Citi Bike Photo: QueensPost
Aug. 20, 2019, By Ryanne Salzano
Some low-income New Yorkers can get a free month of Citi Bike rides, as part of an initiative partnered with Citi Bike and the New York, Brooklyn, and the Queens Public Library.
The offer comes as a celebration of the first anniversary of the Reduced Fare Bike Share from Healthfirst, a New York health insurance company.
Residents of NYCHA developments and people who receive SNAP benefits qualify for a free month of Citi Bike rides. The offer is only available to new Citi Bike members.
New Yorkers who qualify can go to the circulation desk at any library branch for a gift certificate for the offer while supplies last. Riders can use the certificate to enroll online for the Citi Bike membership.
The offer provides unlimited 45-minute rides for the first 30 days. After that, riders can renew their membership for $5 a month. There’s no annual commitment or auto-renew, and riders can re-enroll by taking a Citi Bike ride after the initial offer expires.
“Citi Bike’s reduced fare gift certificates will offer many people who visit our libraries in western Queens and our tech lab at the Queensbridge Houses equitable access to a healthy transportation option that respects the environment,” said Dennis Walcott, president and CEO of the Queens Public Library.
The Reduced Fare Bike Share program from Healthfirst boasts a membership of 3,500 New Yorkers. These members ride, on average, twice as much as those with annual Citi Bike members, according to the press release. Healthfirst is New York’s largest not-for-profit health insurer.
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19 Comments
Half the “low income” people in New York City are just income tax scammers. They make plenty, but they work in cash businesses and private businesses where they hide their money, and meanwhile they milk the system for everything they can.
Every Chinese grandmother who steps off the Air China flight on Sunday is at the Social Security office on Monday and getting payments by Tuesday, from a system to which she contributed $0. And it doesn’t matter if her family is loaded. The corruption levels and grifting are astonishing. But oh, it lets all the Progressive simps virtue signal about “helping the poor.” What a bunch of rubes New Yorkers are.
Yeah there are so many Chinese grandmas on citibikes these days. Please, tRumpy. Comments like the one above is reflects not Queens as the “boro of choice” but the old borough of shameless bigotry (still, but dying out).
Not paying taxes “makes you smart” according to Trump. How dare you criticize him.
Come on guys…it’s a great idea…save the negativity for next month and you can nit pick everything that could go wrong or maybe you can be positive, It’s a good idea and hopefully there will be lots of people taking advantage.
Maybe there should be trigger alerts on positive stories now for the trolls Lol. Just some runaway egos looking anywhere for conflict.
More users will also mean that citibike will grow and that is to everyone’s advantage.
I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised to see this many negative comments. Don’t you guys always complain about how terrible the subway is or how expensive everything is? Well, now we can offer free/cheap transportation for people who need it the most and likely live far away from reliable public transit.
It’s a great program. I recently joined citibike myself and recommend it to anyone. Will help all NYers stay or get fit, regardless of income. That benefits us all financially and as fellow human beings. It is also one more step in dealing with ground level pollution, over crowded trains, and ultimately, climate change. My only issue with citibike so far is the lack of organization with bike or dock availability. Noticed several broken docks recently and I have had some issues getting acct errors corrected. Hopefully these glitches will get worked out. Still, really great to see citibike expanded in Astoria to everyone!
Citibike has been great, I’ve been able to bike home from work in 30 minutes rather than take a 40 minute subway (and that’s assuming it’s actually running on time). I get actual commuter independence and get a great workout in the process. CitiBike is great (in the sense that shared bike services are great programs) but has lots of issues and is very slow to expand. There are very few docks in Astoria so often times I have to go well out of my way to get a bike – it would be terrific if more docks came to places around Ditmars/21st Ave so people can ride the bike to the subway (rather than walk 20 minutes). If the city actually spent some money on it then it can become the program that de Blasio claims to care about.
Can’t wait to see how this all goes.
Great. Another thing we have to pay for. Low income people get free metro cards, free access to museums and on and on. I’m tired of the morons running this city putting their grimy hands in my pocket to pay for other people.
Yeah, let’s just keep beating up the poor because they don’t have it bad already.
It’s a 30 day program. Get over yourself.
The purpose of taxes is to balance the load. NYC and California pay for roads in Arkansas through taxes that go to the federal government. People without kids still pay for schools. If we didn’t balance the load only rich people would be able to have a police and fire department.
Have it bad? If they were so poor wouldn’t they be skinny and dressed in rags? They are morbidly obese and the liberals blame that on the lack of conveniently placed grocery stores providing fresh produce to these leeches. The excuses and allowances made for the “poor” is appalling. These are generational freeloaders who sponge off the government.
No, you are stereotyping and mean.
If you are poor and live in a bad school district the city doesn’t let you send your kids to better school district. Why? Why should quality of education be based on income?
Poverty in the US is about 12% making that $40 million people. You have rich people cheating the tax system for a lot more money than this 12% is doing yet you blame them. You have rich people getting away with crimes because they pay for top lawyers yet poor people get an overworked public defender.
Being born in the bottom 10% makes it is very difficult to move up. Going up 20% still puts you in the bottom 30%.
When you are born in the middle 50% and going to the the 51%, that isn’t very difficult.
30 days of a discount bike share is so awful? Give me a break.
Were you born into a poor family or middle class? How much more money do you make than your parents?
I’m shocked you’re completely uninformed about the things that hurt your feelings.
Wow, it’s almost as if you don’t understand how poor diet and lack of exercise makes someone overweight. All poor people must look like starving refugees in order to receive any kind of government assistance.
What lack of exercise? I hear the elevators in the projects are broken all of the time! Should be nice and lean walking all of those stairs. Please stop making excuses for lazy freeloaders-you are embarrassing yourself. It’s always someone else’s fault but their own. Free education, free food, programs for just about everything yet zero accountability.
You sound pretty fragile for NYC. Maybe you should move out of it if you can’t handle city life.
In a few weeks the projects will be overrun with these bikes in people’s apartments.