The city should pony up public funds for Citi Bike to expand into poorer neighborhoods, City Council members said Monday.
Several members — noting that the privately run bike-share program isn’t offered in disadvantaged areas because it likely wouldn’t be profitable there — called for the city to create a public-private financial partnership.
They said using public funds is the only way to bring the blue cruisers to all corners of the five boroughs.
“One of the most celebrated parts of Citi Bike is that the network has done all of this without any direct public financing,” said Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Washington Heights/Inwood) at
a council Transportation Committee hearing.
“The one concern about this, however, is that the network has expanded to predominantly affluent areas, with concerns that to do otherwise would be financially unsustainable.”
Citi Bike currently has docks throughout Manhattan below 125th Street, a handful of neighborhoods in the northwest corner of Brooklyn,and the Long Island City section of Queens.
Motivate, the company that runs Citi Bike, also plans to install docks in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights in Brooklyn and Astoria, Queens, by the end of 2017.
Riders took more than 10 million trips on Citi Bikes in 2015 and are on track to hit 14 million by the end of this year.
But council members from The Bronx, Staten Island and other parts of Queens complained that their constituents deserve the program too.
“We have a lot of neighborhoods that rely only on the [No.] 7 train, and they need other options to get to work,” said Queens Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside/Woodside/Long Island City).
When city Transportation Department Commissioner Polly Trottenberg suggested that Staten Island have a separate unconnected system, Councilwoman Deborah Rose, who represents that borough, balked.
“We are a burgeoning waterfront community, and there seems to quite a bit of opportunity here,” Rose said.
“It seems counter-intuitive to have a Citi Bike that isn’t connected to the rest of the system. We have been a part of New York City for a very long time.”
No one floated any suggested dollar amounts for how much the city could contribute, and Trottenberg cautioned that it would have to be a continued investment.
She also argued that the city and Motivate might clash over how much involvement the city would get to have on major company decisions.
Citi Bike said that while it welcomes the money, it’s going to have to seriously weigh any strings attached.
“We are eager to work with the city to figure out how to continue to grow the program to reach more and more New Yorkers after the completion of our current agreement,” said a company spokesperson.
There are currently about 10,000 Citi Bikes on the road, and Trottenberg said that it costs $6,000 in full costs to get each bike into the system.