Citi Bike's Better Angels

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Ethan Brooks

Published December 11, 2018 at 4:22 PM EST

Bike-share companies have a problem: how to make sure that there are always enough bikes at their stations for people to use. Some companies truck bikes back and forth across the city, others pay valets or use pedicabs. In New York, Citi Bike decided to use competition. It created a game, in which so-called "Bike Angels" pedal bikes to open stations around the city for points and prizes. Today on The Indicator, how the company used ideas from behavioral economics to solve one of its most thorny problems.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith

Ethan Brooks