Citi Bike By the Numbers

As you may have heard, New York City has a bike-share program that is named after a bank, the fact of which has been met (by me?) with the typical combination of indignation, embarrassment, complacency, and maybe even a little reluctant gratitude (“Fine, thanks Dad”).

But 100 days in, how are these bank bikes doing? According to this highly digestible and moderately revealing infographic, pretty good!

Some financial facts, gleaned by the infograph-ers from various reliable sources, are here presented in plain text:

– Mastercard gave $6.5M, and Citibank gave $41M, for a total of $47.5M in sponsorship.

– The docks cost $13.7M, the kiosks $13.5M, the bikes themselves were $11.2 M, the “cables and toolkits, etc.” were $1.5M, and the cards alone were $250,000 (you guys gotta work on those card margins, ok?).

– As of September 15, 2013, Citi Bike has made $8,532,147 in revenue.

– Riders have traveled 6,840,606 miles, which is, and I know you were wondering, equivalent to 29 trips to the moon.

I have never ridden a Citi Bike, but if it counts for anything I have walked by them a few times without stopping and thought, “Wow, or I could just ride one of these BIKES down to the train. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Then I think about how I don’t have a helmet, and I don’t want to download the app, and that I have my own bike at home I never ride, but I do support the bikes in theory and am happy, bank name aside, that they are doing okay.

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