I felt compelled to support it, both because it encouraged healthy lifestyles and because it might get a few more people out of their cars and off of the ridiculously crowded subways and buses. An annual membership is only $95, and on top of that I was eligible for a discount because I have a Citibank credit card that I haven't gotten around to canceling yet. So about two weeks ago I took the plunge. Of course it was that very evening, after there was no turning back, that I came across an article in the New York Times about the many troubles the bike program was having, with tales of broken kiosks, bikes not locking into racks, annual passes taking forever to ship, and customer service being inundated with complaints.
I experienced the truth of at least one of these statements: the pass I ordered was supposed to ship in 3-5 days, and I found myself waiting just over two weeks until I finally received it last night. I activated it online, and I was off to the races.
...Or so I thought. When I arrived at the kiosk this morning I realized that I hadn't paid close attention to the directions for USING the annual pass: a long rectangular fob on my keychain with a bar code on its side. The kiosk's menu screens didn't say anything about annual passes, and the many scanners and orifices on its front didn't seem designed to accommodate the fob. After a few minutes of fumbling around with the kiosk I finally decided to go over and take a look at the bikes themselves, and sure enough I found that next to each bike there was a slot that the fob fit into perfectly. No screens, no fiddling with the keypad next to each bike, just jam in the fob, wait for the green light, and then out comes the bike. Okay, fair enough.
It took a little time to adjust to the bike, but that's always the case when I ride an unfamiliar model for the first time. It rode well enough, and the tires were probably better suited to the streets than the ones on my regular bike. My only complaint is that the bike just has three gears, and even the highest one isn't terribly powerful. That made for a ride that wasn't terribly fast, although I still managed to pass the occasional slowpoke as I followed the bike lanes along my route (I was still passed by a great many more bikers, but that isn't unusual---I can't bike nearly as well as I run, though part of that may be that I haven't fully readapted to the practice yet).
When I got to the bike stand outside my office, I was able to lock the bike into place after just a couple of tries, which was a relief. Then I headed over to the clean, normal person's elevator, and headed up to start my day.
So to sum up, I still may take my normal bike in with me on days when the weather's more reliable (and if I'm going long distances---Citi Bikes start charging extra after 45 minutes of use), but Citi Bikes do come in handy for less predictable situations, which in this city are always just around the corner.
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