Sustainability Memo 4: NYC Bike Share Program

999 Words4 Pages

Natalie Ambrose, nva2104
04.16.2018
Sustainability Management
Memo 4 – NYC Bike Program

Recommended Action
Expand New York City’s bike share program in an effort to encourage healthier lifestyles for city dwellers, reduce the carbon footprint of the city, and build stronger communities. As the City of New York begins to tackle this task of enlarging the bike share program, it is paramount that do so strategically, whereby improvements to the accessibility of bike stations and bike path/lane options are necessary. Specifically, in order to ensure the success of the bike share program, there is a clear need to increase the number of bike lanes/paths throughout the city as well as offer more stations near subway and bus stops throughout the …show more content…

Considering the minimal space allowable for construction due to the available land space in NYC, concerns have been raised that these paths/lanes will affect parking and road space – causing more congestion. To remediate these concerns, assurance should be given to the public that while it may the case that in certain areas there will be smaller roadways, it will not affect every area of the city, and the decrease in size will be very small, if noticeable at all. It has been proven that the addition of bike lanes has helped to moderate traffic, thereby, making it safer for everyone; thus, the addition of these lanes will add safety to both drivers and bikers …show more content…

New York City is unique in comparison to other cities in that there are numerous easy and accessible forms of transportation so rather than making it more difficult for residents to transfer between modes of transportation, efforts should be focused on streamlining the process. While there is little disagreement that this undertaking should be performed, there has yet to be definitive best means of doing so. Considering that 57% of users report combining their bike share trips with subway; therefore, a more continuous process between the MTA (among others) systems would be beneficial. Rather than needing to use two separate modes of transactions to alternate between the pre-existing system and the bike share program, users should be able to interchange between the systems seamlessly.

From a financial standpoint, efforts must be made with recently announced partners, Related and Equinox, to build the company in a sustainable manner that will provide longevity to the program. Particularly, in order to compensate for the unpredicted annual memberships in comparison to daily or tourist usage, these partnerships are acquiring more members continually and helping to remediate the costs of maintenance and software