4 ms·

Things have gotten a lot better over the past year with the NYC bike share, especially with maintenance, but there's still a ways to go. Generally speaking, if

by dsri 11y ago

Things have gotten a lot better over the past year with the NYC bike share, especially with maintenance, but there's still a ways to go. Generally speaking, if you're commuting, bike docks (where you pick up and drop off) are empty when you want a bike and full when you want to return one. The official Citibike app is also terrible, and the data Citibike makes available is often inaccurate (shows bikes or open slots when there aren't any). The app "Bike NYC" is a good (free) alternative, but obviously limited by data quality.

szx 11y ago
I recommend Citymapper. It's been super reliable and pretty accurate (although my impression may be colored by how bad the experience had been in previous years).
- kh_hk 11y ago
  Unless they access a different data feed [1] [2], both should be as (in)accurate. [1]: https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json [2]: https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json
- dhritzkiv 11y ago
  Another alternative is Transit. It supports bike share data in many cities, including New York. However, it's likely it suffers from the same data quality issues as the Citi Bike app.
mizzao 11y ago
Univelo NYC is a great app as well and pulls down updates very quickly.
mattzito 11y ago
> data Citibike makes available is often inaccurate (shows bikes or open slots when there aren't any) I'm not certain if you're seeing the same thing I am, but I've tracked the inaccuracy of the data for citibike back to an abnormally long refresh time when the app loads. So it preloads whatever the last view of the system is, and displays that as the truth, while it loads a new one in the background, which takes sometimes as long as 60 seconds. So I could see that looking like it's displaying inaccurate data, because it's unclear that it's refreshing the data.

by dsri 11y ago

szx 11y ago

I recommend Citymapper. It's been super reliable and pretty accurate (although my impression may be colored by how bad the experience had been in previous years).

kh_hk 11y ago
Unless they access a different data feed [1] [2], both should be as (in)accurate. [1]: https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json [2]: https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json
dhritzkiv 11y ago
Another alternative is Transit. It supports bike share data in many cities, including New York. However, it's likely it suffers from the same data quality issues as the Citi Bike app.

mizzao 11y ago

Univelo NYC is a great app as well and pulls down updates very quickly.

mattzito 11y ago

> data Citibike makes available is often inaccurate (shows bikes or open slots when there aren't any) I'm not certain if you're seeing the same thing I am, but I've tracked the inaccuracy of the data for citibike back to an abnormally long refresh time when the app loads. So it preloads whatever the last view of the system is, and displays that as the truth, while it loads a new one in the background, which takes sometimes as long as 60 seconds. So I could see that looking like it's displaying inaccurate data, because it's unclear that it's refreshing the data.