The operator of New York City's bicycle-sharing program faces another hurdle as it tries to find a successful financial formula for the popular program—the city wants it to pay up for lost parking revenue.
A little-noticed provision of a contract with Citi Bike's operator, Alta Bicycle Share Inc., requires the company to reimburse the city for parking revenue, since some of the docking stations for the system's bikes take up former parking spots.
The city says Alta owes about $1 million in lost revenue through 2013, according to people familiar with the matter.
Alta, a Portland, Ore.-based company that runs Citi Bike through its subsidiary NYC Bike Share, has been in negotiations with New York City transportation officials and an outside investor, REQX Ventures, whose capital infusion would fuel an expansion of the program.
REQX Ventures and Alta have been seeking to remove the parking-revenue provision from the Citi Bike operator's contract with the city, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Parking revenue has emerged as a bargaining chip in the negotiations, but it is unclear whether the city would let Alta off the hook and remove the requirement in a reworked contract.
4 comments:
Alta are no better than your average scofflaw,except nobody is coming to their doors with a subpoena to answer and pay.
time to design a boot for these hideous,emergency vehicle obstruction stations and tow these things out of there.
and has anyone seen the people that ride these bikes,they are worse and reckless than any take out delivery boy or bike messenger.no vision zero surveillance for these bozos.
So they were given this parking revenue subsidy from day one. Blomberg and the rest lied stating the city lost no money on this.
CitiBike...another whimsical farce left behind by....ready...here it comes...KHAAAAAAAAAN!
I miss that.
This is some incredibly valuable real estate the bikes are taking up.
Street space shouldn't be given away. It should be rented out by the city, and not at a discount. Whatever price the market will pay.
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