The ball is dropping, but Citi Bike prices are going up — with annual membership fees set to increase by 7.3 percent.
Starting on Jan. 4, a yearly subscription will rise to $219.99 from $205, while unlocking a standard Citi Bike for non-members and riding it for 30 minutes will rise to $4.79 (from the current $4.49). The per-minute fees for non-members riding longer than 30 minutes or riding an electric bike, will rise to $0.30 per minute from the current $0.26, or 15 percent.
The per-minute fees for both types of bikes will increase from $0.17 to $0.20, or 17 percent, Lyft officials we set to inform members on Thursday.
[Update, 1/8/24: Upon Lyft's implementation of the price hike in January, Streetsblog learned that the company raised the peak fare for trips under 45 minutes in and out of Manhattan to $4. A company spokesman who previously told Streetslog the $3 peak fare would remain in place.]
Lyft's move to raise bike-share fees comes after the company and city reached a deal to allow the company to dramatically increase the size of its e-bike fleet — from around 10,000 to around 20,000, out of a total of around 40,000 bikes.
The "expansion" deal did not expand Citi Bike's geographic footprint, and did not involve any additional financial investment from the city.
In contrast, officials in other cities such as a San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have leveraged public funding for cheaper user fees.
Annual membership in Northern California's BayWheels, for example, costs $150 — a pricetag that Lyft actually lowered this year citing new public funding. In the D.C. area an annual membership in the heavily subsidized Capital Bikeshare system costs just $95.
New York City's recent negotiations with Lyft resulted in a "price cap" of $0.24 on per-minute ride fees for members and $0.36 for the general public through the end of 2023, plus an annual increase equal to the consumer price index plus 2 percent.
Lyft opted to keep prices below that cap in order to stay "more closely aligned with economic realities," a spokesman said.
Sign up for Citi Bike here.
