Some blame teen riders, but it’s likely the bikes themselves.
26 cents more a minute or 17 cents with an annual membership). The problem is that most people want to ride the 5,000-plus e-bikes — this year, e-bikes are being ridden 50 percent of the time, triple the rate of pedal bike rentals. That number is only increasing; the six highest e-bike ridership days ever have been since late June, a 54 percent jump from 2022, and a new record was set on July 20, with nearly 70,000 rides.
Then there is the matter of how to keep the bike batteries charged. Every day, nearly 250 workers in vans zoom around the city , to move Citi Bikes where they’re needed and swap batteries. But the heavy usage of the e-bikes means that batteries die every one to two days, especially the ones on older models, which only get 30 miles on a charge. When that happens, workers have to swap in a fresh battery and bring the dead ones to outer-borough depots for juice.
For years, Citi Bike reps have publicly floated the idea of charging e-bikes directly at docks, like Paris’ Vélib’ system. It estimates that electrifying some 20 percent of docks would reduce battery swaps by 90 percent. But hooking up the stations to energy grids with enough electricity to power multiple bikes at once is complex, requiring city support.
Although Lyft has shown signs of financial trouble — in April, the company laid off 26 percent of its workforce, or almost 1,100 people — it hasn’t yet cut its bike-share investments. Lyft did leave Minneapolis’s bike-share market the month before, but bigger systems like Citi Bike, one of the largest in the world, areIts recent hiring wave also signals that the company is not winding down the Citi Bike program in any way and, in fact, is trying to meet the growing demand for its e-bikes.
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