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Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G
I'm a little confused. The article detailed the city's plan for the $18 million it had hoped to secure. That plan very clearly calls for the development of 300 stations during 2012. The funding was secured. Why would the plan change?
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The funding was NOT secured. An application had been sent in, but it was not approved until October. My only guess is that the Tribune made a mistake, or just wrote a lazily-worded article. In any event, that article comes from before Chicago had any money allocated to bikesharing, and so whatever it says cannot be taken as budgetary truth, but only the goal.
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Does corporate sponsorship mean that New York's plans warrant less skepticism?
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Not at all. It's just that New York's goals and funding plans have been widely known for a long time, whereas Chicago's sort of materialized out of the blue, at least for me. At this point, I would say Chicago's plans are
more concrete-looking than New York's, because New York is seemingly still negotiating with its sponsor.
It takes 3-4 months for Bixi to manufacture bikes and stations, ship them, and then get them installed. So if New York doesn't announce its sponsor in January it may have a hard time meeting that April goal for roll-out. Unless they decide to fork over public funding, which they could still do (and which the city of NY is almost certainly capable of doing on its own, if they must).