On a hot summer night, those gray Citi Bike e-bikes can be a sweet, jet-setting balm, able to spirit you over a bridge or take you where weekend train service won't. Suddenly, the stagnant air is moving again. The bright skyscraper lights? They're twinkling for you. For those of us who have partaken in the heady rush of its commuting powers, it's an actual change to how you experience the city—you can imagine (and even see) a better, less car-centric future.
But that's if you can get a bike—in most neighborhoods, that means waking up before the morning commute, or waiting until the mid-day lull to find one. And even if you do snag one, it's increasingly often accompanied by a blinking red light on the dock that signals it's not working.
For Curbed, Hell Gate contributor John Surico dove into why these beautiful cruisers are both so rare and increasingly decrepit, and answers the question of whether the teens bombing through city streets are to blame (they are not).
Instead, Surico found, people just really, really want to ride e-bikes, and not the bullshit, heavy, I'm-sweating-through-my-jeans on a steamy night, regular bikes:
The problem is that most people want to ride the 5,000-plus e-bikes — this year, e-bikes are being ridden 50 percent of the time, triple the rate of pedal bike rentals. That number is only increasing; the six highest e-bike ridership days ever have been since late June, a 54 percent jump from 2022, and a new record was set on July 20, with nearly 70,000 rides.
New York City limits the number of e-bikes to only 20 percent of Citi Bike's fleet, meaning the number of e-bikes aren't keeping up with demand. Lyft has wanted to lift (haha) the cap on e-bikes because it would mean more revenue for the struggling company. But the City Council wants to keep bikes cheap for regular New Yorkers, which means fewer e-bikes. (If only there was a way to solve this conundrum.)
On top of that, the heavy usage of the bikes has cut down on their expected lifetime, from five years to just two years, which means that even more breakdowns are on the horizon. Right now, Lyft, which operates the bike system, is scrambling to keep up with charging and repairs, sending a fleet of hundreds of mechanics out on the street each day. But until the City allows Lyft to install charging stations at the Citi Bike docks themselves (a concept which presents the kind of cross-agency logistical hurdles New York City is especially bad at), they might always be playing catch-up.
The system will be expanding further into Brooklyn and Queens this fall, which means more bikes, including e-bikes, will be added. But it still won't be enough, especially as New Yorkers have made our preference clear—we want fast, fun, reliable e-bikes.
Some links without the blinking red light of doom:
- A seventh person has died while incarcerated on Rikers Island this year. Curtis Davis, 44, was apparently found lifeless on the floor of his cell on Sunday morning. Last week, the U.S. Attorney monitoring the conditions at the jail complex called on the federal government to take away control of Rikers Island from Mayor Eric Adams.
- An NYPD officer with a long, long disciplinary record is now chief of staff to the department's second-in-command Jeffrey Maddrey (who himself has been known to let some shit slide).
- Reactionary Queens Councilmember Vickie Paladino's son appears to be among the many driving around city streets with fake license plate tags.
- You won't believe this one, but these luxury housing developers are simply not giving the public what they promised.
- Does your building allow Airbnbs? (We hope not.)
- The losses keep piling up for Andrew Cuomo.
- The City is getting closer to an actual accurate accounting of its homeless residents.
- Switching New York City's buildings off of gas heat will be crucial to the city's climate future. At some NYCHA developments, the City is trying to test out a possible solution, with heat pumps directly in residents' homes: "It's just so freaking huge," one resident told the CITY, who despite the size, says she's enjoying the experience.
- So far, app-based delivery companies have been able to somehow distance themselves from their role in deadly fires that result from their drivers' unsafe e-bike batteries. But City inspectors found that GrubHub and the bike rental company JoCo have been charging those unsafe batteries at their new "safe" charging station on the Bowery.
- And finally, fake borough to join fake state in filing a lawsuit.
