Community Corner
Bike Share Equipment Damaged by Navy Yard Flooding
Officials have not announced the severity of the damage, or if it will affect the bike share's launch date in March.
Though plagued with software glitches earlier this year, New York City’s bike share program has a new set of obstacles – flooding in the bike storage warehouse from Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times reports.
The Citi Bikes and docking stations have been stored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Building 293, near Wallabout Bay. Many areas of the Navy Yard were flooded with several feet of water, and many businesses housed in the complex reported losses due to the storm’s destruction.
A spokesman for the mayor’s office on Tuesday told the Times that there appeared to be damage to program equipment, especially the docking stations.
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“We’re working on it,” Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, told the paper. “We had six feet of water in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
There is no official word yet on whether the flooding and damage will affect the program’s scheduled start date in March.
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The bike share was supposed to be up and running this summer, but software glitches pushed back the start date. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which left New Yorkers with very limited transportation options, some say the bike share would have helped more people get around.
“New Yorkers have been patient,” Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, told the Times. “I think that with any more delays, New Yorkers’ patience will start to wear a bit thin.”