UniChris

As a matter of personal convenience, sure.

But as a matter of public policy, we're already paying for the expense and energy to run that late train. It makes no sense to stock e-bike batteries into a dock to support a need that's already filled in a more efficient manner with the train.

If you want personal convenience, paying the higher fee is perhaps in reason. But there doesn't seem to be any policy reason to *encourage* people to take late night e-bike rides unless they help with rebalancing. My guess though is that unless your commute was in an atypical direction (which would by detrimental to balancing) by the time you go there the e-bikes would all be gone anyway.

wilfried

That may be true, until they get all the way up to the northern tip of Manhattan. Then there are some hills . I ride up the one on Broadway between 191st and 181st about weekly, and it's more intense than any bridge.


There might be a case to be made for incentivizing longer trips. More options that are not a car is good. So, say you have three choices:

1. Long, unpredictable, train ride with transfer (made longer and less predictable late at night)
2. Long bike ride, but shorter and more predictable than the train, but hard work, but made much easier by ebike.
3. Uber

A bike ride replacing a car ride is good thing. dendawg indicates that ebikes would have made option 2 possible, rather than option 3. Long bikes trips might be most likely to replace car trips, which is a good thing, so making option two cheap and easy with ebikes is a good thing.

I'm not sure what the right pricing is. $4.50 for a long ebike ride is still a lot cheaper than $34 for Uber, so maybe that's good enough. Would making the bike ride a couple bucks cheaper make more people choose option 2? Maybe cap the price at train fare? Price not-car transportation transportation the same. I've always found it strange an annoying in other cities where the bike share option is more expensive than the public transit option, or the day pass was expensive enough that it would take a whole bunch of rides to make each ride equal to a transit ride.

dendawg

For the short time they did have e-bikes I only found one, and that was in a dock at central park south and 6th. My normal 10 minute commute through the park took 1/2 the time. By the follwing week they had been taken out of service.

UniChris

Indeed, those are intimidating. Perhaps you are talking about after some expansion, but today those hills are irrelevant to CitiBike pricing as there are no docks north of the 130's and you're not allowed to keep one of their bikes overnight to ride back down the next morning.

They are perhaps an argument for a personal assist bike.

If they do expand up there, a reasonable argument could be made that anything beyond those hills should count as another boro.

The thing is that the money is better spent on the solution that supports more people - perhaps there's a case for more train service at night. Tying up part of the public e-bike fleet to support a commute that already has a subsidized public option, at the time of day when the only for-all-bodies option that is using a private car is at its lowest impact, isn't really the best use of money for a society.

Whatever funding shuffle is going to keep e-bike prices low belongs on the e-bike rides that create the greatest reduction to traffic, capacity, and pollution problems - and those aren't the sparse late night commutes.

When the goal is to get people to take the bike instead of the train, capping the price makes sense. But when providing the bike has real cost, then at hours where putting another rider on an underutilized train has essentially zero marginal cost, it makes no sense to cap the bike price below its actual share of the cost of operating the system - potentially including paying a few cents towards subsidizing the peak hours rides.

I'd take issue with a policy of closing bike routes at night - something there are some problematic examples of. But not subsidizing e-bikes at night (as an indirect result of not subsidizing the routes where they'd be uniquely useful then) is a case of policy planned for the maximum effect per dollar, not a restriction on personal choices.

noglider 

What do folks think of the NuVinci hubs? We have discussed them before, but I've had some time on them by now. My opinion is lower than before. First of all, some here have said that they're set up wrong if I don't get a high ratio. I think they're set up the same way (roughly) and I just can't get a high enough ratio. More importantly, I think I notice the inefficiency compared with a geared hub. Last week, I rode 6 miles with my wife. I was on my bike, and she was on Citi Bike with a Nu Vinci hub. Her normal moving average is 10 mph, but we moved at 7.8 mph. Of course I can't prove the hub was the reason for her lower speed, but it might have been a factor. Bikes with the Sturmey-Archer 3-speed are the rarest in the fleet, as they went from SA to NuVinci fairly quickly. Too bad. Does anyone know the company's stance on these hubs? Have they proven reliable and durable? One thing I do like is the micro-adjustability.

zacster

It's funny you say that. I was on a NuVinci hubbed bike a few months ago and kept getting passed by others on Citibikes, which I though strange because I was riding hard and am in good cycling shape. It dawned on me then that it could be the hub for some reason. The next bike I took was a three speed and it felt much faster. I've always found some to be faster than others but this was pretty clearly the hub.

That said, my Citibiking days are over since I retired. If I want to bike I'm always starting from home now.

noglider 

Thanks for confirming, zacster.

There's something with the V1 (Shimano rear hub) bikes that worked badly for me. One was the extra-low gearing. I think the other was the ergonomics, but I can't be sure.

The V2 bikes have SA rear hubs. I like them, and 3rd gear is high enough.

The V2.1 have Nuvinci hubs. I think the rear hub is the only difference from the V2 bikes.

So that leaves me liking (relatively) only the V2 bikes, and they are the rarest of all of them.

arbee

@noglider @zacster Interesting observations. I wouldn't try to generalize from most of my Citibike rides: they're too brief and too varied to conclude anything useful, and frankly, because they're brief, anything (even my two feet) would get me there and back almost as briskly. There's one recurring round-trip between West 14th St and the Upper Left Side from which I'm comfortable generalizing. The ride is long enough, follows the same route and reverses, and I've done it enough that I can tease out a few conclusions. There's always some sort of wind on the West Side pedpath, but unless it's howling out of the north or south, there's rarely more than a 1 or 2 minute difference in total trip duration. This includes — northbound — the climb from the pedpath to the streets and southbound, the descent to the pedpath. Also surprising — at least to me: this difference in trip duration stays in the same narrow range whether I'm on an old Shimano, a Sturmey Archer, or one of the Nuvincis. But the subjective feel is distinctly different. The Shimanos are rock-solid for reliability but they always feel "slow". The Sturmey Archers sometimes lack for a 3rd (high) gear and similarly, sometimes the Nuvincis' top range seems unavailable. Subjectively, there are distinct differences — and I have my preference between the rear hubs — but actual performance is close enough for me to say there's no meaningful objective difference. Still, I'll grab a Nuvinci when it's available.

noglider 

My preference is to ride a road bike because road bikes are light, and I like to lean forward, at least a little. So these fleet bikes are quite annoying to me, though I concede that they are the right bike for the job. I don't mind riding Citi Bike for up to three miles, but I find it annoying to ride it more. Sometimes I ride it five or six miles, and it's a chore. Maybe I should reduce my effort.

Measuring the travel time may be meaningful, but for some reason, the effort seems to vary a lot. Also, I think I'm more sensitive to winds than other people. That might make sense since I'm thin and light. I notice the wind affects my travel time all the time as well as the level of effort. The west side path is the best place in NYC to ride, even though the winds can be horrific, so I tolerate the winds to get the freedom from stupid motor drivers.

arbee, could the higher effort on the Shimano bike be from the lower gearing? Those gears are ridiculously low.

They seem to have fixed the no-top-gear problem on the SA bikes.

And they have not fixed the no-top-range on the Nuvinci problem!

zacster

About 95% of my Citibike rides started at my office and went down the 2nd Ave bike lane. Only the final destination varied. Sometimes I would go to Brooklyn but usually not as riding up the bridge was always too difficult in comparison to my own commuter bike and I just avoided it no matter which type of bike I rode.

In any case my daughter is going to take my citibike key to use it through the next expiration since I just don't see myself using it anymore. I have 3 bikes to choose from now at home, road, commuter and fat tire, plus a 4th steel roadie that needs a tire. Ah, there's an idea, I want to put a bigger tire (700x28) on my good road bike since that is the direction people are going now with road bikes, and I can swap out my current rear 700x23 that has about 6 months of life left. It'll last for years on the steel given how little I ride it.

arbee

noglider Agreed pretty much entirely. What surprised me was W 14th St to / from the Upper Left Side regularly / reliably takes — within 1 - 2 minutes — the same time in either direction no matter the wind or model of Citibike. None of the models is fun, but the Shimanos have, in my experience, been the most reliable. Good news about being able to now rely on the Sturmey Archer top gear. FWIW, I seem to recall the geometry of the v1 frames (with the Shimano hub) is slightly different from the v2 frames with the S/A and Nuvinci hubs. I'm at a loss to say what the difference is.

tubesocksFred

I avoid the Shimano bikes at all cost due to the low gearings (and the usually terribly spongy brakes, which one frequently don't realize until hard braking is required).


I almost always ride the S/A bikes unless there isn't one available, and if I ended up with a Shimano or a NuVinci with no overdrive, I usually ride it to a station on the way that has plenty of bikes and swap it for a S/A one (not a big deal ever since they removed the 2min wait time, but I don't fully gear up (tie up bag, etc). One bad thing with the S/A hubs is once in a blue moon, I will get one that slips off the top gear. It would throw me off balance if I don't have my hands on the grips, or worse, if I was standing up, my foot would drop and in both cases, have almost crashed a few times. I just have to remember to maintain pressure on as much of downward cycle instead of just on the 2-5 o'clock range.


As for the NuVinci hub, I still pick that over the Shimano, but I can usually tell if it has an overdrive gear after riding 50 ft, and if it is ridiculously low, I would turn back and switch to another one, or just switch to a S/A on the next station. A few times, even with a NuVinci that felt like it has overdrive, I feel like there is some kind of drag, like I am riding in a dirt path. Other times, when I got a NuVinci w/overdrive, I ride and feel like I am flying, only to check my app to find out I was doing not much different than when on the S/A bikes. Maybe the higher gearing is offset by the increased drag. I have done the S/A on HR bike path with tailwinds (or stayed on with some wed morning pack coming back from GWB) and have always been limited by cadence, always wanted to find out how it would be w/a NuVinci w/overdrive, but never had the opportunity.


I frequently press the service button when I get a NuVinci bike with too low a gear, but I don't know if they know what the issue is since there is no section to fill out on what exactly the problem is.

basketbro

if you're standing off the saddle on a citibike, you're doing it wrong.

tubesocksFred

I felt the need to ride a scooter and the citibike was all that was available.


Anyway, on my morning ride, I was looking for bikes with NuVinci hubs to ride, given in the last couple of days with the wind and cold, the S/A equipped bikes' top gear felt too high (with the legs not able to fully warm up to power thru them) and middle gear felt too low. The first one I got had the shifter stuck. I rode it to the next station where I switched it to another NuVinci'd bike, and this one's shifter was also stuck (in overdrive, no less, making pedaling in lower speed almost impossible). I docked it again searching for a bike with a good NuVinci shifter and felt few where the shifter didn't move. I eventually got a good one and continued the rest of my ride.


Is this a known issue with the NuVinci shifter/hub, especially in the cold? I presume the lubricant won't freeze. Nor should the traction fluid, unless the got those fluid in the parts that parts that does not need it and it became seized in the cold.

On my way home, I found another NuVinci bike with the cables starting to unwind out of the shifter mechanism by the handlebar. Maybe the user tried to twist and twist on a shifter that refuses to shift?

On a note, I searched the information superhighway and came upon this article on the issue. I can only guess the freezing rain from a few days ago seeped into the internals and froze the shifting mechanism

https://simplecycle-marc.blogspot.co...vinci-hub.html

DJH8098

tubesocksFred you are correct, if water i.e. rain, gets into the cable housing and cold weather hits it can freeze the cables causing shifting to be harder. The same goes for the interface on the hub if the lubricant has been spread thin due to use. The cables coming out of the shifter sounds like you said, some goof ball was JRA and twisted too hard and broke the small plastic piece inside of the shifter. This causes over rotation and will make the cables stick out of the shifters. I believe the fluid inside of the hub turns to a slushie basically at -4F so the hub was probably okay in this situation.

hotbike

Good Evening,
Had a nice ride today, went as far uptown as 125th.
This is the first time I’ve used the CitiBike app,
and I’ve included a screen shot to give you all an idea.
I only went over 45 minutes once, and I was fined only 45 cents. I seem to recall the fee was ten dollars before ?
The first four bikes had NuVinci , and the fifth one was a classic.... it shifted between first and second gear according to its own will, as if demonically possessed...
The CitiBike app gives the rider a timer, so you can see the elapsed time since the bike was undocked.
Great weather today, considering it’s January 26th!
I couldn’t go much further north, there are no CitiBike stations past a certain point.

tubesocksFred

Is that the new fee? I've been over by one minute once in a while and the last one time was roughly a month ago and got billed $2.50.

As for going above 125th st, when the weather was warmer, I usually take the scenic route to work, which is unlock a bike at penn station, go straight to the hudson river greenway and head north, reach the 125th st dock and dock/unlock to reset the timer, head north again, pass GWB, down the traversing ramp and head up inwood hill park until 20-23 minutes is up (depending if I encountered head or tailwind), then turn back and dock/unlock at 125th st dock again, then ride all the way down to the oculus. Its probably a 1h30min ride, but with 125th st the only stop point, I still have dock twice even though my 1st and 3rd legs are only 20-30min long.

hotbike

okay, I took 2 hours 31 minutes, but I stopped at every light, and stopped a few times for water.
But I wasn’t asking you to compare rides, I asked if you could compare unlocking a CitiBike with a smartphone app, versus the old rfid fob.
This was the first time using the app , for me.
I see the advantages already, I don’t think I’ll go back to the fob, unless my phone breaks, gets stolen, or the battery goes dead.

I have an appointment with a cardiologist later this week, and I’ll be sure to tell him about this ride before I get on the treadmill!

noglider 

I didn't know you can unlock a bike with the app. I'll try it for fun. But I can't see a big advantage for me, as my keys are always handy on my belt loop.

Has anyone noticed that there's something different about the newest model with the big basket? I can't put my finger on it, but it might just be merely that the basket doesn't rattle. I find this bike rides best of all, despite the problems (previously covered here) with the NuVinci hub.

hotbike

Yes, the app works great !
You open the app, find your place on the map ( your cell phone is tracking you, so you’ll be near the nearest dock.
I have taken a screenshot, assume I have chosen the station near Bryant Park.
You click on the station, and then click “unlock a bike” at the bottom left corner. Then you’ll get a five digit code consisting of the 1, 2, & 3 buttons on the dock. You have thirty seconds to press the buttons.

CitiBike App Station at Bryant Park (example).

tubesocksFred

I wasn't trying to compare rides, but suggesting the best way to go even farther beyond the farthest station is to reset the timer at the that station, ride as far away from it for 20 min or so, then turn back.

I've used the app a few times, mainly during times when I left my key behind, or when the key just doesn't work in the dock. But the disadvantage of it is that the app needs to know your exact location for you to be able to unlock a bike. I've had situation where I came out of a train station and my gps location was off and the error range was quite large. The app did not allow me to unlock a bike, so I had to move to an area away from all the skyscrapers and wait for the my location to become more accurate. I wasted a bit of time there.

But in general, when I am preparing other things between getting off the train and arriving the bike dock, getting the key to unlock is only a few seconds vs maybe 1 minute or more to use the app (especially if wearing thick gloves). Same goes for extending the time of a ride.

UniChris

That sounds badly implemented, they should have used BLE beacon technology in the station itself rather than GPS so that the app can directly detect what matters.

zacster

Just saw an email saying the e-bikes are coming back starting today. I'll have to try one before my membership expires since I'm not renewing it. I just haven't used it since I retired.

flattie

They are in fact back. Grabbed one to try it out. No more buttons to activate the electric assist - hop on, pedal and the assist is instant on. It feels like the assist gives out somewhere around 12 to 15 mph if I had to guess. Coming off the Brooklyn Bridge the electric assist did not slow down the bike - you could spin out and gain speed if you wanted to. There are no gears to select - it is strictly single speed but it feels like they designed the combo - gearing plus assist - in a well thought out manner so starting from a stop is not difficult and the top end isn't so limited that you get frustrated. I tried as much as possible to pedal up to and past the point where the assist gives out. My commute took 18 minutes versus my normal 23 minutes average from near Atlantic Terminal over the Brooklyn Bridge to lower Manhattan. For reference I have made the same trip on a "normal" citibike in 18 minutes under perfect conditions going all out - perfect conditions being a properly adjusted Sturmey Archer, fully inflated tires, catching all the lights, in cool spring weather in shorts and a t-shirt. My route according to google maps is right at 3.4 miles.

Not sure I will use the e-bike version much as the bike commute is the extent of my exercise these days but it is a nice option to have.

noglider 

Before checking in on this thread, I saw a Cit-E-bike today. At first, I thought the rider was very strong. Then at the stoplight, I saw the giant rear hub. I looked for a battery, and yup. I look forward to trying it. More importantly, I hope my wife gets to try one, because eventually, I see her on an ebike of her own so she can keep up with me on my regular bike.