Bay Area Bike Share

It looks like New York City is days away from announcing a deal in which REQX Ventures, an affiliate of the Related Companies and its Equinox unit, will buy out Alta Bicycle Share, the company that operates Citi Bike and Bay Area Bike Share. The implications are big -- not just for bike-share in New York, but for several other major American cities as well.

Despite continually growing ridership, Alta Bicycle Share-operated bike-share systems across America will probably not be adding bikes or docks this year. The bankruptcy of Montreal-based Public Bike Share Company, known as Bixi, which developed and manufactured the equipment that Alta's systems use, has disrupted the supply chain that numerous cities were pinning their expansion plans on.

The expansion of Bay Area Bike Share into the Mission, the Castro, Hayes Valley, and Mission Bay planned for early this year won't happen until fall at the soonest, due to the recent bankruptcy of Bixi, the company that supplies hardware and software for several American bike-share systems.

The SF County Transportation Authority issued a new report Monday to guide the expansion of Bay Area Bike Share, which sees 90 percent of its rides in San Francisco, despite the city encompassing half of the system's bikes and stations.

Major media have a habit of blowing bike-share problems out of proportion. Witness the 2009 BBC story that cast theft and vandalism as an existential threat to Velib in Paris. Five years later, Velib is still going strong. The most recent entry in the genre is Christopher Matthews' misguided story on the Bixi bankruptcy in TIME. Headline: "Why America’s Grand Bike-Sharing Experiment Is Failing."

The Montreal-based equipment supplier for several American bike-share systems, including New York's Citi Bike and Chicago's Divvy, filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday. It's unclear exactly how the restructuring or sale of the company known as Bixi will play out, but the bankruptcy filing could accelerate the transition to more robust and reliable hardware and software. It also figures to be a messy process, though the company that operates Citi Bike expressed confidence today that it won't impede their service.

Following an underwhelming start, Bay Area Bike Share now sees an average of at least 2.5 trips per bike per day within San Francisco, according to the SFMTA. Since September 10, the average rate in SF has held mostly steady at about 2.7, and goes as high as 3.7.

The next 15 Bay Area Bike Share stations to be rolled out in San Francisco won't fill in the system's existing downtown footprint as originally planned -- instead, planners have decided it's time to bring the system out to neighborhoods like the Mission, the Castro, Hayes Valley, and Mission Bay sooner than expected.

Some of the first usage data is in from Bay Area Bike Share. The data is rough, but the number of trips in the first 12 days is underwhelming compared to bike-share launches in New York or Washington, DC.