Citi Bike Launches Dockless Bike Share Experiment

"Citi Bike launched in the Bronx yesterday with a small fleet of dockless bicycles and a lot of asterisks," reports Ben Fried.

Fried did some spot checks and test rides of the company’s dockless offering on the day of the launch and discovered a "ton of potential" but enough question marks to decide the service is unreliable.

The new bikes are the first in a test run with dockless bike share instead of new docked bikes—a pilot effort undertaken by de Blasio administration. The first dockless bikes will soon multiply: "By next week, Motivate, the company that runs Citi Bike, expects to have 200 bicycles on the street in the area roughly between Bronx Park and the Harlem River."

According to Fried, however, the small service area for the new dockless bikes means, "[f]or now, these neighborhoods are getting an experiment in dockless Citi Bike, not access to bike-share that serves as a viable option for many types of trips."