Citi Bike Coming To These NYC Neighborhoods In Major Expansion

NEW YORK — Citi Bike is going citywide. New York City's bike-sharing service will cruise into more than two dozen neighborhoods in the next four years in a major expansion.

By 2023, Citi Bike docks will hit parts of the Bronx, cover all of Manhattan and expand further into Brooklyn and Queens in an effort to double the program's service area, a map of the planned expansion shows. The city's Department of Transportation is expected to formally announce the plans Tuesday morning.

Citi Bike's larger service area will eventually include:

• Mott Haven, Melrose, Port Morris, Highbridge, Claremont, Morrisania, Longwood, Concourse and Mt. Eden in The Bronx.
• Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, East Flatbush, Sunset Park, South Slope, Windsor Terrace, Prospect Park South and Kensington in Brooklyn.
• Sunnyside, Maspeth, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona in Queens.
• Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Sugar Hill, Washington Heights and Inwood in Manhattan.

The expansion, which will grow Citi Bike's service area by 35 square miles, will start next year, with outreach to local community boards beginning this fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office said. Citi Bike has already begun putting docks in East Williamsburg and Bushwick and will place some in Ridgewood, Queens in the coming months, officials said.

"This expansion will help us build a more fair and equitable city for all New Yorkers," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Even more communities will have access to this low-cost, sustainable mode of transportation."

Lyft, Citi Bike's new owner, committed $100 million last fall to expanding the program's geographic reach and more than tripling the size of its fleet to 40,000 bikes.

Citi Bike docks currently extend as far north as 130th Street in Manhattan and to several neighborhoods in northern Brooklyn and western Queens.

Details of the expansion, first reported by the New York Post, come on the heels of a report showing that Citi Bike's current service area serves a largely white, affluent population while shutting out poor people of color.

More than 70 percent of neighborhoods with a median income less than $20,000 lack access to bike-sharing, while every neighborhood with a median income above $200,000 can easily grab a bike, according to the report New York Communities for Change published last week.

Annual Citi Bike memberships run $169 for unlimited 45-minute rides, though public housing residents and food-stamp recipients can get one for $5 a month. Cyclists can also buy single rides for $3 or day passes for $12.

Citi Bike has proven popular in its six years of operation — riders logged more than 1.9 million trips in May, more than triple the 618,572 recorded in June 2013.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of Citi Bike's plans to grow its fleet. It will eventually have 40,000 bikes on the road, not add 40,000 bikes to the fleet.