citi bike

Only Rich White People Use Citi Bike

Justin Ginsburg, the NYC Bike Share project director behind Citi Bike, said last month that the service, hailed as a great success so far, mostly caters to white men in households making six figures — “This is great if you’re a marketing person” — and new data obtained by DNA Info backs him up. Through July, just a few hundred of the 60,000-plus annual members were from the Bronx or Staten Island (neighborhoods far from the stations set up so far).

Residents of public housing, meanwhile, make up just 0.5 percent of the members (285 total), despite the $35 discount offered to people in low-income housing. And the city doesn’t really want to talk about it: “The DOT provided the data three months after the inquiry, after an initial denial, and did not respond to requests for comment for this article by press time.”

The discounted $60 yearly membership is required all at once via credit card, another obstacle. “We are in the projects,” one resident told DNA Info. “A lot of people don’t have credit cards.”

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Only Rich White People Use Citi Bike