Citi Bike Angel Keeps Wheels Turning For Other Bike-Share Users

Citi Bike angel Joe Miller has covered more than 12,000 miles on ride-share bikes in New York City in a quest to earn points by ferrying bikes to where others need them.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Not all heroes wear capes, as they say. Some just move bikes. We have a story of bike-share businesses. Riders pick up bicycles parked on the streets and rent them, ride where they're heading, then drop them off. New York City has the largest bike-share in the United States, 12,000 bicycles that come and go from 750 docking stations run by Citi Bike.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Thing is, though, you don't leave the bike in the same place you found it, right? Some neighborhoods then end up with too many bikes, so Citi Bike started enlisting so-called angels. They get money and free memberships for moving the bikes around.

INSKEEP: Joe Miller was an avid Citi Bike user even before the Bike Angels program.

MARTIN: But it didn't take long for Miller to get into it - really into it.

JOE MILLER: You might say I was more intensely involved in it. And I treated it more as a game to win.

MARTIN: Joe Miller ended up becoming New York's top Bike Angel. He says he rode about 500 miles a week at his peak.

MILLER: I had a decent amount of free time. I believed in the system and wanting to try and balance the bikes out.

INSKEEP: Mr. Miller spent months competing for the top spot on the Bike Angel leaderboard - there's a leaderboard - building on what he already knew about the system.

MILLER: I got a deeper and deeper understanding of it and started to see the flow of bikes throughout the city. You might say I got in too deep. I actually blocked the leaderboard from all of my browsers just to keep me from being pulled back in even possibly.

MARTIN: Miller has cut his bike use but hasn't given it up altogether. He still went out of his way to rack up some points on his way to talk to us in NPR's New York bureau.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BICYCLE RACE")

QUEEN: (Singing) Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle. I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like. You say black. I say white.

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