BY JACKSON CHEN | Citi Bike has announced plans to expand north in Manhattan all the way up to 110th Street, while also adding stations in areas on the Upper East and Upper West Sides already served by the bike-sharing operation.
According to the announcement, the expansions are expected to begin in August and will also cover several neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Counting the additions in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, Motivate, the operator of Citi Bike, said it will be adding 140 new docking stations overall.
According to the Department of Transportation, the Upper West Side will receive 24 new stations total, 18 of them between 86th Street and 110th Street and six of them within the current Citi Bike coverage area below 86th Street. For the Upper East Side, the DOT said there will be 20 new stations overall, 11 stations for 86th Street to 110th Street and nine below 86th Street.
The DOT has not yet scheduled any meetings with the affected community boards — CB7 and CB8.
Scott Falk, CB8’s Transportation Committee co-chair, said he expects DOT to come before the committee with more details at its July 6 meeting.
He explained that DOT informed CB8 in early May that it would be proposing nine new stations in the area on the East Side below 86th Street where docking stations already exist, while simultaneously reducing the size of some existing stations.
“It’s probably a good thing for them to reexamine the appropriate spacing of stations,” Falk said. “I also think it’s appropriate they look at the size of existing stations.”
As for the Upper West Side, the DOT previously reached out to CB7, which runs north to 110th Street, to inform its members of plans for the six additional sites to be added to the current Citi Bike coverage area while reducing the size of other stations.
As for the expansion further north past 86th Street, Andrew Albert, CB7’s Transportation Committee co-chair, said the board was also familiar with those plans and had discussed some options with DOT.
“We knew that more was coming for CB7 in the northern part of the district,” said Albert, who added that community board members raised concerns about possible docking stations at a particularly dark Riverside Drive intersection close to West 92nd Street, at the northwestern point of Straus Park on the corner of West End Avenue and 107th Street, and on the north side of West 90th Street in front of the New York City Housing Authority’s Wise Towers at Columbus Avenue.
Albert said that DOT hasn’t scheduled a date to meet with CB7’s Transportation Committee regarding the new docking stations.
