Ride hailing company Lyft said it’s offering discounts for residents at the Hoboken Housing Authority, which offers subsidized and discounted housing to the city’s poorest residents, and for residents on food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Under the new offering, those residents would get discounts through Lyft for the Citi Bike memberships, which allow users to rent a bike for local travel. The discounts come out to $60 a year to – billed at $5 a month – “take advantage of a unified bikeshare system interconnecting Hoboken, Jersey City, and New York City,” reads the July 22 announcement from the Hudson County city.
The mayors of Hoboken and Jersey City, Ravinder Bhalla and Steven Fulop ride in their cities’ unified Citi Bike bikeshare inaugural ride. – JENNIFER BROWN PHOTOGRAPHY
“We have worked hard to provide affordable transportation options to our residents,” reads a prepared statement from Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla. “Citi Bike’s new reduced rate will help our residents most in need travel not only throughout Hoboken but throughout Jersey City and New York City.”
Local officials and Lyft executives began to expand the Citi Bike program across Jersey City and Hoboken, which both sit on the Hudson River across from Lower Manhattan, over the winter and spring. They formally unveiled the unified “bike-share” program in May, under a five-year agreement that makes 820 bikes available across the two cities.
Hoboken is getting 29 docking stations and Jersey City is getting another two docking stations, adding 82 total stations across both cities. Three stations are already installed at the Hoboken Housing Authority.
