
A Tale of Twenty-Two Million Citi Bikes: Analyzing the NYC Bike Share System - lil_tee
http://toddwschneider.com/posts/a-tale-of-twenty-two-million-citi-bikes-analyzing-the-nyc-bike-share-system/
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CydeWeys
I know it's a huge nit to pick, but did the editing on the title bother anyone
else? "A Tale of Twenty-Two Million Citi Bikes" implies that there are 22
million Citibikes. They're actually numbered in the thousands. The article is
an analysis of 22 million RIDES.

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twoodfin
Agree that it's unnecessarily ambiguous, made worse because the obvious
interpretation is the incorrect one.

OTOH, there's an interesting bit of English going on here: You can "go for a
bike" like you can "go for a swim" because "bike" has been verbed for a very
long time (in a way that, say, "car" has not, but in some English-speaking
countries, "motor" has.)

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Frondo
That's interesting, as a native American English speaker approaching 40, I
have never heard anyone say "go for a bike". Neither native speakers nor
people whose first language is not English.

Is this common in some part of the country, or outside the US?

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soperj
Yeah, from western Canada, i'd go biking, or go for a run, but I don't think
I've ever said, I'm going to go for a bike. I'd say "I'm going for a bike
ride".

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davidjhall
A great idea but we had a major flaw near us in the Financial District --- no
parking!!!

We had a station outside our office, but in the morning, the station was full
-- you had to go find another station that had open slots -- sometimes a long
way off, somewhat defeating the point to begin with.

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Coincoin
There are trucks that are supposed to resupply the various stations,
transferring bikes from popular full stations to popular empty ones. Maybe
they did not have time to figure the patterns to do that optimally yet.

I know it took a couple of years here before it was better.

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spot
Here's a notebook with analysis of Citi Bike data by Ben Wellington of I Quant
NY:
[https://pub.beakernotebook.com/#/publications/560eb102-736b-...](https://pub.beakernotebook.com/#/publications/560eb102-736b-4477-98d3-ebeeb5772efa?fullscreen=false)
it's missing the maps but shows you how to go right from the raw data.

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CydeWeys
I take Citibike to and from work every day, rain or snow, if anyone has
questions.

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dionidium
Why don't you buy your own bike?

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ericwood
Most of the people I know who use CitiBike use it as one leg of their commute.
One of my coworkers, for example, takes the PATH in from New Jersey then bikes
to the office from there.

In these cases you _could_ buy a bike and leave it in the city, but there's a
very very serious risk of bike theft. It's easier to pay for the CitiBike
membership and not have to worry about it.

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agumonkey
I wish someone took economy of scale and produced a resilient bike tracker so
cheap it could be embedded in the factory. Bike theft is the main reason I
don't use my bike anymore (sic).

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edelans
Nice viz ! That's awesome to have such a dataset available, kudos Citi Bike !
I wish we had the same openness here in Paris, I would love to compile the
same view for velibs (that's how our shared bikes are called). All we have is
an API for bike station data
[https://developer.jcdecaux.com](https://developer.jcdecaux.com) :/

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shmerl
_> For what it’s worth, most Citi Bike trips start and end in Manhattan_

That's because Manhattan has the huge majority of Citibike terminals. In
Brooklyn it's still virtually non existent (yet it has a high population
density).

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festizio
I tried Citibike when it came out, but there were no bikes in either direction
of my commute way too frequently. I have read that they have improved it, but
I haven't tried it recently.

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bwilliams18
I think his analysis is flawed because the Google Maps routing algo highly
favors the bike lanes throughout the city, often taking you out of the way to
use them.

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jbooth
Most people who are commuting probably don't look at Google Maps every day to
figure out how to get home. They're taking the bike lanes because they're
safer.

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Spooky23
That would make the decision for me. I considered biking, in my city, until
two colleagues were seriously injured in bike commutes.

