Bike-share in the Bay Area will now arrive no sooner than the summer of 2013, roughly a year and a half after the original launch date, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Alta Bicycle Share, the chosen vendor, is still negotiating a contract with agencies in the five cities in which the system is planned to launch, said BAAQMD spokesperson Ralph Borrmann. Once the contract is signed, he said, the launch will come at least six to eight months later.
A bike-share station in Anaheim. Photo: ##http://www.flickr.com/photos/29300710@N08/7631129834/##LA Streetsblog/Flickr##
Few details are available on the causes of the repeated delays. The BAAQMD offered the same explanation given in July, citing the complexity of launching the 1,000-bike system in multiple cities along the Peninsula. Alta has not responded to requests for more information.
"Things are moving along," said Borrmann. "They're still working on contractual and administrative issues in dealing with a larger-scale program like this. I believe this is the only one that's going to be region-wide like this."
Alta is the dominant bike-share vendor in major North American cities, and plans to launch other systems next year in New York City, Chicago, and Portland, where it is based. The New York launch -- set to be the nation's largest -- has been delayed by software glitches, but it's unclear if those issues have affected the launch of the Bay Area's system.
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.
Two of the founders of the Bay Area's advocacy group dedicated to fare integration and rational schedules talk about a half-decade of fighting for better transit and what's likely to happen in the next five years.