9 Insights From A Year of Bike Sharing

Late to the party, but so glad to be here.

Quick note:Vote early, if you can 🇺🇸 Many states have early voting days this weekend. If you voted by mail, check to make sure your ballot was received: I had a nerve-wracking week in which mine wasn’t being shown as delivered, but it was (phew!).

Last Halloween my son got off the bus weeping because he’d left an essential part of his costume at school. I zipped off a text to his teacher, who it turned out would be at the school for at least a half an hour. My son’s school is less than three miles away, but my mind raced trying to figure out the fastest way to get there and back in time for trick or treating. Then I realized the solution: An e-bike.

It took me a moment to hit on this idea because bike sharing was an option that hadn’t existed a month before: My neighborhood in Queens only got Citi Bike, New York City’s bike sharing program, in the fall of 2023 (ten years after it launched!). I had never ridden the electronic model, but I’d recently downloaded the app and biked back and forth to his school several times. I grabbed my helmet, looked for an available bike, and dashed. According to my ride history, I got to the school in a little less than 14 minutes and back to our neighborhood in 16. That Halloween-saving ride sealed the deal: I signed up for an annual membership.

In the past year, I took 79 rides, almost all of them in Queens. Belonging to a bike share has been transformative: I’ve experienced my city in new ways after 26 years of living here. Using the bike share was also an act of living small. Biking, of course, is a non-polluting way to get around, but it felt like it was “small” in so many other ways. Bike sharing is a rare example of the sharing economy working on a large scale, and it help me feel more connected to my community. On the one-year anniversary of joining my city’s bike share program, I thought I’d share my thoughts and impressions. 

Riding a bike is joyful

Riding the subway or bus or driving in my car does not bring me any joy, but hopping on a bike to get from Point A to Point B almost always makes me smile. When I found myself debating between public transportation and a bike, cycling usually won because being outside, moving my body, and feeling a little rush on the rare downhill was all so. much. more. joyful. My friend Alana told me how she’d changed her routine from transferring subways to riding the 20 blocks at the end of her commute and that it left her happy when she got home instead of grouchy. I remember a particularly blissful ride in May when I biked from Long Island City to Brooklyn for my friend

Leah Wiseman Fink

’s birthday: I felt so connected to my fellow New Yorkers riding our bikes across the Pulaski Bridge on what felt like the first real day of summer. 

A bike share is nothing like owning a bike

I’ve owned a bike in the city in the past, but I discovered bike sharing is nothing like bike ownership—and in many ways it is so much better. You don’t need to have a place to store a bike (a huge win for small-space dwellers), nor do you have to worry about your bike being stolen when you leave it locked up on the street. But even more significant is the flexibility of a bike share. With an owned bike, you always have to plan on a round-trip. With bike share, you can take a short ride and then walk away without another thought. It is hard to understate how freeing this is–and how many more places I biked as a result. I could take a quick ride over to Trader Joe’s while my son was at rock climbing. I could ride to the express subway station (or home from it). So many of those 79 rides were super-short trips that just saved me the time of a long walk.

Ebikes make the city so small

I’ve only rarely used the bike share’s e-bikes, but when I do, it makes me realize how revolutionary electric bikes could be. The distance between my neighborhood and others contracts to nothing when you can hop on an ebike and get there in half the time of the subway. (Yes, driving might be just as fast, but traffic is unpredictable and then you have to find a place to park your car.) Plus, if I am going to a meeting or other work event, I don’t have to worry about working up a sweat on an ebike. I’d love to see a day where you could rent an e-cargo bike to take to Costco or an electric long-tail to bring your kid along with you, so a shared bike could do the work of a car more often.

New York City has more bike lanes than ever…

One marked difference between riding a bike in 2024 and riding a bike in 2014 is how many designated bike lanes there are today. According to the mayor’s office, over 479 miles of bike lanes have been built in New York City that decade, plus another 180 miles of protected bike lanes. For someone who first biked in New York City in the late 1990s, this infrastructure feels nothing short of miraculous. 

…but the drivers (and their cars!) are worse than ever

Bike lanes make me feel safe, but the streets without them and the places where bike lanes are interrupted by construction work or parked cars can be harrowing. Today’s drivers seem so oblivious to cyclists. (This is something I have also observed as a runner too.) Drivers are more distracted and disconnected from what’s outside their car–maybe because cars are so much bigger (and their sight lines so much worse). Drivers are less law-abiding too: I have repeatedly been caught off-guard by cars running red lights and on two occasions in 2024 found myself screaming at a driver who nearly mowed me down while jogging on a small side street–something that never happened in the 20+ years of running before that.

Sharing the road is also trickier than ever

In my earlier chapters of city bike riding, the vehicles on the road were cars and bikes with an occasional moped for food delivery. Today, there are all manner of non-car, powered vehicles–mopeds, ebikes, e-scooters–many of them using the bike lanes. In theory, I am all for electronic micro mobility replacing cars, but I won’t lie: Those fast-moving electric bikes/mopeds/scooters often make me feel unsafe. It’s telling that when the Paris mayor called a referendum on rented e-scooters almost 90% of people voted to ban them. Anyone know of cities that are testing out solutions to share the road?

So, please wear a helmet

Most of the riders out there are not wearing helmets and it makes me so nervous. I bought myself a nifty collapsible helmet (which takes up less space in my bag and home), but any old helmet will do. Just wear one okay? I have even considered wearing a safety vest while riding to up my chances of being seen by all those distracted drivers.

Bike sharing could save you money

Saving money is another way that bike sharing is living small. I prepaid $219 for a year of Citi Bike membership and I think it was well worthwhile. The investment did subtly influence my usage: Because I’d already paid for the bike it felt “free” whereas a subway right would cost $2.90. Over the course of a year I rode Citi Bikes 79 times, which works out to $2.73 a ride–cheaper than the subway. (I was also away for most of the summer, so I would have made an even better cost per ride, if I’d been here those months.) Plus, I got exercise and Vitamin D out of the deal too! 

I predict it’ll get even better

Have you ever ridden a bike in a European city? It’s an entirely different (and more pleasant) experience, but I don’t think it’s just cultural. My hunch is that Europe just has a decades-long history of cycling that makes it so much more enjoyable to ride there today. Here in New York, I even noticed that neighborhoods in Brooklyn with longer-established bike shares seemed to have a more harmonious relationship between cars and cyclists. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, where docking stations are huge and well-used, I saw so many people riding shared bikes and I never felt unsafe. I think with time my borough will catch up to the other parts of the city.  

If you’ve never tried your city’s bike share, I encourage you to do so. And if your community doesn’t have bike sharing, maybe dust off your old bicycle and use it for a short errand? You might just find you enjoy it more than getting in the car.

Do you use a bike share? What have you observed? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments. If you’re feeling inspired, here are some cycling-related links (some of which I have shared before), if you want to read more:

• Study: Cycling is 10x More Important Than Electric Cars For Reaching Net Zero

• How to Turn Any Bike Into an Electric Vehicle (gift link)

• The Real Reason You Should Get an E-bike 

• The Art of Taking It Slow 

• The Hustlers Who Make $6,000 a Month by Gaming Citi Bikes (gift link)

🏠 Living Small

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📌 3 More Things

The best small-space article I read this week was this opinion piece in the Washington Post (gift link)¹ about why the new American Dream should be a townhouse. Co-sign!

Gardening: This week, my definitive guide to how to leave your leaves was published on Gardenista. I am really proud of this one because I think it will help people actually do it. I also got to write about a sweet backyard garden in Brooklyn by Verru Design.

Signing off: Instagram and Substack have been sucking too much of my time (especially as the algorithms have figured out what election content will keep me scrolling), so I am logging off until after Nov. 5. I’ll see you next week with a new edition of Small Takes.

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1. I did not cancel my subscription to the Washington Post like so many others because I know that it will hurt the journalists in the newsroom much more than it will change Jeff Bezos’s mind—and I love their climate coverage!