Electric Citi Bikes will be slightly easier to find now — but members will have to pay more to ride them, company officials announced Thursday.
Citi Bike plans to add 4,000 new pedal-assist electric bikes to its fleet starting Thursday and throughout the spring. And now those bikes will cost an extra $2 per ride for members.
“Keeping pedal-assist batteries charged and bikes available requires additional operational resources, including additional staff members who swap out depleted batteries with fresh ones,” the company said in a press release.
Citi Bike first added some pedal-assist bikes to its fleet last year, but riders have complained that they can never find them. The company said it planned to add more electric bikes to augment transit options during the now-scuttled L train shutdown.
The extra charge will kick in for members on April 27.
Riders say they are outraged by the increased price for the electric bicycle.
“This charge is bulls–t,” said 36-year-old John Patterson, who rides Citi Bike several times a day.
“If I pay for an unlimited MetroCard, I don’t get charged an extra fee per ride. I love Citi Bike, but they’ve raised rates a couple of times now, and now they’re doing it again.”
Disability advocates also decried the charge, saying it was an extra charge that people will have to be for not being able-bodied enough to ride a regular bike.
“If you’re trying to make the system more accessible, you have to charge the same amount for the accessible parts,” said Joe Rappaport, Executive Director of Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. “That’s why we don’t charge more if someone takes a wheelchair-accessible taxi or if someone uses a ramp on the bus or an elevator in the subway.”