Citi Bike will make its $5 per month discount membership available to the 1.6 million New Yorkers eligible for food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Mayor de Blasio announced today.
The $5/month membership significantly lowers the price of bike-share access compared to the $169 annual membership. Nearly three times as many people are now eligible for the discount, which had previously been available only to NYCHA residents and members of three community development credit unions.
The discount for SNAP recipients is "presented" by the Healthfirst insurance company, according to the announcement from the de Blasio administration. City Hall did not return a query about the extent to which Healthfirst is funding the program.
SNAP recipients can use their EBT card number to confirm eligibility for the discount online. Citi Bike staff will also be working with the city's Human Resources Administration and the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation to conduct in-person sign-ups at SNAP enrollment centers, greenmarkets, and other locations.
Expanding eligibility for the $5/month memberships will improve access to Citi Bike, but it would go a lot farther if the system itself were still expanding. This marks the first year since Citi Bike debuted in 2013 that the service area will not reach new neighborhoods.
With 12,000 bikes distributed in Manhattan below 135th Street and parts of Queens and Brooklyn, the system is still only about one-sixth the size of the network city planners originally envisioned, and doesn't reach the neighborhoods farther from the city center where many SNAP recipients live.
