A New York Times report published on Thursday reveals that some Citi Bike users have exploited its process for allocating bikes, earning up to $6,000 a month by gaming the “Bike Angels” program.
Since its launch in 2013, Citi Bike has benefited from a gradual, unbroken rise in popularity, now including over 27,000 bikes at 1,800 stations spread across the city and parts of New Jersey, making it the largest bike-share program in the United States.
Bike Angels is one of the ways that Lyft, Citi Bike’s parent company, manages the distribution of bikes across the city to meet demand, ensuring that would-be riders don’t make their way to a bike-docking station only to find it empty. Essentially, the program rewards Citi Bike users with a small number of points – redeemable for a variety of swag or gift cards – for each bike that they return to a docking station. Beyond this program offered to its consumers, Lyft has also employed workers to drive around the city in trucks to pick up and redock bikes, allocating them where they are most needed.
By closely monitoring the Lyft app, a small number of Citi Bike users figured out the intricacies of the algorithm controlling the reward system and have exploited it to great effect, as a variety of factors can increase the reward. Taking a bike from a full dock, for example, or returning one to an empty dock, boosts the point payout. Returning four or more bikes offers a 3X multiplier for the day. According to the Times, the users gaming the system take bikes from racks with the largest payouts, ride them a short distance, then wait 15 minutes before returning them. The program’s designers expected that users might take a recreational interest in the program at most. Lyft leaned towards gamifying the program, maintaining a public leaderboard of the top 20 Bike Angels, hoping that bragging rights would keep people’s interest.
But nothing beats cold hard cash. Lyft offers 20 cents per point before boosts and multipliers, but these “hustlers,” as the Times calls them, have been able to milk that for all its worth. One apparently earned over $6,000 in a month, while another is rumored to have skimmed over $60,000 for the whole year.
Lyft recently reached out to the Bike Angel hustlers via email, telling them they had been figured out and to tread lightly: “continued instances of station flipping could result in removal from the Bike Angel program.” However, according to the Times, the hustlers remain undeterred.
