The recent Citi Bike data has garnered a lot of attention. This is the third in a series of post exploring the demographics of Citi Bike Riders. Todays post seeks to explore gender through the lens of the Citi Bike program.

Geography

First, I explored Citi Bikes and gender geographically. I’ve split the station districts into 5 quantiles representing the percentage of annual pass rides at any given station that are taken by woman. Each quantile has an associated color, with red having the lowest percentage male, and thus highest female:

What we see is that Citi Bikers in midtown are strongly male dominated, while a large swatch of Brooklyn has a relatively higher proportion of females than other areas. The Financial District seems to also weight high on the male side.

Time of Day

I was also curious how the percentage of Male/Female riders changed depending on time of day.

The plot shows that female ridership is lowest at 3AM. This is likely due to safety concerns and one might conclude that 3AM is considered the least safe hour by females. At that time, their share of rides is down to 11% from an average of 23%.

Age

Lastly, I explored if age plays a role in the gender breakdown across Citi Bike riders. To explore that, I looked at the gender split across age buckets:

The findings show that as riders get older, they are generally less likely to be female. The exception is the very youngest riders, who also tend to be more male. The highest percentage of female riders relative to their male counterparts are between the ages of 25-29.

This data is of course only about Citi Bikers, but the story it tells may help to reveal how gender plays a role in the way New Yorkers experience the City.

Data provided by Citi Bike

Map made in QGIS