4 Charts That Show How Citi Bike Is Taking Over New York
REUTERS/Carlo AllegriSince New York City's bike share program launched in late May, its popularity has skyrocketed - despite a healthy wave of complaints that accompanied its creation.
More than 80,000 people have plunked down the $95 for a year-long Citi Bike membership. Users have pedaled more than 8 million miles on 4 million trips.
In the past two months, the number of daily trips has hovered between 30,000 and 40,000.
That's not to say the system works perfectly. I have an annual membership and regularly come across stations that are broken down or bikes that mysteriously cannot be returned at an empty dock.
Then there's the problem of stations with no bikes to take, or no empty docks to return a bike. The Citi Bike app provides the number of available bikes and docks at each station, but not in real time - so the information is often inaccurate.
Still, those hiccups are good problems in the sense that they are the result of heavy demand, and they can be fixed. These charts prove the demand is there.
From Citi Bike data, they cover every day since the May 27 program launch through October 7. You can click each for a larger image.
Here's the most important measure: the number of daily rides. It has its ups and downs (presumably due to days of the week and weather) but the overall trend is up. The number of trips has dipped below 25,000 only once since mid-July; it's steadily above 30,000. There are about 3,000 bikes in the system, so that's ten trips per day, per bike.
The rate of increase for total trips has held steady for the past few months:
So it makes sense that miles traveled has followed the same trajectory:
The number of annual memberships, which cost $95 plus tax, and provide an unlimited number of 45 minute trips, has slowed after an early jump:
Wondering how all this extra biking has impacted New York's emergency rooms? The city's Department of Transportation using data on cyclist ridership, injuries, and deaths to find the "Cycling Risk Indicator."
Even with the rise in cycling in recent years, the average risk of a serious injury to a cyclist plummeted 73% between 2000 and 2011. Part of that is thanks to the installation of 200 miles of bike lanes in the past few years.
In 2012, 4,207 cyclists were injured in crashes. 20 were killed.
