Citigroup pays for advertising :)
Citibike runs a small profit. They even pay NYC for the street space they use for their stations.
they are expanding as fast as operationally possible.
NYC is a perfect landscape for cycling. Mild Climate, 80% of all trips less than 3 miles, shortage of roadway space, and time is of the essence ( NY minute )
My typical routes are 1-3 miles in Manhattan midtown - the bike is faster than any other mode.
This is one of the big blind spots for critics of biking in general, and bikeshare programs in particular. We all tend to overgeneralize from our own situations. I'm sure I'm guilty of it at times as well, though I bend over backwards to recognize and correct for my bias. (That's one of the reasons I tend to write long ....) Anyhow, the suburban commuter steps into a discussion about bicycling and reflexively dismisses it as irrelevant, because it usually is irrelevant to his situation. But biking isn't mostly about getting the spandexed warrior from the outer suburbs to downtown. It's mostly about people being able to move easily around their own neighorhoods, without getting run over by suburban car addicts who are perfectly willing to destroy the liveability of city neighborhoods to shave a few minutes off their commutes.
I've worked in several different locations over the last 40 years, but because I live in a centrally located neighborhood, my longest commute was about seven miles. That location was eminently metro accessible; I drove only because, at that point in my life, I had little people at home and school dropoff and pickup responsibilities. (And because my employer paid for parking. Had I been paying, I might have chosen differently.) I rode a bike for years when my commute was under a mile and a half; biking was faster than driving, and a lot more fun. I worked downtown for a number of years and took metrorail to that. Jobs change. Life circumstances change. (Parents of young kids become chauffeurs.) Exercise options and ambitions change. A balanced transportation system that offers flexible options is a wonderful thing.
The spandexed warriors are primarily an indicator species. There really aren't enough of them to build infrastructure for them. But if we do what is appropriate to make neighborhoods A, B, and C all the way to X, Y, and Z walkable and bikeable, the long distance guys can piggyback on that. The spandexed warriors are mostly using existing neighborhood infrastructure along most of their routes. They stay off arterial roads where they can. The only additional element that planners need to provide is reasonable links among these local, neighborhood systems. Planners need to be sensitive to chokepoints and barriers; can a pedestrian or cyclist get over the bridge or across the freeway? The suburban cowboys need to understand that cyclists don't want to be on busy highways any more than motorists want them there. When you enounter them, it's usually because they're transiting a gap between bike-friendly routes on both sides.