Since Citi Bike’s launch, there have been no recorded cycling fatalities on one of their bikes. For Citi Bike riders like me, that’s good news in a system that some said would lead to a bicycling apocalypse

That being said, some people are still nervous to hop on the blue stallions and take a ride, so I decided to crunch some numbers to find the stations in the system that have had the least/most number of reported cycling injuries around them from Jan 2013 - May 2014. (Note that these are not Citi Bike specific injuries, but rather all cycling injuries reported to the police involving a Motor Vehicle)

I paired Citi Bike station data with vehicle/bicycle collision data from the city’s Open Data portal. For each accident resulting in a death or injury, I mapped it to the closest Citi Bike station. That gave an injury count per station. I then divided the result by the total area covered by that station. The results in an injury-per-square-foot metric.

The following table displays the top 10 stations for near-by injury density. The index given is compared to the top station, which is given a 1.0. I also supply the raw count of accidents.

The findings? Three of the top ten stations with the highest injury density are located just off the Williamsburg Bridge. Note that we can’t control for bicycle traffic here, so this does not mean that any given rider has a higher chance of getting an injury; more riders means more injuries. That being said, any one who has biked near the exit of the Williamsburg Bridge knows it’s a bit of a tricky place. Other top stations are listed above, including three on Broadway.

The 32 stations that have not had a single reported injury nearby since 2013 are as follows:

Many of these stations are in Brooklyn or line the edge of the city, near the waterfront. Presumably, people biking along the river are more likely to use the bike paths there and thus there are less injuries.

To find the safest among those stations, I chose the one that was farthest from any injury at all in the data set. The winner was Columbia Heights & Cranberry St in Brooklyn, but up second was E 20th St and FDR Drive. Both of these were at least half a kilometer from the nearest accident .

Lastly, I mapped the injury index for each station below. Darker colors indicate more injuries. Clicking on any area gives you the station address that is closest to that point as well as the index value and raw accident count for that station:

So if you have a friend who is saying that they are too scared to Citi Bike in NYC, bring them to one of the 32 stations on the list above. You can reliably say “Since the launch of Citi Bike, no Citi Biker (and even no cyclist!) has gotten in an accident with a car around this station… I Quant NY says so!” Who knows- maybe that will give them enough confidence to give it a shot.

Also on I Quant NY: More posts on Citi Bike and Vision Zero.

Tools used above: QGIS, Pandas, iPython, Excel

Cyclist Injury Data: Jan 2013-May 2014

Note that the map does not normalize for cycling traffic and only tracks injuries reported to the police.