With its snow plan in place, Citi Bike is ensuring that New Yorkers can ride bikes pretty much all year round. In the city that never sleeps, could we expect anything less from our bike share program?

Citi Bike’s decision to stay open year round preserves a much-needed mobility choice for New Yorkers, which seems to be bucking conventional wisdom of a drop off in ridership from warm to cooler seasons. Citi Bike ridership increased by 5 percent from the end of summer and into fall.

While some North American bike share programs, including Nice Ride Minnesota, Bixi Montreal and Madison B-Cycle, cease operations in the winter, other systems are open year-round. TSTC looked at Boston’s Hubway, which is piloting its first winter operations (but only in Cambridge) this year, and Bixi Toronto, which has been operating year-round since its first year, to see how these systems will deal with inclement weather.

Cambridge is the only one of four municipalities where Hubway operates that will remain open this winter. Because most of Cambridge’s docking stations are off-street, it is easier to avoid snow plow damage, according to City Transportation Program Manager, Bill Deignan. Working closely with the City’s Departments of Public Works and Traffic, Parking & Transportation, the system’s operator, Alta Bike Share, is taking responsibility for snow removal around all stations, access to sidewalks and streets, and will remove bikes before big storms if needed. In anticipation of snow that could be plowed up against docking stations that are close to the curb, Alta will install bollard covers to protect the station from getting buried. Snow removal contractors are also on standby for more severe storms.

Bixi Toronto made sure the city and vendor had a plan in place to deal with wintry conditions, and has successfully operated through two winters. DNA reports that even through their heaviest snowfall last winter, “there were no problems of note,” according to Daniel Egan, the manager of the Cycling Infrastructure and Programs in Toronto’s Transportation Department. To deal with winter conditions, Bixi Toronto removes some stations that are located on-street to protect them from snow plows, and crews visit 20 to 30 stations a day to keep up on repairs.

Rolling into its first winter season, Citi Bike’s plan, like Cambridge and Toronto, is to “embrace the cold” and combat winter storms:

• Citi Bike will relocate bikes from on-street docking stations to off-street stations when heavy winter storms hit
• Citi Bike workers are responsible for removing snow from stations and bikes
• If conditions are severe, stations will be temporarily locked down and restored as quickly as possible
• Flags will be installed on docking stations to make them more visible

By learning from what works and doesn’t work in other bike share systems’ plans — and by providing some incentives for riders — Citi Bike’s oath may as well follow the inscription on the iconic James Farley Post Office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these bicycles from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”