Sounds like a great private business venture! Unfortunately, it probably is not profitable and thus no person or company is willing to throw their money away.

But why do we need private businesses when we can just have the government run it and tax the non-users for the service.

No wonder why successful businesses run away from Ptown and we have a 12%+ unemployment rate.

i am really grateful that clear channel didn't win the bid. Sure their money is still green, but any company that sues our city to get more rights of expression than individuals needs to get put down, not just insulted.

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_…

The Paris Velibe project lost 15% of the bikes the first year. In Portland, that would translate to roughly $340,000 (or 99 of the $3450 bikes). It would be easier to justify revisiting the yellow bike project for this kind of throwaway. This is bike wonk resume fodder and nothing more.

We seemed to have zero fucking problem as a city to shovel millions of public dollars into a project that benefits only two niche parties:

A. Merritt Paulson and
B. soccer fans

But now we have a project that stands to benefit a much wider audience on a DAILY basis, and the well is dry. Say what you will about this project (indeed I haven't seen the fine print on it myself) but it seems like it would have much more benefit to the people of Portland than making PGE park look pretty on TV for MLS.