Will City of Seattle bail out Pronto bike share program?
Feb 1, 2016, 10:17 PM | Updated: May 7, 2016, 10:18 pm
Seattle’s bike rental program, known as Pronto, is apparently broke and it will disappear without more than a million dollars from the city.
The question is why — in bike-loving Seattle — is a bike-sharing program not working?
Very few people are riding the green Pronto bikes, and according to the city, the program will run out of money soon.
Related: Pronto data proves users prefer sunshine, downhill rides
Mayor Ed Murray allocated $5 million in his budget to save the program, but the City Council put that plan on hold once it realized that no one was renting the bikes to make the program worthwhile.
The City Council will be asked this week to spend $1.4 million on the program just to keep it afloat.
Pronto advocates, like Nicole Freedman, still believe the program can be successful but only if the city bails it out and expands it.
“Right now, the system is primarily downtown, but most people need to get either to downtown or from downtown,” she told KIRO 7. “But right now, you can only get within downtown. Expanding that increases the destination combinations and that’s actually going to be exponential.”
Currently, there are only 50 stations in Seattle. Freedman wants 250 stations.
“Bike share is tremendously successful,” she said. “It’s a new day, new era. There are 500 systems worldwide.”
The reality might be that Seattle is too hilly and rainy for a program like Pronto to be successful.
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The cities that advocates say prove bike sharing can work, places like Washington D.C., are flat, and nothing like Seattle geographically.
According to The Seattle Times, the numbers for the program are abysmal. There were less than 143,000 rides on Pronto bikes last year, less than 400 a day. Each bike was checked-out less than one time a day.
Each station made about $30 a day.
The city also asked the federal government for a $10 million grant to expand the system, but it was denied.
So, will the City Council bail out the underused system? We will find out on Tuesday.
Alaska Airlines, sponsors of the bikes, issued a statement on Monday: “We see a lot of value in the Pronto Bike Share program and look forward to learning how the city plans to build out the program.”
“Alaska stands behind the Pronto Bike Share program, but we feel the City of Seattle needs to act in the best interests of the citizens of Seattle, whatever that may be.”
