The Tampa Bay Times is drawing attention to a possible hang-up for bike share aspirations in St. Pete: Seattle’s program is saddled with debt. That’s a scary prospect, indeed.
But the article is, at best, making a mountain out of a molehill and, at worst, entirely irrelevant.
Let’s first look at the mountain-out-of-a-molehill scenario. Seattle, huh? Short of Hawaii or Alaska, you can’t get any farther from the Sunshine City than that. What about Tampa where the program is a great success?
“While success stories for bike share abound, providing council members evidence to move forward, Seattle’s road to bike share can be used by skeptics to apply the brakes,” the Times piece reads.
Let’s translate that. There are lots of success stories, but let’s look at just this one. The article says skeptics “can” use the Seattle example to apply the brakes not that they could or might.
The article explains that the company contracted to run the bike share program in Seattle, and that owns the infrastructure, became insolvent. But if the city discontinues the program, it would be on the hook for $1 million in federal grants.
Here’s where the mountain becomes irrelevant: St. Pete is not relying on federal grants. The program would be funded in a three-way split among parking fees, transportation impact fees and BP oil spill settlement money to the tune of $500,000 each.
Further, the city would own the infrastructure. The only outside influence would come by way of a company managing the program.
The Times article glosses over that when ending its story with a quote from Holly Houser, the former executive director of Pronto, the company facilitating Seattle’s bike share program.
“It makes all the sense in the world for the city to own and operate the bike-share system,” Houser told The Seattle Times. “The only reason the nonprofit was formed 3½ years ago was because the city wasn’t interested in owning and launching bike share at the time, and now that’s changed.”
If anything, that last quote could be used as an argument FOR bike share in St. Pete. It could be a “learning from another city’s mistakes” sort of thing.
It’s unfair to claim, entirely, that St. Pete City Council should ignore potential financial risks associated with launching bike share. Indeed, it’s a costly venture using city funds that arguably could be spent elsewhere.
It’s equally unfair to claim that a bike share snafu across the country based on a model entirely different than the one St Pete is planning is cause for pause.
Officials need only look across the Bay for evidence that bike share could work in St Pete. The model in St Pete is mirrored on Tampa’s program. That program has been a success. As of last summer, the Coast Bike Share system had reached 10,000 members, a number impressive enough to prompt a planned expansion.
St. Pete, perhaps, has an even better opportunity for bike share success. Its downtown model is light years ahead of Tampa’s in offering a robust array of activities for locals and tourists alike including restaurants, bars, breweries, a movie theater, night clubs, theaters, and a giant system of waterfront parks to explore.
