The Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, announced that the Citi Bike, the city’s bike rental service, has reached 5.1 million rides since the system began working last May.
In the last five months after the launch of the new transport system in the Big Apple, more than 432,000 people have bought access passes to the service, with an average visit of 35,000 during the last three months.
It was estimated that on the first 166 days of operation 16 million kilometers had been ridden (equivalent to 404 trips around earth) surpassing other American cities that also have similar bike-sharing service. Washington, as a matter of fact, took three years to reach the level of 5 million rides.
The median number of daily trips on the 6,000 bikes of the service is 6, which suggests that the median number of trips on each of the bikes throughout these five months has been 862 trips.
The bike-renting service launched on May 27th includes daily or weekly passes. According to the rates plan, interested people can acquire a daily pass for USD 9.95 (EUR 7.6) and a weekly pass for USD 25 (EUR 19.2), which gives you a 30-minute free renting right, and an additional payment for each extra half hour fraction. There is also an annual pass for USD 95 dollars (EUR 73) that will give you a 45-minute free rental.
The service includes the City of Manhattan below 59th street and the Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill neighborhoods and Bedford Stuyvesant zones in Brooklyn.
The main objective is to extend the system to 10,000 bikes and 600 stations in the coming years. The company Citi Bike trusts to create 170 jobs and generate USD 36 million (EUR 27.6 million) annually in the local economic activity.
“City Bike is the largest bike rental program in the country and it’s now also the fastest growing one”, said Mayor Bloomberg who added that the system has resulted in a great success among New Yorkers and visitors, and that the amount of passengers has surpassed the most optimistic projections.