In a time when there are so many options for getting around the urban landscape (walking, subway, e-bikes, e-scooters, Yellow Cabs, Uber, Lyft, Juno etc), you would think that the six year old Citibike service in NYC would be “old hat.”
But it remains one of my favorite things about living in NYC. The addition of bike lanes all over lower Manhattan (where I live and work) has made biking a lot safer and pedestrians are increasingly aware of the bike paths and the bikers on them.
The kiosk system, vs the dockless system that many of the newer offrrings use, has some challenges around trying to dock in a full kiosk at the end of your ride, but it is much preferable for the tidy/neat nature of the bikes.
Citibikes are particularly great for the one to two mile journey that would take 20-30mins to walk but 5-10 mins to bike.
I did that this morning from this kiosk in the west village to the Union Square neighborhood.
It took me 7 minutes and I was early enough to my meeting that I had time to get a cup of coffee before the meeting.
I honestly don’t think there is a better way to get around NYC for short distances on a lovely spring day. It is one of the things that makes living in NYC so enjoyable.
