Lyft cracking down on Citi Bike riders cashing in big on Bike Angels program

NEW YORK - For over a decade now, the Citi Bike program has been a popular way to get around New York City.

With thousands of bikes scattered across the city, ready to ride at a moment's notice, ridership has continued to soar.

But an unintended consequence of Citi Bike's success has emerged: some users of the Bike Angels program are profiting by manipulating Citi Bike's docking system.

Lyft, Citi Bike’s parent company, introduced the Bike Angels program in 2016 to balance the flow of bikes between full and empty docking stations across the city. The program rewards users with points for moving bikes from overcrowded stations to those that are empty. These points can be redeemed for credits on Lyft rides, future bike rentals, or even cash transferred directly to PayPal accounts.

"In the morning, there's almost always a need to pull bikes away from 6th Avenue over toward Broadway," said Mark Epperson, an actor who is one of the program's most active participants.

Along with a group of 10 to 15 other riders, Epperson will move bikes between stations, racking up points. 

"We just all recognize there are points to be made, and so we all end up here at the same time," Epperson said. "We move those bikes and do it for a couple hours, and some people do it longer."

For some, the Bike Angels program has become a lucrative side gig. Epperson said he managed to earn between $1,000 and $2,000 every month over the summer, while others have made even more.

"Some of them can make upwards of 7 to 8 thousand a month but that’s all they’re doing," he added.

However, the program’s success has caught the attention of Lyft and critics who say some users are manipulating the system by intentionally creating bike shortages.

"They understood they could manipulate the market and cash in points by creating a shortage when there was none," said David Shmoys, a data science professor at Cornell University who helped build Citi Bike’s current algorithm.

Shmoys noted that while this practice isn't illegal, it’s not how Lyft intended the system to be used.

In late August, Lyft sent a letter to Bike Angels, including Epperson, addressing the issue of "station flipping," a term used for intentionally shifting bikes between stations for profit. 

"They let a bunch of us know, ‘Hey, we really don’t want that to be how you do it,’" Epperson said. "So that’s not happening anymore. But at the time, we were just kind of following the algorithm."

Shmoys suggested that Citi Bike could take more aggressive steps, such as revoking the memberships of users suspected of manipulating the system. 

An alternate response could include reconfiguring the current algorithm to cut down on similar tendencies. 

FOX5 reached out to Lyft for comment and will provide their response as soon as it’s made available.