Brooklyn, it seems, likes bikes.
Before Citi Bike launched in 2013, the Department of Transportation (DOT) released a suggestion portal, where people could suggest future Citi Bike station locations. The portal, which acts as a crowd sourced suggestion database, is just one of the factors that go into the decision of choosing a location. According to a DOT spokesperson, “Locations for future Citi Bike stations are determined via hundreds of meetings with stakeholders, an online portal, demonstration events, community planning workshops, and meetings with community boards and members of the NYC City Council.”
Following the recent announcement of the phase II expansion of Citi Bike into parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, The Brooklyn Ink analyzed the data collected by the online portal to understand where these requests were coming from and where people said they wanted new Citi Bike stations. From 2012 to November 2014, around 36,000 people have participated in the suggestion process and have created a database of around 8,500 suggested points on the map.
Brooklyn likes bikes.
When the number of requests for Citi Bike stations were analyzed by borough, the highest demand came from Brooklyn.
While Citi Bike already has some presence in parts of Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, and Williamsburg, a huge amount of interest is also coming from the neighborhoods of Park Slope and Greenpoint.
According to the comments of people from Park Slope, the fact that 5th Avenue/7th Avenue have bike lanes makes it a viable spot for bike sharing. They also point out the fact that the neighborhood is situated in an area underserved by other modes of public transit.
Brooklyn also leads the charts for the postal codes that received the most number of requests. The analysis shows that five out of ten postal codes that received the highest requests belong to Brooklyn.
In terms of neighborhoods, the highest demand comes from Roosevelt Island.
Exactly 1,937 requests came from Roosevelt and 189 of those requests actually supported one single location near West Road and the Roosevelt Island F train station. Both figures were the highest of their kind in the analysis. A lot of these requests come from people living in the luxury Octagon Park Apartments. Comments also suggest that the heavy reliance the neighborhood has on the bus system is another factor that drives the demand for Citi Bike.
The City Department of Transportation, in a statement to The Brooklyn Ink, said that at this stage there are no plans to expand Citi Bike into Roosevelt Island.
Densely populated regions that want Citi Bike, will most probably get them.
According to the DOT, the population density of a neighborhood plays a key role in deciding where Citi Bike would go next. So we looked at the ten most densely populated regions in NYC against the number requests that came from those regions. This is what it tally looked like:
Out of these, Madison Square/Cooper Village and Lincoln Center/Ansonia are presently covered by Citi Bike. Clearly, densely populated regions aren’t proactively expressing the need for Citi Bike stations. But the ones that are, namely Greenpoint and Long Island City, are also the ones that will receive the initial installations from the second phase expansion.
Suggest a #citibike station to @NYC_DOT here http://t.co/pWEp6MnCDC Let your voice be heard!
— Citi Bike (@CitiBikeNYC) November 17, 2014
Both Department of Transportation and Citi Bike have been actively reaching out to people on social media to collaborate in the process and add suggested locations to map. In many ways, it also appears to have helped in determining the forthcoming locations.
The only missing element in the forthcoming plan of action appears to be consideration for regions such as Roosevelt island that have a high demand for bike sharing. Census estimates a population of 11,399 for the neighborhood. The number of requests from the area add up to 17 percent of that number. Despite the volume of requests, the region still won’t be expecting Citi Bikes anytime soon.
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