New York City is introducing Citi Bike in order to provide New Yorkers with an additional transportation option for getting around their city.

A bike sharing system consists of a fleet of specially designed, heavy-duty, very durable bikes that are locked into a network of docking stations sited at regular intervals around a city. The bikes can be rented from and then returned to any station in the system, creating an efficient network with many possible points and combinations of departure and arrival.

Citi Bike, the name of New York City’s bike sharing system, will be among the first bicycle sharing systems and the largest system in the United States. Scheduled for launched in Summer 2012, Citi Bike will have 10,000 bikes in 600 stations that will be available for use 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The station network will provide 20,000 docking points, assuring that an available dock to return a CitiBike is always nearby.

Citi Bike will be operated by NYC Bike Share LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alta Bicycle Share. Alta is a unique company focused solely on operating large-scale bike share systems. The equipment will be provided by Public Bike System Company (PBSC), who created the first solar-powered bike share system in the world, and has close to 20,000 bikes on the street globally.