You’ve never been to NYC, clearly. But let’s consider a few facts. First, it’s the most desirable place to live in America. We can tell this by looking at the real estate market wherein people are willing to pay such high prices that 70 story apartment buildings are constructed and all new supply is absorbed instantly.
This means that there is enormous population density. So many people wanting to live in a small area produces that outcome by definition. What this means first and foremost is that when those people want to move around their environment, having them all do it in private automobiles is a really shitty idea. If I have to explain to you just exactly why that is such an incredibly stupid idea, then it’s really not going to be worth talking to you because you are just beneath reason, and it would be like trying to explain something to a shellfish.
Therefore transportation becomes a utility function. There are huge investments required not only financially but in a variety of land use decisions that exceed by a great margin what a private company can provide. The MTA tunnels under your building, builds bus stops and subway entrances on the sidewalks in front of your building, and commits hundreds of other indelicacies including having its own police force, all in the name of moving people around the city in an efficient and cost effective manner. If you think a private company could do that, you are just wrong, and do not know the history of the matter. It’s a utility function, with privileges allocated to it by the government, and responsibilities incumbent upon it.
Now let’s turn to the bike share program, which is a relatively tiny parallel to the other quasi-governmental transit options. As a brand new entity, the bike share program had to make a lot of assumptions about how much to charge, how many people would use it, and how much it would cost to run the project. Certainly it needed to be a government sponsored enterprise, because a private company could not have gotten the sidewalk space allocated for the rental racks.
As the program worked out, it’s exceeded the imaginings of it’s greatest supporters, not to mention the skeptical idiots like the fat-ass ginger twat who wrote this article.
There have been parts of the program that have been more expensive, however. One is that because it’s been so wildly oversubscribed as a commuter tool in the mornings, that the bikes have to be moved back to their starting stations manually. The heavier than expected rates of usage have also meant that there have been higher maintenance costs than were anticipated. Also some of the technology worked poorly. Some of the racks wouldn’t accept the bicycle wheels, or would say there was no bike present when there was one there. It’s a new project, and there have been setbacks operationally, but demand is not one of them.
So, what would you do if you had a product that at its current price point was wildly oversubscribed, but not operationally profitable. Well, you would raise the price, and expand the service. That’s what they are doing, and while it may piss of General Motors and the sad-sack George Washington impersonator driving a muscle car in the picture at the top of the thread, no one in NYC is going to be using one of those things to go to the grocery store, ever.
Some areas will rent bikes or even, on rare and happy occasions, loan them courtesy of a local merchant or tourism group. Generally, they are a distinctive bright red color so, if stolen, would be quite noticeable. Of course, it is Japan, so theft is rare and the program works far more economically than what is described for New York City.
Other than your unnecessary use of profanity, I agree with your position. Bike sharing is a good idea for densely populated markets. Even those who never use it will benefit from less traffic congestion.
I think the role of government should be to put regulations in place to allow bike sharing businesses to compete and flourish. This could take the form of tax incentives, traffic laws, bike lanes (yes, paid for with tax dollars), and standardization (like your example of bike racks). Apparently this is at least being run as a for-profit business rather than just another government boondoggle.
Some of us may have difficulty not being bitter over the bailout connection. A successful idea here and there does not justify the theft of our tax dollars.
As you said, a government role in this project is inevitable. Allowing businesses to compete for a piece of the profit center would be the most conservative approach, in my opinion.
Conservatives are not anathema to the use of fossil fuel to generate wealth (by converting fuel to energy to work), but we are also not automatically opposed to innovation just because fossil fuel is not consumed and additional smog is not produced.