Thread by @jonorcutt

Creating CitiBike mega-🧵! It began 16 yrs ago. NYC had released a new 🌎 plan & Mayor Bloomberg had recruited @JSadikKhan to set a new transportation direction. Janette noted our early interest in what Paris was doing in the recent @Curbed 10-yr piece: curbed.com/2023/05/citi-b…

Paris wasn’t the 1st big French city with public bikes. Lyon went earlier. But Paris Mayor Delanöe was changing streets & wanted to increase the pace of cycling uptake

Bike share is best used as this kind of strategic accelerant for cities coming late to bike transportation. It worked in Paris and is working in NYC. Plenty of places go too small or don’t accompany 🚲 share with sufficient street changes to allow it to play this role

Early steps on bike share in NYC included forums on emerging applications in cities like Paris & Montreal, and street demos of bikes/stations during 2009/10, including during Summer Streets

The city’s work was underpinned by key analysis of how to maximize bike share usage via station spacing/walkability by @kfillinyeh

An essential move in making CitiBike happen was bringing Kate from DCP to DOT in 2010

Another key to making bike share/CitiBike work was the decision to go big.

DOT issued the request for proposals for a 10,000 🚲 system to providers/operators at Thanksgiving 2010

“That was the depths of NY’s ‘bike-lash,’ when the tabloids would inflate complaints or misinformation about 🚲 lanes into a story. That we went forward at scale in that moment is a huge testament to the leadership of both @JSadikKhan and @MikeBloomberg” curbed.com/2023/05/citi-b…

Ultimate result of the RFP was selection in Sept 2011 of PBSC/Alta Bike Share as provider/operator, mostly on the basis of their success in Montreal, DC, and Boston. PBSC was also 🚲 supplier for London. Announcement was a 🎉

An unsung NYC bike share hero at the time was then-Council Speaker @chriscquinn, who agreed DOT could use a “revenue contract” with the providers, instead of the much lengthier city franchise process, provided the public process was really robust nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/12/cit…

Late 2011 and 2012 are kind of a blur in my mind. We started work in a lot of directions simultaneously. We assembled a fantastic DOT bike share planning group led by Kate to start finding 100s of station sites for the public process to come

Another round of public events and a very broad set of DOT-initiated conversations with govt, civic and other stakeholders followed the contract award. The NYC bike share website launched

Search for a system sponsor went on through that winter & spring, with the @Citi deal finalized in May 2012. That led to a City Hall presser with the mayor, Janette & Citi’s CEO. The station here is a wooden mock-up (also feat. parts of DOT’s bike share, comms & legal teams)

Sponsorship allowed financing for equipment purchases. Accumulation of parts & bikes began, including mountains of station base plates

The relationship with the contractors began to head south when it became clear that PBSC had fired its software provider shortly after winning the NYC bid.

We established a pilot system in the BK Navy Yard to monitor progress of the shaky in-house replacement software

This also led to some weird trips to Chattanooga, a recently established Alta/PBSC system also using the bad software

A more local weird trip to Long Beach, NY to check out its solar-powered stations.

This system was swept out to sea by Hurricane Sandy and, to my knowledge, never replaced

Meanwhile, we had begun showing potential station sites to the 14 community boards slated for bike share stations. The approach was to provide multiple options for each site needed to hit the target station density of one every 1,000 feet (one per grid square on this map)

We never asked the boards to vote or approve the bike share system overall. Instead we engaged them in a detailed discussion about *how* it would be established & work locally. DOT seems to be finally doing that with at least some bike lane plans now

Unfortunately the software problem was not getting resolved quickly, and we made it official in July 2012 that the launch would be delayed until spring 2013. Moar Navy Yard testing

Learning from other major city operators

Hurricane Sandy in Oct 2012 did not only wipe out bike share in Long Beach, but also damaged or destroyed some of the CitiBike equipment stored in the Navy Yard. It turned out we would launch with 7,000 bikes rather than 10k twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Planning staff went into “start up” mode in a conference room at 59 Maiden Lane after DOT HQ was knocked out by the storm

Nonetheless, we kept up the pace & buzz around the coming system, including with an exhibit at the @AIA_NewYork

The station siting public process continued with public planning workshops in each of the affected community boards. Strong backing & attendance by City Council members helped make these work

Up & coming city leaders were part of the process & went on to become strong #bikenyc supporters. That’s future Council Speaker (then CB4 MN chair) @CoreyinNYC checking out the 🚲 at the back of the left pic, and future electeds @LincolnRestler & @EmilyAssembly on right

The workshops were part of winnowing station sites down to the final set. We provided the CBs with so much info on this that they got tired of hearing about it

Winter into spring 2013 saw accelerating staging of station elements for deployment

DOT was developing its pedestrian wayfinding maps at the same time. It made sense to include them on each of the 100s of new station kiosks for CitiBike users & anyone happening by

The first CitiBike stations hit the street in Brooklyn the 1st week of April. The period until Memorial Day became a short “valley of death” for bike share, when NIMBYs & the change-averse could rage on & plot lawsuits, while a high usage 🚲 system was still a future prospect

Reporters initially made fun of DOT for compiling a report on CitiBike outreach. But in affidavit form, it quickly wiped the floor with 7-8 NIMBY lawsuits. In the political sphere, @StephenLevinBk & @TishJames were fantastic in toning down some of the outrage in Brooklyn

You don’t install 100s of pieces of street furniture without using them to shape streets themselves! Slip lane in Tribeca & single largest station going in at GCT. Post facto Grand Central pic from Summer Streets 2013

Pre launch press briefing with @danisimons!

Finally, the stations were all down & the system could be populated with 🚲🚲🚲. DOT’s stellar & tireless bike share planning group celebrated at South Ferry the night before launch

Launch! 10 years ago this weekend!

I won’t go on about CitiBike’s record except to say it was a success out of the blocks & is now one of the world’s largest & most heavily used 🚲 systems

It showed & continues to demonstrate undeniable demand for easy, safe 🚲 transport in NYC

Zeitgeist shift (still a work in progress!): From Bikelash to Bike City