Hats off to Matt Flegenheimer for the enlightening piece in today's Times describing the lessons from other bike-share systems that informed New York's big decisions about Citi Bike. This passage stood out, given the recent tabloid coverage about station placement:
In London and Paris, stations are trenched in the ground, rendering them difficult to remove. Kiosks in New York’s system, similar to Montreal’s, are simply set on the street surface, secured by their own weight, with no physical tethering to the ground.
“Can you imagine doing 300 miniconstruction sites around the city?” Mr. Orcutt said, alluding to the resident complaints about even the low-maintenance installation.
The flexibility has already allowed the city to adjust kiosks, as workers did recently on Bank Street, where a few spots were removed to avoid blocking a building entrance.
In related news, the sterling journalists at the New York Post insist that rearranging bike-share docks isn't a sign of the system's flexibility but instead amounts to "a kind of shell game." Because it's so, so devious and deceptive to respond to feedback.
Say what you will about whether the feedback from 99 Bank and 175 West 13th Street was worth a response (Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said the complaints about emergency access have no basis in reality), the ability to fine-tune Citi Bike stations is a big plus. Unlike huge, expensive wastes of concrete like the parking garages at East River Plaza and Yankee Stadium, it's a cinch to make adjustments to Citi Bike as needed.
