NEW YORK — More than 400 locations across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens have been chosen as the first sites of the long-awaited rollout of the city’s new bike share system.
The movable, solar-powered stations will be dotted every few blocks along sidewalks, side streets, and in public parks and plazas across Manhattan south of Central Park, western Queens, and northern Brooklyn, according to draft maps released by the Department of Transportation Friday.
The map shows large numbers of bikes in central locations, including 59 bike slots outside of Madison Square Garden, 59 outside the Empire State Building, and nearly 100 placed around Washington Square Park.
Smaller docks are placed across residential neighborhoods, mostly near intersections and along major thoroughfares.
The city is still in the process of selecting locations on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side of Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.
"I'm extremely proud to release this plan for the Citi Bike network," DOR Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said in a statement.
"New Yorkers created this plan during the past six months, contributing time and expertise in workshops, on-line and in dozens of meetings to discuss and plan the City's newest transportation system,” she said.
The maps come after months of consultation with local community boards and business groups, as well as from 70,000 online suggestions about where the stations should be placed.
The new “Citibikes,” named after sponsor CitiBank, are set to start hitting the streets in July, with 10,000 bikes in place within the year.
Those who purchase daily, weekly or annual passes will be able to borrow the bikes at one location and drop them off near their destinations.
While some have raised concerns about putting 10,000 new bikes on the road, a new Quinnipiac poll out Friday found that 64 percent of voters support the bike share idea, which has proven a success in other cities across Europe and North America, including London, Paris and Washington, D.C.
Click here to see all the locations in your neighborhood.
