The city is preparing to boost its number of Citi Bikes from 6,000 to 10,000, so if you don’t want one of the clunky kiosks in front of your building, start griping now, critics of the program warn.
Nearly 45 percent of the bike-share stations that had been planned for certain locations in the spring were moved because of residents’ objections, according to a report quietly published by the city Department of Transportation in April and recently obtained by The Post.
But after the program was officially launched in May, the DOT only moved a “handful of [established] locations,” a spokesman said.
The Transportation Department says it “plans to announce the timeline for expansion soon.”
Targeted neighborhoods include the tony Upper West and Upper East sides, along with Cobble Hill and Park Slope in Brooklyn.
Residents living in the neighborhoods shouldn’t expect to be contacted by the DOT about planned kiosks.
So “start your protests earlier rather than later, because in my experience it’s been much easier to deal with relocation before the racks are in place,” said lawyer Steven Sladkus.
Sladkus convinced the city to move three docking stations that had been slated for placement in Manhattan’s swankiest zip codes — at the luxury Milan Condominium on East 55th Street, the set for Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”; at a Midtown West office building and at a residential address near Carnegie Hall.
But the lawyer is currently embroiled in a nasty legal battle with the city over a row of bright-blue Citi Bikes across from the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Kenn Lowy of Brooklyn Heights said the DOT initially planned to put a kiosk in front of his building on Clinton and Atlantic avenues. He said he only learned of the issue because he’s on the local community board.
“They said they had reached out to the public and done all these meetings, but honestly I was baffled by it. No one in my apartment building, 70 to 80 units, [knew about it],” he said.
“I told them, ‘You could put up a sign on where the spots would be, “Please come and give us your thoughts.” I didn’t see anything like that in Brooklyn Heights or DUMBO,” Lowy said.
The location was ultimately moved.
But Manhattan’s Community Board Two unanimously opposed the rack in SoHo’s Petrosino Square but hasn’t been able to have it moved even after a bitter court battle.
“We made ourselves so clear, and worked so hard to present them with alternative,” said Georgette Fleischer, president of Friends of Petrosino Square. “It’s just astonishing that they haven’t moved it yet.”
The city has also refused to move three other sites that have ended up in court.
A Manhattan judge ruled in the city’s favor in two of the cases, and the remaining lawsuits are pending.
“I fear that these two recent court victories are going to embolden the DOT,” Sladkus said.