With 67,489 trips last Wednesday, Citi Bike hit a new daily ridership peak for the ninth time this month, according to an email sent to members this morning. Riders have made 10 million Citi Bike trips so far in 2016, reaching the milestone more three months earlier than last year.
NYC's bike-share system is in the middle of a three-year expansion plan, with the service area now extending up to 110th Street in Manhattan and into the Brooklyn neighborhoods between Prospect Park and the Red Hook waterfront. Record ridership should be expected as the system grows, but it's notable just how many people use the system now. On days with good weather, notes Citi Bike, ridership is comparable to the Staten Island Ferry or the boro taxi program.
For international comparison, London's bike-share program, which is three years older than New York's and has more stations and bikes, has only topped 60,000 rides twice in its entire history, according to Transport for London data. Only Paris's Velib and China's massive bike-share systems get more ridership.
After declining in 2014, Citi Bike ridership started to turn around last summer when new ownership made a slew of improvements to the system's hardware and software and began to add new stations.
The question now is how the city and Motivate will keep the momentum going after next year's round of expansion in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. DOT says its goal is to bring bike-share to all five boroughs, though it has yet to provide a timetable for doing so.
