Citi Bike has finally caught on in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant.
A new report by the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation says that after a rocky roll-out in the neighborhood — which was the easternmost point in the bike share system when it launched in 2013 — many residents who were initially skeptical of a program they saw as a sign of gentrification have embraced it.
The number of Citi Bike trips taken in Bed Stuy more than doubled from 146,000 in 2015 to 319,000 in 2016.
“We knew that people were against it. People felt it was a possible harbinger of gentrification. People just didn’t know how bike share worked and were very concerned,” said Restoration vice president Tracey Capers.
“As they see more people like them on the bike … they start to understand that it is a vehicle, literally a vehicle, to help them meet their needs — to get to work, to get active, to get across town.”
In a 2015 survey, 87% of residents said they’d heard of Citi Bike but only 18% had ever tried it, according to the report.
The number of stations in the Central Brooklyn neighborhood has now expanded from 10 to 36 — covering a bigger chunk of the area — and Bed Stuy Restoration ran a campaign encouraging people to jump on a bike.
The number of members in the neighborhood grew 56% from March 2015 to December 2016, to 5,583, compared to a 46% increase citywide.
In August 2015, Bed Stuy bike share stations averaged 685 trips, far short of the citywide rate of 2,500 trips per station, the report found. By a year later, the Bed Stuy number, though still below average, had jumped to over 1,000, while the citywide rate stayed about the same.
Citi Bike offers a discounted membership for NYCHA residents for $60 a year, but Restoration’s 2015 survey found that only 9% of respondents knew about it.
The group ran ads at subway stations and bus shelters showing black and Latino Bed Stuy residents riding the bikes and promoting the NYCHA discount, and hosted community rides in the neighborhood.
Citi Bike also began allowing members to pay monthly, instead of ponying up the whole yearly fee at once. And two local hospitals, Interfaith and Woodhull, bought discounted memberships for their employees.
Citi Bike is still concentrated mostly in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods — but as it moves to expand, the group says similar tactics would help it catch on and plans to work with local organizations in East Harlem, Red Hook and Crown Heights.
