The city even subsidizes ferry service from the Rockaways and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to Pier 11 in Manhattan. This ferry has cost well over $3 million to date, and it has fewer than 1,000 riders per day. The only day the Citi Bike system had fewer than 1,000 riders was Feb. 13, when almost 10 inches of snow fell on the city.

Yet Citi Bike was supposed to be different. Our tax dollars were not paying for it. Instead, it would be sustained by an optimistic projection of subscription revenues and corporate sponsorship — a sort of Bloombergian perpetual motion machine.

Other bike share programs run differently. Capital Bikeshare in Washington is partly financed by a grant from the United States Department of Transportation, as well as other regional subsidies. Vélib’ in Paris is funded by JCDecaux, an advertising company, in exchange for control of some 1,600 billboards — space it sells to clients. In London, the system is sponsored by Barclays Bank, but also looks to Transport for London as well as local councils to help fund its expansion, which ultimately costs the taxpayers.

Granted, only the fact that New Yorkers weren’t ostensibly paying for Citi Bike allowed it to overcome ingrained cultural resistance. Mayor Bill de Blasio has made it clear that he will not give city funds to Citi Bike.

This is a shame. Sure, Citi Bike is not indispensable; after all, this is not the subway we’re talking about. Yet it’s difficult at this point to imagine New York City without it — and we shouldn’t have to. It’s a fantastic amenity and a convenience to many thousands of people, from the tourist to the workaday commuter heading from Grand Central to an office. And where would the New York media be without paparazzi shots of Leonardo DiCaprio riding one on the sidewalk?

Perhaps most important, bike share is an integral part of a change in street design that has had a palliative effect on New York City streets, calming them and making them safer for all of us no matter how we travel. It’s an essential part of the urban ecosystem, like bivalves helping to clean a polluted waterway.

As Citi Bike enters its second year, it does so having passed both the safety test and the popularity test. Now it faces its biggest and most important test, which is whether we’ll forgive it for being unprofitable and poorly managed in the past, and commit to maintaining and improving it for the future — even if, ultimately, it should prove necessary to use city funds. When our auto industry sputtered, it got a bailout. When our banking system, Citibank included, was on the brink of collapse, it got a bailout.

Citi Bike is minuscule compared with the auto industry, or the banking industry or even the rest of the transit system, but its tiny size belies the positive effects it’s already had on the city. If we can find a way to keep bike share running in New York City, then it, too, will have officially become American.