You Can Now Subscribe to Citi Bike

A big announcement is coming later this morning, but the news is all over Twitter: You can now buy a Citi Bike annual membership.

Citi Bike membership registration is OPEN! Just signed up for my @citibikenyc key. Here’s the link > ow.ly/k4lZK #bikenyc

— susi wunsch (@velojoy) April 15, 2013

An annual subscription is $95 plus tax and gets you unlimited rides under 45 minutes. NYCHA residents and members of some community development credit unions can get $60 annual memberships by entering a discount code, though the codes aren’t available yet. Members who sign up now will have a bike-share key mailed to them a week before the system launches, sometime in May.

As of 9:55 a.m., when I signed up, 353 other people had already purchased a membership. While I live slightly outside the service area — about a 10-minute walk to the nearest station — Streetsblog HQ is in SoHo, and I expect to make a lot of bike-share trips after work.

We’ll have more details following the 11 a.m. press conference with NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson.

Anonymous

http://citibikenyc.com/how-it-works

“Please allow at least two minutes between rides for the system to process your return and prepare for your next trip.”

So it seems to me that it is a soft 2 mins. It is probably closer to 1 min, but they are being on the safer side, allowing for any computer slowdown issues etc.

Either way, it isn’t a bad wait at all. Good to rest your legs a little after 30-40 mins of cycling.
Margaret Cuonzo

4134 at 7:30 a.m. on 4/16.
Anonymous

Great! When are the next phases supposed to be enacted?
Anonymous

Right. The site says: “Station Full? Select ‘Request Time Credit’ at the kiosk. You will have 15 minutes added to your ride time at no charge.”

Is there a timer on the bike so that the rider will know precisely how much time is left according to the system?
Bronxite

Probably not, haven’t seen one (timer) on two of the other systems I tried. 45 minutes is a long time. You can ride across the length of Manhattan in about 15 minutes at it’s widest points.
Bronxite

Iit depends on a lot of factors like demand. My personal estimate is maybe 2 years or so before all 100,000 bikes are on the road. Could be sooner.
Danelle Davis

#5866 here…woo hoo!
David

Seems like sign up has slowed. I signed up at 10pm last night (23rd April) and was number 6,170-ish
Really Unimpressed

So dreading what the CitiBike program will do to Manhattan. There will be loads of unhappy residents, pedestrians and motorists…
Anonymous

And your dread is 100% justified. Truly, adding more bikers in a time when there are already a lot of new bikers will cause *bikers* to ride the streets. And one look at the statistics will show that bikers . . . well, okay, basically they do close to zero harm to anyone other than themselves if you look at the best numbers we have available but . . . BIKERS!
Joe R.

So dreading that your kind makes things which are easy to do in other cities next to impossible to do in New York. Every little change, even when it’s for the better, is a fight and it’s getting to be really old. Change has been the one constant in NYC for the 50 years I’ve lived here. If you really like places which always stay the same, try a small town out in the middle of nowhere.
Nyer

I am in the $78,000’s this thing is really popular

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