This is just the moment I drove a Citi bike.
Like many new Yorkers without a car, I started walking or biking as a safer option for MTA pandemic. But last week, my motorcycle was supposed to go to the store, and I had to cross Brooklyn to meet potential roommates. So I accessed my Lyft app, rented the last remaining motorcycle on the pier near my house and went to Flatbush.
Since its launch in 2013, Citi Bike has the largest motorcycle sharing formula in the United States. On Monday, the corporation announced that it had finished its hundred millionth tower and soon set up its hundredth-10th-century berth docking station in the city. According to monthly knowledge published through Citi Bike, single cyclists like me, other people who pay for 30-minute trips and do not subscribe throughout the year, constitute a developing segment of the company’s passenger number. Last June, non-subscribers accounted for only 14% of the total passengers of the month. By June 2020, 46% of users were non-subscribers.
One can only speculate on the reasons, however, it is moderate to think that the pandemic may be the cause of this increase. This is definitely something in my case: normally, without a running bike, I would have opted for the bus.
I ended up wishing I had selected some other option. About forty-five minutes after the start of my outdoor meeting, a guy casually walked to where our motorcycles were parked in the backyard, a few backyards from where we were sitting, grabbed the motorcycle and jumped on it before anyone could do anything. to prevent it. It was an electric motorcycle, so it went like a shot, however, I still gave a full chase midway through the block before I knew I could never run fast enough. I swear the guy laughed a little at me; to be honest, I probably looked pretty funny.
I don’t want to panic, I thought. In fact, this has happened before. I looked for a way to report the theft in the Lyft app, where I had rented the bike. There is a way to report that it was lost, but not in particular, stolen. I connected. The Citi Bike online page asked me to call the visitor service.
So began my Kafkaesque adventure in the bureaucratic nightmare of wasting (or being forcibly relieved) of a Citi bike.
Mixed messages
Citi Bike’s online website says little about stealing motorcycles or how to save them. In addition to the mandate to call the visitor service (“now with Lyft’s support”) in case of loss or theft of a bicycle, the site states that “motorcycles missing for more than 24 hours may result in $1, Two hundred rate (plus taxes) to the account holder who took out the motorcycle”. There is no indication that it is even vital to know who is to blame, Citi Bike adds that “they encourage you to register a police report in case a motorcycle has been forcibly stuck or stolen.” That dollar, two hundred, was enough to cool my blood. Panic, I called the number.
On the telephone with the visitor service, I was told that I had to register a police report or face fees for the bicycle. I asked him if the police report would save him from being charged. The telephone user just said it would assist in the investigation. It was a little ridiculous to call 911 for a non-emergency situation amid a pandemic and mass protests opposed to police brutality, so I called the 70th district of the NYPD. After all, the incident had occurred on their territory. I called a lot. There’s no answer. It wasn’t until the next day that my repeated calls nevertheless resulted in a voice at the other end of the line, who told me to call 911.
Other victims
Turns out I’m not the only one with this problem. A quick browsing on social media has uncovered other people’s threads in the same scenario they are asking for help. My scenario was that the motorcycle was stuck in front of my eyes; Much more often, motorcycles disappeared from the docks after consumers left them there, thinking their journeys were over. Some users insisted that they had anchored the motorcycles very well; others are not sure.
One of those users, Mark (not his genuine name), who spoke to me on condition of anonymity because the stage had not yet been resolved, said his motorcycle had been removed after putting it on the dock the first day he had started. Subscribe. When he learned that the trip was still on the app after mooring the motorcycle, he called Citi Bike. They said they had to tie it incorrectly, which it recognizes is imaginable, it’s new to the app.
According to the cyclist, Citi Bike told him to record a police report, which he tried to do several times. But the cops in the 79th district where he registered his case told him that he may not legally register the report as a tenant; Citi Bike had to do it themselves, police said, as the legal owner of the bicycle. He tried to ride, which said they were filing such reports all the time, but they may simply not record a report that did not happen in their area. Empty-handed, Mark explained the challenge to Citi Bike. “Every time, Citi Bike said, “It’s your responsibility, “but I can’t just make a police report,” he told me.
Caught between cops
I can just tell the story. I found similar disorders after calling 911. The agents who came to my door to pick up the report told me That Citi Bike left him, not me. Like the agents Mark dealt with, I was told that it’s possible that a tenant just didn’t file a report. In the end, they went ahead and postponed one after I braggedly pleaded, but they said it wasn’t NYPD’s policy to do so. One of the cops later called me to stand my ground and reiterated that, saying that he had consulted with the superiors and showed that the policy of the NYPD was that Citi Bike offered itself as the owner of the vehicle.
A spokesman for the NYPD, the sergeant. Mary O’Donnell tells City Limits that NYPD’s policy is and at all times has been that those who suffered the theft of Citi Bike can record police reports.
“We are taking reports of citizens who have had their motorcycles stolen,” O’Donnell said. “They are considered a wonderful flight.” I didn’t know why the agents had told Mark and me that those reports were submitted through Citi Bike. “Whoever told you this was misinformed, ” he said.
He said the New York Police Department did not track the number of reported motorcycle thefts, particularly involving Citi motorcycles, but said that, as a detective, he used to take such reports regularly. “They were stolen all the time,” he said. She added that a user renting a Citi motorcycle is “a type of transitional owner” and, as such, will record the report herself, as if she were renting a car.
She also said that in her experience she gave the impression that most of the thefts occurred after a user left the motorcycle on a platform, she had no express figures on it. “Locking mechanisms aren’t the best on luggage racks,” he said, adding that Citi’s motorcyclists want to use some force to make sure their motorcycles are securely attached to the dock.
Joseph Cutrufo, spokesman for local motorcycle advocacy, Transportation Alternatives, said he hadn’t heard much about Citi Bike flights, but said he thought he would if officials saw self-service bike service as an essential component of New York flights. transport system. Array “If city officials, adding the NYPD, shared this same understanding of Citi Bike as a component of the transit system, then there would probably be a greater mechanism for reporting or at least a universal mechanism for reporting [the theft], “Cutrufo said.
He also noted that, unlike many other motorcycle-sharing facilities in the United States, Citi Bike is privately owned and receives no public funding. By comparison, Divvy, Chicago’s comparable bike rental system, is a program of the Chicago Department of Transportation and was first funded by federal grants. Both systems are controlled through Lyft.
“I’ll be more careful”
Michelle Hum, who has been a Citi Bike subscriber for two years, said she had never had a challenge that was temporarily unsolved through the visitor service, until she won a notification a few weeks ago that she was still on its way, hours after the bike docked. . She said Citi Bike’s visitor service had told her to return to the dock to make sure the motorcycle was there, but during that time it was after midnight and she was miles away. She said she asked a friend to check the dock for her and the friend had taken pictures of all the motorcycle numbers.
His number was not on the platform; said some of the motorcycles docked had no visual numbers. He said he had sent several emails to the visitor service, but that on the 16th he had not yet received a response and, in the meantime, his account was blocked. She said the emails were beginning to seem fruitless at this point. “I’m like screaming in the void, ” he said. He said no one he had spoken to on Citi Bike had told him to record a police report, so he didn’t. He then called Citi Bike’s visitor service and said they had unlocked his account, but his case was not yet resolved.
Citi Bike says that in a motorcycle-sharing formula, it is vital to make sure that other people return to motorcycles and that the company has to pay the consequences when the number of its fleet is too low. They also claimed that the lack of motorcycles goes back to the formula when other people saw abandoned motorcycles and tied them up.
Julie Wood, Lyft’s director of political communications, said of Citi Bike’s motorcycle theft/loss procedures: “We are reviewing this policy internally as we try to keep motorcycles in the formula and having our motorcyclists have access to them.”
Not everyone has disorders that report Citi motorcycle theft. Jason, who asked for only his first call, stole his rental motorcycle in front of him while he was at an ATM. “The motorcycle was in my sight the whole time,” he said. “I was looking to get my card out while that user was getting on my motorcycle.”
He said he could record a police report without any problem, but described the delight of Citi Bike’s visitor service control as “incredibly frustrating.” He feared to be charged within the time necessary to download a copy of the report. He also claimed that a visitor service representative kept insisting that he locate the motorcycle himself. “Why do you ask me to threaten to get coronavirus when you go out and locate a motorcycle?” Jason said. “I’m not going to walk with a magnifying glass and a detective hat, like, “I wonder if this motorcycle is mine.”
In the end, Jason claimed that his case had been settled without him having to pay an exorbitant fine. I wanted him to have a chance. I hope you’re right, I’m still waiting for a copy of this police report. Both Jason and Mark said they would continue to use their Citi Bike subscriptions because they had already paid for them. “I’ll be more careful,” Jason said.
For my part, I was still motivated to take my own motorcycle as a focus. Now he’s locked in my apartment and in a rolling position.
I like the way the article ignores the fact that the motorcycle was left unkeyed and unguarded. Just hang up the motorcycle! Be sure to get the soft green and a notification and it will possibly not occur for you. If you need to keep him away, close it. Just like you would with your own motorcycle.
It is curious how TranAlt’s lobbyists point to JQ Public’s portfolio as the solution to all Citibike problems.
He is the third owner in six years and has never paid a penny of the millions he owes the city contractually for the loss of parking revenue. I don’t think it’s a counterfeit company …
Holly, if I’m waiting for the sympathy of your readers, I’m sorry, I’m accumulating @Bike Tips.
Whether it’s a Citi motorcycle or your own motorcycle, when you’re not driving it, hang it or close it.
How can a personal company use public space for its own desires and benefits? Do you pay the people for the use of the parking areas?
It just happened to me! I tied up the city motorcycle at 72nd and 5th Avenue and a few hours later I learned that the app was still following my phone while I was still driving it. I ran to the dock, but the motorcycle wasn’t there. I spent the next 3 hours talking to the city’s motorcycle agents over the phone, both disconnected once while on standby. So once and both times I called again, I had to follow the story from the beginning. I was told I had to record a report with the police, so I went to the police station and after filling out the stolen goods report and waiting there an hour, I was told that since I don’t own the motorcycle, I can’t. Record. They broke it right in front of me. Cried. I called the city motorcycles again. I was told to go to the various police stations …, I called another police station and they told me they would not settle for the complaint of stolen motorcycle in the village. I keep walking according to the Lyft app 20 hours later. When I parked the motorcycle, I drove hard and I’m pretty sure the sound worked. I don’t think it’s fair to pay $1,300 for this incident. I read that urban motorcycles have a chip that allows them to see their location, if that’s true, they can insinuate when my telephone’s trajectory separates from the motorcycle chip trail. Of course, I am very disappointed that I have not reviewed my application three or four times after connecting the motorcycle. I hope they eventually locate him.
Mayor Bloomberg has the right not to invest the city’s cash on CitiBike. He gave a reference to CitiBank and the indefinite use of DOT services and staff, but no dollars. I knew I was a cash loser without them ingesting genuine fees to users.
I guessed how I was going to take a stand as soon as Mrs. DeMuth wrote, “and I went to Flatbush.” “There are no docking stations in Flatbush, ” I thought, “at least none south of Empire Boulevard.” But @Bike Tips and @redbike are meaningless. Even when you do something stupid, there has to be a formula in a position to solve the problem. That’s what the story is all about. When Citi Bike was new and the motorcycles were under-maintained and cyclists simply couldn’t reliably say if they had effectively docked a bike, the grace of the life-saving formula was the visitor service, which was excellent. Now that the hardware and software have improved a lot, the visitor service is almost useless. I never call, no matter what the problem is.
@Reginald Culver: Specifically in The Citi Bike Visitor Service, I agree with you that under the leadership of Alta (the first Operator of Alta Citi Bike), the telephone visitor service is a must and worked well. This is essential because Alta’s steering is so bad that he barely invented the wheel. In the next operators, in general, Citi Bike’s service has improved. The most productive visitor service is, wait, not wanting visitor service.
But express the story of Holly DeMuth’s misfortune (and K’s observation): if/when a Citi Bike member unleashes a motorcycle, the member, not Citi Bike, is guilty of the motorcycle. Following Holly DeMuth: In my initial response, I have avoided rubbing salt into an open wound, but I will go up now: Citi motorcycles are designed for short-term use through several successive riders. Electrically assisted CiteeeeBikes remain infrequent and demand is high. Keeping a Citi motorcycle, especially an electric motorcycle, out of the formula eliminates its availability to other members.
Never miss a full research report, an editorial that invites reflection or a writing podcast
Housing Bulletin and City Boundary Development. News and equipment for New Yorkers to deal with the housing crisis
Community reports presented the city
Report detailed in spa’ol
Thanks for the recording. Send your email for confirmation.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s budget crisis, City Limits exists to count democracy and equip itself to create a fairer city. The organization is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization funded through basic support, advertising sponsorship, and reader donations.