We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of Citi Bike’s launch in NYC. To celebrate, let’s take a look at what may be the system’s greatest workhorse.
The always wonderful NYC data blog I Quant NY crunched Citi Bike’s publicly available data to find bike #17279, which blogger Ben Wellington is calling “the busiest Citi Bike in NYC” — though it’s unclear from his analysis whether that means #17279 has taken more individual trips or traveled more cumulative miles than any other bike (or both). Either way, it’s an impressive machine.
UPDATE: Wellington told me over Twitter that he used number of trips to gauge business.
@cushac I used number of trips. I'd guess it's both but don't have data in front of me.
— IQuantNY (@IQuantNY) May 23, 2014
Here’s how Wellington breaks down the bike’s feats of endurance:
The bike has been used 1,341times, or an average of 5.5 times per day. That’s compared with an average use rate of 851 times for all bikes.
It was rebalanced 158 times (when a bike goes from one station to another without a registered ride. This is often a van “rebalancing” the bikes.)
It has been riding for a total of 19,606 minutes or 326 hours. That’s an average of 82 minutes every day.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to track down the John Henry of bike share and test it out for yourself, as the ID numbers Citi Bike uses for data are different from those that are printed on the bikes. #1729, we salute you, wherever you are.
