Are You Going to Bike Share?

Here it comes bitches: BIKE SHARING! They do it in DC, they do it in Paris, hell they even do it in Boston and now we'll finally being doing it in NYC. With only a few snafus, the New York City Department of Transportation and New York Bike Share are finally unveiling the specifics to their May launch. Called Citibike for the same reason it's called CitiField, this program is "a self-service system that provides members with easy access to a network of thousands of bicycles." 

As announced by just about everyone late last week, we're finally getting the specifics as to where those thousands of bikes will be. According to Patch and the spiffy new draft of the map (or you can look at the spiffier one I made you), Park Slope is now getting 56 docks on Fifth Avenue and Dean Street. This comes after the Slope was initially snubbed from phase one inclusion. 

How did the DOT pick the sites?  

New Yorkers picked these sites, submitting their ideas in the tens of thousands on the online suggestion map, in community workshops held throughout the service area, in community board feedback sessions and in hundreds of meetings that neighborhood and other organizations held directly with NYC DOT.

5,500 are being rolled out across Brooklyn and Manhattan for this first phase of the sharing venture. By the end of 2013 more bike sharing stations will start popping up in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Cobble Hill, and Crown Heights, along with the Upper East and West Sides in Manhattan bring the total number of bikes up to 7000. When the full roll out is complete 10,000 bikes will be available at 600 different stations. 

Here's how the pricing is going to work: Basically, you can get a 24 hour pass for $9.95, a 7-day pass for $25 or a yearly pass for $96 or as the Citibike site aptly points out, "that's 26 cents a day." But you're only allowed a certain amount of time on the bike before you start incurring overtime fees: 45 minutes for yearly members and 30 minutes for daily and weekly members. 

So what do we think? Are Park Slopers going to dip into the Citibike kitty?