Starting Tuesday, Citi Bike users who have an annual membership will have to shell out more green to ride the blue bikes. NY1's Roger Clark filed the following report.
After nearly three years of bike-sharing, many Citi Bike users are satisfied with the program, even as the cost goes up again.
"I think it is totally fine," said one Citi Bike user.
"When I'm running late I don't take a taxi anywhere. I take a bike. So I have saved a lot of money on cab fares," said another.
Starting March 1, Citi Bikers are paying $155 for a year-long membership, an increase of $6, or 4 percent. It's less than the last increase of more than $50 when a new company started running the program. That company says the latest price jump is necessary to keep growing and making Citi Bike better.
"We made a lot of improvements to the system. We fixed software that had been glitchy for years. We improved the hardware that also helped operate the Citi Bike system. And we introduced a new bike that our riders are telling us is much more comfortable and easier to ride," said Dani Simons, director of communications with Motivate.
Citi Bike says membership fell 10,000 to 82,000 a year ago, but that it has since rebounded to 94,000 annual members today.
The bike-sharing program also says the number of trips taken jumped 24 percent last year to nearly 10 million. There are now 472 stations in Manhattan south of 86th Street, in Brooklyn and in Long Island City in Queens, with more in the works.
"That expansion will continue to take the program northward into Harlem, and we will go into some additional Brooklyn neighborhoods," Simons said.
More will come to Queens and Brooklyn by the end of 2017.
Some riders say bring it on.
"There's a big discrepancy between bikes that are downtown versus uptown," said one rider.
In addition to getting more New Yorkers on bikes, another impact Citi Bike has had around town is taking away parking spots, as these docking stations have been placed in residential neighborhoods."
"These bikes have eaten up a tremendous amount of spaces," said one New Yorker.
That's likely to continue as Citi Bike expands even more across New York.