For years now the city of New York has been slowly moving forward with a plan to start a bike-share program similar to those seen in European cities like Paris and Barcelona. But we guess nobody bothered to tell the New York Post, because today Murdoch's minions editorialize about it as if their story on Sunday was the first time the idea had ever been mentioned.
Further, the Post paints a picture of the bike-share program—which is expected to start on a small scale this summer and expand to 10,000 bikes in 2012—as a money-suck for the city. Which is odd since one of the most crucial aspects of the Request For Proposals put out by the DOT was that whatever private company launches the program it has to "bear all the cost and responsibilities for the system during an initial five-year period while sharing revenues with the city, and with no taxpayer funds being used for the system’s implementation, upkeep or maintenance."
The paper also bitches that the city isn't offering up enough information about the program even though the winning bidder has not been selected yet! Specifically they are concerned that the "remarkable project is going forward with scant input from the general public." Strange, since in the Post article that the paper is now editorializing about the author quotes the DOT's spokesman saying "there will be extensive community consultation and dialog about locations before any choices are made." How could the DOT consult with communities about the location of the 30 bike-share racks the city hopes to install this summer when they don't even know who is going to be installing them?
Which isn't to say that there aren't lots of good and reasonable questions to ask about a bike-share program in New York City! Like, how exactly will a private company be able to make this work and still be affordable? Fast Company yesterday took a look at how such a system can be profitable and offered up some legitimate evidence from other cities, like Washington D.C., that a completely private system can be very difficult, if not impossible, to make work. One thing in our favor though is the fact that, despite the city's street-furniture deal with CEMUSA, the winner will be able to sell advertising on both the system's bikes and racks.
And while we are on the topic, we'd really like to see the winning bidder make it less tricky to rent a bike-share bike for just one day, something which other cities' programs have tried to various degrees. But such a move would leave the bike-shares to the people who live and work in the city, help keep the city's existing bike rental programs from danger and would help keep cycling tourists, already wary of riding in the big city, to the areas they already frequent, like Central Park, while leaving the city's ticket-infested bike lanes for the rest of us.
