Citi Bike Praise and Protests Fill Packed Prospect Heights Hearing

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Dozens of residents from Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and surroundings neighborhoods packed a Community Board 6 hearing Thursday night to register their approval, or publicize complaints, about Citi Bike, after the bike-sharing system expanded into Red Hook, Gowanus, Park Slope and BoCoCa this summer.

No officials from the city's Department of Transportation were at the meeting — a fact lamented by CB6 chair Sayar Lonial and Councilman Brad Lander, who streamed the meeting on Facebook Live.

In a recent email to CB6 district manager Craig Hammerman, DOT commissioner Polly Trottenberg said that her agency "will of course take CB6’s feedback and work with you all to potentially make adjustments to bike stations as needed."

But both Lonial and Hammerman said before the meeting that they won't limit their feedback to five locations.

"We're going to compile [public feedback] and we're going to send as much as possible to DOT," Lonial said, adding during the meeting that CB6's June support for Citi Bike's final roll-out plan was always "conditional" on the board's ability to review the placement of docking stations.

Similarly, Hammerman said the board will pull the community feedback it's received into a report which it will send to the DOT.

At the meeting, CB6 transportation committee co-chair Eric McClure reviewed the process by which Citi Bike had come to CB6's neighborhoods, including public workshops in March 2012 and June 2015, and community board hearings in October and November of last year and June of this year.

McClure said the board had reviewed all of the Citi Bike docking stations in Park Slope, concluding that they had removed 77 parking spots, 0.75 percent of the neighborhood's total parking.

The co-chair also pointed to statistics compiled by Carroll Gardens resident Viktor Geller, who used Citi Bike's publicly available data, that showed how the system has been used in August and September.

Gellar's findings rank each neighborhood's stations by how often bikes are taken out or returned. Park Slope had the busiest station — Plaza St. West and Flatbush Ave., which was seeing 133.5 bikes checked out or returned daily. Boerum Hill's station at Bergen Street and Smith Street was the second busiest, averaging 128.8 check-outs or returns per day.

According to the DOT, 8,000 CB6 residents were annual Citi Bike members as of Oct. 10, while 2,700 had purchased an annual membership since August.

McClure concluded his remarks by saying that "Citi Bike is not going away," adding that "it's been part of our public transportation system" for years. The board's goal, he said, should be to find ways to improve it.

Among the meeting attendees, those sharing concerns about Citi Bike coalesced around similar issues, key among them the loss of street parking. Many said they weren't against the bikes inherently, but that too many stations were in their neighborhoods, or that stations had been placed in the street when they could instead be situated on sidewalks.

A Carroll Gardens resident said that older individuals who don't use computers were unaware of Citi Bike's online station map, meaning the stations were a surprise to them. And a nurse said that she now has to spend 25 to 30 minutes looking for parking after 12-hour shifts at her job.

Michelle Arbeeny, who said her family has lived in Cobble Hill for seven generations, offered a similar take. Cobble Hill is already short on parking due to local religious institutions and schools with no-parking zones out front, area construction, and a lack of parking garages, she said. Following the bikes' arrival, she said, parking has become an increasing hassle, including for her 85-year-old father who still works and drives.

"I'm not as opposed to the whole program, I'm opposed to the density," Arbeeny said, referring to the small distance between stations. Arbeeny also said there were opportunities to move stations onto sidewalks or out of the street to accommodate more cars.

Park Slope resident Robert Krakovski said he supported Citi Bike, but noted that "it feels like it was a deliberate slap in the face if you own a car." Krakovski said he hoped the city could "make it work better without it being at a segment's expense," meaning the neighborhood's car-owning segment.

Many of those in attendance, however, had come to support the system.

"The coverage is great," said Carroll Gardens resident Chris Toth. "I feel more connected to the neighborhoods, especially Red Hook," which lacks public transit options.

Another neighborhood resident, Lincoln Palmer, addressed what he said were concerns that Citi Bike was catering to younger residents at the expense of others. He said he was a middle-aged man who was one of those "people using the system to great effect." Palmer also said the dense placement of stations is needed in order to make the system function well.

A Park Slope resident named Natalie said she was an avid biker who joined the system partly on principal, even though she also owns her own bikes and a car.

"I understand where some of these people are coming from," Natalie said, referring to those who are raising concerns about the system. But she wondered whether Citi Bike was unfairly blamed by those nervous about broader economic changes in their neighborhoods.

Natalie downplayed parking concerns, adding that, "we all know that parking's already an issue, and I personally haven't seen a change" in its availability following the bike roll-out.

The Park Sloper said she, too, questions station placements at times, and added that everyone in the discussion should be listened to. Then, she headed off to her bike to ride home.

Meanwhile, the community planning process for Citi Bike's expansion into Prospect Heights and Crown Heights is now underway.

Pictured at top: At the CB6 Citi Bike hearing. Photo by John V. Santore