Citi Bike Stations Spotted in Fort Greene [Updated]

The brains and guts of the 33-dock bike-share station at Myrtle and Clinton. Photo: Joanna Oltman Smith

After the first Citi Bike stations were installed in Bed Stuy and Clinton Hill over the weekend, NYC DOT Policy Director Jon Orcutt told Transportation Nation that bike-share implementation will “be moving through the Brooklyn area and then into Manhattan over the next few weeks.” And it looks like stations have now been installed at least as far west as Adelphi Street and as far north as Flushing Avenue.

Reader Joanna Oltman Smith sent in the above photo of a 33-dock station going in on Clinton Avenue by Myrtle Avenue. And I passed this 23-dock station on Flushing between Adelphi and Carlton Avenue on the way into work this morning:

This one should be popular with workers at the Navy Yard, which is across the street, and residents of Navy Green, a new parking-free development one block to the east.

We’ve also seen reports of stations at Adelphi and Myrtle, Clermont Avenue and Park Avenue, Washington Avenue and Greene Avenue, and Myrtle and Franklin Avenue.

Meanwhile, it looks like BusinessWeek is first out of the gate with a story about merchants reacting to the new stations. To be fair to the two retailers quoted by BusinessWeek, they seem to be reserving judgment about bike-share. But something is still a little off-kilter about a story which implicitly weighs a new form of transit that will serve hundreds of thousands of people against a liquor store owner’s ability to access his rooftop A/C unit.

Update: We’re hearing that Council Member Tish James is getting an earful from NIMBYs about a few of these stations. But if you’ve been tracking reaction to CitiBike on Twitter, the general sense is overwhelmingly positive. A wave of tweets like these to @TishJames should help get the message across to the council member that people want these stations in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.

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