Less than two weeks after officials announced it finally would happen, Queens became the third borough to participate in the Citi Bike program as of Wednesday afternoon, after a Long Island City station was installed on Center Boulevard between Borden Avenue and 54th Avenue.
The station, the first of 12 to be installed in the neighborhood and among 91 to be placed in an overall Brooklyn and Queens expansion this summer as the popular bike-sharing program expands over the East River into Queens, is just south of the NY Waterways ferry station at Hunters Point South Park.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the blue bikes are in Queens County, New York City,” said City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) at a kickoff event for the station, which also included a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
There, some officials and residents were able to take a spin on the new bikes, which comply with an updated design. They rolled through Hunters Point Park.
The expansion this summer will double the size of the program in the city.
Among the new bike stations will be a hub at the Queensbridge Houses, where NYCHA residents will receive a discount on memberships.
The other planned stations include one in front of MoMA PS1 and another by LaGuardia Community College.
In the fall, organizers, which include the bike-share program Motivate and the city Department of Transportation, also plans to add 27 stations on the Upper East Side and 21 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
“New Yorkers have ridden Citi bikes over 20 million times since it started,” said DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg.
The new stations will put 1,400 new bikes into service in the next three weeks, with more to follow, Trottenberg said.
Jay Walder, president and CEO of Motivate, which operates Citi Bike, said anyone who joins Citi Bike during the month of August will receive $25 off the price of an annual membership.
Under the next phase of the expansion plan, once a customer gets on a Citi Bike in Long Island City, he or she will eventually be able to dock it in Astoria, or in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Dumbo.
A bike lane is under construction on the Pulaski Bridge, which Trottenberg said she hopes will be open to cyclists by spring 2016.
“I certainly hope if my team is playing in October, we find a way to ride a Citi Bike over there,” said Walder, a Mets fan.
