I rode my first Citi Bike since the storm yesterday — mostly because I was afraid to get stuck with the bike at the other end. Across the neighborhood, docks are still mostly snowed in, despite what Lyft says is their best efforts to liberate them. (The Hudson River Park bike bath is in good shape, though some of the crosswalks are still obstructed.)

They say they have cleared more than 600 of their 2200 docks as of four days ago, and they are aiming to clear 300 stations per day. Their aim was to have the majority cleared this week. When I got to the station at the Whitney last night, it was not cleared, but riders had stomped paths to a lot of the docks.

“This has been a record-breaking storm, causing stations to get plowed over after we’ve cleared them and snow freezing into solid ice,” they said. (I get it — it took an hour to liberate car from a wall of ice last week using what was essentially an axe, even with the help of a friendly janitor from BMCC, who stopped when he saw me struggling.)

“To accelerate this work, we also augmented this workforce with contracted teams who were busy with other snow removal jobs around the city. The snow removal crews are now using pickaxes and sledgehammers to free the bikes, which is effective but takes much longer than shoveling.”

Lyft said the iced-in stations have prevented battery swapping crews from servicing bikes, which will cause ebike challenges. They said they will scale the operation to “tackle the backlog.”

“We know New Yorkers rely heavily on this system. Our profound thanks go to the Citi Bike team and additional crews that have supported efforts to shovel out our stations day in and day out. Most importantly, thank you to our riders who depend on the program for your patience and support. We will continue to provide updates on our progress.”