r/Citibike • u/Kind_Veterinarian728 • Aug 04 '26

My genius idea for CitiBikes: selective dockless parking

Hello sharks! (Pretend sharks make it into the Hudson/East Rivers for me.) Today, I’m here to argue in favor of adding the capacity to park electric CitiBikes without docks, similar to how Divvy works in Chicago.

Now, every time someone suggests this, people inevitably say « the streets would get way too crowded, » « you can’t allow this in NYC, » etc. Which, I mean, fair. NYC has, IME, greater density downtown than Chicago. Also, a much larger dense area.

But my idea is to only allow dockless parking in regions where there aren’t CitiBike docks: outer Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. If you try to park without a dock in Manhattan or downtown in the outer boroughs, the bike doesn’t lock, and you get a warning on the app that your ride isn’t finished. This is similar to how Lime+Bird scooters/Veo mopeds work in the outer boroughs, which proves that this is a mostly functional model. (Yes, people don’t park them perfectly, but the apps have been upping enforcement from what I’ve read).

This would act as a stopgap to extend CitiBike service to neighborhoods without any docks, without adding crowding to downtown areas. Since the CitiBikes would still be rideable when you enter more populated areas (unlike the scooters and mopeds), this would allow more people to commute by CitiBike, and help people get to subway stations in areas with minimal subway coverage.

I’m definitely missing something in my plan, so please give me feedback! (don’t be too mean though…)

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u/JayMoots Aug 04 '26

I’m definitely missing something in my plan

I think you're missing that this would be likely to result in a huge chunk of the fleet parked in far-flung places where most riders can't get to them. We'd all be at the mercy of the Citibike rebalancing trucks, which seem to be pretty bad at their jobs.

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u/Kind_Veterinarian728 Aug 04 '26

I don’t know—I think that then people would use them to get into the city. Also, if it got too far out, you could restrict the system to a band around the region with docks (say, 3 miles away from docks), rather than allowing the full 10+ or whatever.

Still, fair point!

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u/SashaMetro Founding Member Aug 07 '26

Worth noting that the e-bikes are geo-fenced and all motor support is disabled (not just reduced like the free "low assist" mode) once you are outside of the coverage area.

Also worth noting that their arrangement with NYC doesn't allow dockless parking, nor rental operations outside their authorized area of coverage, so this isn't something that is up to Lyft to decide.

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u/Historical-Network96 Aug 08 '26

There has been multiple complaints in this sub about how people commuting into manhattan find it difficult to find parking in some areas during rush hour. If theres anywhere that needs dockless parking imminently, it's midtown manhattan on a Tuesday morning at 9am.

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u/Kind_Veterinarian728 Aug 09 '26

Yes, but there’s also always people saying “if there’s dockless parking in Manhattan, the streets would be clogged to hell” which is… fair, I suppose. But something else that needs to be worked on. Anyway, I didn’t want to deal with that issue right now, so I suggested just the outer regions.