Bikes Both Loved and Despised

I like the idea of a bikeshare program, but haven’t had a chance to use it — mostly because I’d use it in lieu of taking the subway, and there aren’t any bikes in my neighborhood yet. There have been a few problems (Felix Salmon describes some of them here), but an informal survey done by New York magazine shows that a lot of people are enjoying it so far and think the $95 annual membership is worth it. Al Madrigal’s man-on-the-street segment on the Daily Show pretty much sums it up. It’s great that there are so many bikes available in downtown Manhattan, but they’d be a lot more useful in places where public transit is hard to come by (i.e. neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Bed Stuy in Brooklyn).

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