Life in and around Hell’s Kitchen, NYC
Just grabbing a quick snack, surely:
Only a brave few people seem to be giving Citibikes a ride in the snow…meanwhile the rest of the “fleet” is forgotten:
If you’re anything like me you might have wondered what the plan for the Citibikes are when it snows and buries the docks. Obviously having a snowplow take out an entire row of bikes isn’t ideal…and looks like they’ve found a solution:
Ah, nothing to worry about now.
Workers were out today loading the Citibike docks along Broadway north of Times Square onto trucks, leaving a outlines along the bike lanes where they used to be. It looks like this is the start of preparations for the big New Years Eve celebrations…I guess having thousands of people swarming isn’t good for the bikes, who would’ve thought…
Here’s the affected docks from the map. They’re just marked as “out of service”, so it’s pretty safe to assume they’ll be back in the new year:
In other Citibike-New-Years news, they installed a few of the bikes in Times Square today hooked up to a generator, so you can contribute a tiny, tiny fraction of the electricity the ball will use on the night. There was also the whole Good Riddance Day thing going on, but that’s something else entirely…
Here’s something you probably won’t even notice: the maps signage on the side of the Citibike dock got updated today:
The big change seems to be that it’s now upside-down, with Central Park at the bottom and Times Square, etc, at the top. Makes sense considering there’s no docks past 60th St.
Slow news day.
Citibike recently put out an article about their efforts to manage the bike levels across the city. If you haven’t been playing along at home, by around 8am all the docks in the area (and most other residential areas across the city) are completely empty, and then in the evening many are completely full, so cyclists can’t return the bikes.
The main part of their strategy to manage the levels are the vans they have to move bikes between docks, and this morning they were out in force:
As good as it is, it’ll never be enough. The van had probably 20 or so bikes in it, but half an hour after they left they were all taken again.
Spotted this happening this morning on 9th Ave. I guess the cyclist ran the red light? The guy was not happy.
Citibike has really taken off in the area. Walking past the docks most hours of the day they’re completely empty, aside from one or two “out of order” bikes. Turns out today’s rain was the secret to getting one:
I guess the rain makes it harder to hold your latte.
(Jokes aside, we think Citibike’s great.)