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General Manager Of Citi Bike Program Stepping Down

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The head of the Citi Bike program is resigning from his post, program officials announced Wednesday.

Justin Ginsburgh will step down as general manager of New York City Bike Share – the firm that operates Citi Bike. The move came just as Citi Bike was approaching its one-year anniversary.

Ginsburgh will join Lehrer LLC, a large-scale construction project management firm, as a special adviser to firm principal Peter Lehrer.

Eddie Inlow, former manager of the Divvy Bikes sharing program in Chicago and current chief operating officer of Portland, Ore.-based Alta Bicycle Share, will oversee general operations as Citi Bike conducts a national search for a new general manager.

The bike share program launched last May, and this week, the program reached a milestone with 100,000 annual members.

But the program has also been losing money. Leaders of the bike-share program said they need to raise tens of millions of dollars to keep it running, WCBS 880's Monica Miller reported last week.

The bike share is focused on increasing the number of weekly and daily users. Currently, weekly memberships are available for $25 and daily memberships are available for $9.95.

And despite reaching the 100,000-member mark, ridership took a worse-than-expected hit this winter.

Operators are looking for more sponsors to provide a financial cushion. Citi Bike is looking at ways to attract more short-term users and expand into new neighborhoods.

According to reports, some Citi Bike workers have been laid off and there have also been operational problems.

In other major cities such as Chicago and Boston, where the bike-share programs are very successful, their annual membership is actually slightly less than what's charged in New York. However, those bike-share programs are subsidized, while Citi Bike operates on private sponsors.

There are 6,000 Citi Bikes docked at 330 stations across parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

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