You are reading

Citi Bike Reduces E-Bike Roll Out This Summer, Production Slowed Down by COVID-19

Citi Bike (Queens Post/ Michael Dorgan)

Aug. 12, 2020 By Allie Griffin

Citi Bike has significantly cut the number of electric bikes it had promised to add to city streets this summer.

The company pledged to add “thousands” of e-bikes to its fleet over the summer back in February, but has switched course and will only be adding “hundreds,” according to a report in Gothamist.

A spokesperson for Lyft, which owns Citi Bike, told the outlet that the coronavirus pandemic slowed the supply chain and limited the labor force in factories producing the e-bikes.

There are about 300 e-bikes currently in Citi Bike’s fleet. The pedal-assist bikes can reach up to 18 miles per hour and proved to be very popular when approximately 1,000 of them were rolled out in 2018 under previous ownership.

Citi Bike, however, pulled those e-bikes after a few months because people had problems with the brakes that led to falls.

Lyft released an updated model of about 150 e-bikes in February and planned to gradually add more e-bikes until there were thousands this summer.

“Pedal-assist bikes have proven incredibly popular, and we are working hard to keep up with demand both on a daily basis as well as by increasing our fleet,” a Lyft spokesperson told the Queens Post. “We are on track to add hundreds more throughout the rest of the summer and more on top of that this year.”

email the author: news@queenspost.com
No comments yet

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Ridgewood mother and daughter arrested for attacking woman over parking spot: NYPD

A Ridgewood mother and daughter were arrested Monday after they ambushed a young Black woman who tried to park her car in a spot in front of their apartment building that they frequently cordon off with garbage cans and traffic cones.

A family friend was standing at the northeast corner of Onderdonk Avenue and Putnam Avenue at around 7:30 p.m. when the 21-year-old Jada McPherson tried to park her car in the spot. The man placed a garbage can in her way. She drove off and circled the block multiple times. She tried to pull into the same spot one more time, but the man tried to stop her again. McPherson got out of her car to confront him, and an argument ensued.

Man in his 50s sought for exposing himself to 13-year-old on E train in Forest Hills: NYPD

Police from the 112th Precinct in Forest Hills and Transit District 20 are looking for a suspect who allegedly flashed a 13-year-old girl on a Queens subway train last month.

The victim was riding a southbound E train approaching the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike station at around 1 p.m. on Monday, June 30, when she saw a stranger exposing himself to her, police said Wednesday. The perpetrator ran off the train at the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike station and fled in an unknown direction. The youngster was not injured during her encounter with the stranger.