Originally Posted by
ExpertTools
The bottom line is that it never was an ideal city bike. The streets of NYC are horrible, not much can last forever. But to give you better odds...look at what NYC bike messengers ride. While some nuts ride single speed fixed gear bikes with no brakes, most use fairly light aluminum framed hard tail mountain bikes with front suspension, and non-knobby tires. Many add a suspension seatpost. Actually the Citibikes are pretty nice to ride; much lighter than they look. But a key feature of the Citibike is the fairly broad tires that help absorb the bumps, along with a robust aluminum frame. But a nice hardtail can be quite a bit lighter than a Citibike, and give you some suspension to deal with the bumps, and more gears as well. Time to look for something new.
I had a free Citibike membership for a year, it ended a couple weeks ago, 2-3 days after my bike frame broke. Citibikes are heavy sluggish tanks. They aren't much fun to ride. If I've been hitting the Citibike thing hard for a few days, it's always a relief and joy to have my bike under me because it's so much lighter, faster, and nimbler ... and that's saying allot because the Motobecane Grand Tourer is by any measure a relatively heavy, slow, unresponsive steel bike. The newest batch of Citibikes - the ones with the blue basket on the front - shift a lot smoother than the older beat out bikes (some of which have a lag time of 10 or more seconds between when you shift and when the gears actually decide to move) but they're still relatively uninteresting rigs to ride. They are heavy unpleasant tanks but their virtue is their convenience and that they roll over anything and they can take a dumb beating, including going off curbs and slamming them into their docks. The convenience factor in piecing together a meandering and uncertain itinerary combining subway, foot, and bike is a watershed moment in moving around the city without the millstone moments that a normal bike can present.
What's great about the Motobecane is with the rack and Ortlieb back roller plus panniers (and often with a backpack as well) it could haul 38-40lbs of cargo door-to-door (which includes an 8lb 1980s vintage St. Pierre lock that I've had for about 30 years and is totally bomber!) and the rest in groceries. It got me from around for 7 years without ever being stolen or vandalized (the
only time it's been messed with in 7 years is someone left the air out of a tire once when it was parked in a place that my intuition told me was sketchy ... but I
had to leave it). Amazing! And it's got a sprung Brooks seat on it to boot.
My recollection of bike messengers is fixies or lean nondescript road bikes.