This past weekend, my wife and I decided to give the nascent
Citibike program a day. After a late
evening stop at the 21st Trader Joe’s, we decided to bike home with
some groceries and continue using the bikes for errands on Sunday. I bought two
24-hr passes for me and Sara that totaled $21+ after taxes. Once I received the pass codes, Sara and I
selected our bikes, punched in the pass codes on the selected bike dock, and
off we went. My first selected bike and
dock didn’t accept the code, but the second did. Didn’t realize it was a sign of things to
come.
Basic Costs
Before going any further, here are a few details on the
Citibike bike share program. Costs are
as follows:
- $9.95 for 24hr period
- $25.00 for 7-day pass
- $99.00 for an annual pass and key
- Bikes can only be used in 30-minute chunks. In other words, once a bike is checked out,
it has to be docked within 30 minutes.
- If a bike station is crowded, there is an option to request an extra 15-minutes at the electronic concierge to allow riders to find the next empty station.
- Overage charges vary according to how long the bike has out of dock
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Sunday was a gorgeous day for a bike ride. I heeded my wife’s advice against a long ride
to Piermont because my marathon was a week away, but I thought riding in the
city would be fine since it’s at slower speeds.
Initial Problems
We got to our nearest station at 44th and 9th
excited to check out our bikes. I held
on to the codes from the previous evening to check out our bikes. We punched in the 5-code digits on every
available bike – no luck. It took nearly
60 minutes, dozens of bikes, and three stations later, ending up at Broadway
and 53rd for us to finally check out our bikes. Why?
- First, the codes last for only 5 minutes after created. I had to request new codes from the electronic concierge. We discovered that after the second station.
- Secondly, discovered by trial and error, we couldn’t check out the bikes when I requested two passcodes. However, if I requested one code at a time, the bikes would check out of the dock.
- Note that there is a 2 minute mandatory wait period in between passcode requests.
We called the Citibike help desk 3 different times and they
were helpful, navigating us to the nearest station with available bikes and
working docks. They were also agreed to
grant us an extra 24-hrs of rental given our troubles.
Success!
Finally, Sara and I could pedal to our first destination – Nordstrom
Rack at Union Square to return an item. Navigating
through Times Square and down Broadway through Herald Square, It was a glorious
ride, albeit short. The dock at Broadway
and 17th was fairly empty so we had no issues with the bike return.
Sara and I used the Citibike station on 14th and
Broadway for our next pickup. I
requested the new bike codes, one at a time, checked out our bikes, and we were
off to Chelsea Market for some gift shopping.
We headed west on 13th St., made a right on 8th
Ave., left on 15th, and docked the bikes right in front of Chelsea
Market. This was starting to be fun and
easy!
After picking up some items and lunching at Chelsea Market,
we got on the bikes again, one pass code at a time, and we headed to Giggle in
Soho, docking at a crowded station at Thompson and Prince. Another fun and short ride following the bike
lane from 9th Ave. to Bleecker, and heading south towards
Wooster.
While there, I decided to check if there were cronuts
available at the originator’s bakery (name escapes me). No luck unfortunately. After our Soho stop, we decided to make one
more stop uptown at FAO Schwartz. It was
a more enjoyable day to ride a bike around the city instead of being in a muggy subway station.
We returned to the bike dock where we had parked our bike
and realized why the station was crowded -
the electronic concierge was not operating properly. I dubbed it a bike black hole station. We saw other black holes throughout the
day. We checked the map on the concierge
for the nearest station. Only two blocks
away, we were lucky there were just enough bikes available for me and Sara. Sara took advantage of the two minute wait
between codes by loading our items on our selected bikes.
Back on the saddle, we headed north on 6th
Ave. When we reached 34th
St., I decided we should dock and switch out the bikes because although we
could make it FAO Schwartz on time, we would still have to find a dock in the
area.
After switching out our bikes, we continued to head north on
6th Ave, where we encountered traffic once we reached the 50’s. We made a right on 53rd and found
a dock that was taped off. It wasn’t
online yet. So we continued west towards
5th. No bike stations. Worse, it was the Puerto Rican day
parade. We circled a couple of blocks
heading all the way to Park Ave. for a station – no luck. Finally, we decided to head back to Broadway
and 53rd, where we checked out our first bike. I was feeling very smart about exchanging the
bikes at 34th because we would have already been charged for late
fees.
Door!
Sara and I had to navigate through quite a bit of pedestrian
and vehicular traffic due to the parade to get back to our first station Between 5th and 6th on
53rd St., we navigated through parked cars on the right and cars in
traffic on our left. Although the bike
lane was on the left side of traffic, we rode on the right because delivery
vehicles were blocking. Suddenly, an
SUV’s door flung open, timing perfectly to knock me off my bike and to ricochet
me off a parked black Mercedez. I wasn’t
going that fast, but the accident was a blur.
I remember the car door opening, thinking “crap, this could cost me my
marathon,” bouncing off the Mercedez, trying to protect my camera slung around
my back, and then landing back on my feet over the bike. I did a systems check and noticed various
pains on my left side. I sustained a cut
on my left ear, sprained left middle finger, slightly sprained shoulder, and
lightly banged up knee. Things could’ve
been worse, and I’m thankful I’ll still be able to run the SF marathon on Sunday. Sara called over police officers. We stayed at the scene expecting for the
Mercedez owner to file a report against the people in the vehicle, but he
decided against it.
Checking In
Sara called Citibikes for the 4th time, and they
were understanding of the situation.
Interestingly, we also found out that the bikes we returned at 34th
station were not checked into the system.
One last tip for future users: make
sure that the bike is properly checked in by watching the led lights go to
green on check in.
We finally finished our shopping at FAO Schwartz, walked
back to 53rd and Broadway, checked out our bikes one at a time. We explained this trick to a couple of other
frustrated users at the same station and it worked for them as well. We dropped off our bags at home and made one
last stop…back to Trader Joe’s where it all started hrs earlier.
