Photo by Jacques Arsenault

Capital Bikeshare is still looking for its first 10,000-rider day, but it’s been getting awfully close in the past few days. And yesterday—a Tuesday, of all days—the communal cycling system enjoyed its biggest single-day ridership ever with 9,857.

Of course, yesterday featured a confluence of reasons to hope on one of those red, lumbering rental bikes. Not only was it a picturesque day outside, with a high temperature in the low 80s and very mild humidity, the Yoshino cherry trees around the National Mall and Tidal Basin hit their peak bloom.

But it was still a weekday, which usually means that most rides were taken by monthly or annual members. The analysts at Arlington’s Mobility Lab crunched the numbers, and tell DCist that only 2,140 rides, or about 22 percent, were by people who purchased one- or three-day memberships.

Perhaps thats why National Mall dock-blocking wasn’t much of an issue yesterday, as it can sometimes be when tourists swarm to admire D.C.’s cherry tree crop on a weekend. Bikes flowed freely throughout the day, with Mobility Lab reporting that Bikeshare stations were full for just 6.46 percent of the time and completely empty 7.74 percent of the time. Peak ridership came at 6:02 p.m., right in the middle of evening rush hour, when 502 people were on Bikeshare.

The split between regular and one-off Bikeshare members was a lot more balanced last weekend, when the system also saw some of its biggest days in its two-and-half-year history. It registered 9,257 rides on Saturday, and another 9,831 on Sunday, with both days showing a bit more than 40 percent “casual” (one- and three-day) users.

But the cherry blossoms only just entered peak bloom yesterday, and it is forecasted to be quite nice again this coming weekend, the final weekend of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Perhaps that 10,000-ride day will happen quite soon.