Citi Bike Share Left Out Some Areas in NYC; Picking Only Rich Zones

Two weeks after the launch, the Citi Bike Share program is still not accessible to everyone.

While the Manhattan is fortunate to have up to 6,000 docking stations for the bike between 59th Street and Brooklyn, there are still part of the city which remains bikeless-- including Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, the majority of Brooklyn and a lot of Manhattan.

This was brought to the attention of city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. However, it was highly unlikely that it will be addressed soon as the expansion will need additional funds since Citigroup Inc. and MasterCard will not be able to subsidize it anymore for the government.

The current coverage of the program is within the rich zones of NYC including SoHo and TriBeCa where residents earn an average of $73,000. This is way higher than the rest of the city which averages to $48,300 only based on Wall Street Journal’s report.

Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the city's transportation commissioner, said in an interview with Wall Street that “it is absurd to focus on the demographics of populations not near docking stations, since the bike-share system is located in the heart of Manhattan, where most of the city's population works and visits and therefore where the most trips are. We plan and hope to expand Citi Bike further into Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, and Harlem and beyond." This is in defense of allegations that they favored the rich zones over other parts of the city to gain more revenue and impose higher tax in the future.

University campuses also have the same dilemma as students at New York University in Greenwich Village have six bike stations nearby while students from the Columbia University may have to wait years.

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed that the Citi Bike program is fully subsidized calling it “one of the great success stories. Remember, this is all private money—no public moneys whatsoever,” in another interview with Wall Street. However, he did not comment when information from the city records revealed that the government had spent $600,000 to fund the program and have an actual budget of $1.55 million dedicated for the program until 2015.