- PBOT
- PBOT Director Leah Treat
Leah Treat, Portland’s transportation director, is concerned something’s been lost lately in discussion of a bike share system here.
With yet another delay seeming more likely every day, and sponsorship negotiations going hot and heavy behind the scenes, Portland Bureau of Transportation staff say the benefits of our incoming bike share system have been obscured by coverage of the broader implementation process.
So Treat called the Mercury this morning to make the case afresh. And I’ll get right into it, after this tiny bit of process coverage.
While we’ve known for months the city has considered fronting some of the $5.5 million in sponsorship cash it’s seeking, Treat revealed that PBOT’s now sort of counting on that.
“In our financial plan, we have made the assumption that we might need to cover the costs of a sponsorship being laid out over several years,” Treat said. “It still hasn’t been finalized or negotiated.”
Still, the assumption is significant. Negotiations with a title sponsor (rumored to be health care provider Kaiser Permanente) have no doubt progressed since last August, when Willamette Week first turned up the possibility public funds will be used. Treat should have a much better idea of where things stand. Any public money used on the 750-bike system would be paid back, as sponsorship money flowed incrementally in over a number of years, and the arrangement would have to be approved by the Portland City Council.
Treat also mentioned we shouldn’t expect news on the system any time soon. She’s getting ready travel out of town and negotiations are ongoing.
“It could be a while,” she said.
Treat, tapped to helm PBOT last summer, made a case that the system isn’t just something Portland’s implementing because of “peer pressure,” as the Oregonian recently suggested.
The program will be a boon to both business and commuters in the downtown core, she said, and lunch hour trips workers wouldn’t make by foot or transit will be accessible and easy with the system’s clunky, tank-like fleet. The PBOT director is a daily bicycle commuter, but said she’ll use bike share to complete midday errands rather than her bike. She thinks other Portlanders will do the same.
As to commerce, “cyclists in general shop locally and shop often, and cyclists talk amongst themselves about bike-friendly businesses,” Treat said. “It will generate buzz.”
And she pointed out the system should be popular with tourists, though some Portland bike rental businesses fear exactly that. Bike share’s also often seen as a boon for other public transit because it can act as a “last mile connector,” whisking people from their bus stop to their homes or jobs.
Portland initially announced bike share would hit the streets in spring 2013, but had supposed companies bidding to set up the Portland system would come with sponsors in tow. They didn’t, and Alta had just begun fundraising in spring 2013, according to Vice President Mia Birk. Sponsorship money has been tricky to come by.
PBOT currently projects it could have a system in place by this spring, but even that seems optimistic. Staffers estimate it will take six months to set the program up once we have the money.
One heartening factor: Treat’s got plenty of experience with bike share. While working in Chicago, she awarded a contract for the city’s 4,000-bike Divvy Bikes system (to Alta Bicycle Share, the Portland company that’s also been tapped to do the job here). And she dealt with Capital Bikeshare while working for Washington, DC’s transportation department. But both systems relied on federal funds to get up and running. Portland has only tapped $1.8 million in federal money, a fraction of the estimated $14.6 million needed to purchase the system and run it for five years.
“The way Portland is doing the bike share system is a 180-degree turn from the way Chicago did it,” Treat said. “It was much simpler and easier to roll out.
“Like I mentioned before, these deals are complicated and they take excessive due diligence. It’s not as simple as just ramping up a program.”
So, “it all pays for itself” has turned into us spending $5.5 million we’ll never see again. And since this is Portland, that $5.5 million will turn out to be $8 million.
“In our financial plan, we have made the assumption that we might need to cover the costs of a sponsorship being laid out over several years,” Treat said. “It still hasn’t been finalized or negotiated.”
So that application for federal funds for the expansion contained a bald face lie that sponsorship funds were secure and available now? No mention of city funds covering and then recouping funds from sponsorships if and when they come in the application that I could see.
Kind of also goes against the general PR for this thing all along that none of this funding is coming from city coffers:
http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…
1) Bike share is a tremendously stupid idea. It addresses a need that, to the extent it actually exists, is already served by companies who will be put out of business by bike share.
2) For this “last mile” garbage, I’d like to see a graph of the portions of the City of Portland where anyone has to walk a mile from their address to the nearest Tri-met stop.
I guess that’s another point – how does a successful bike share program not exacerbate TriMet’s whole “less riders/higher fares” death spiral?
That’s going to be interesting to see, CC. I posed the same question in a piece in the Oregonian back in 2012. At least one study suggests bike share can eat in to ridership.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
I would think Kaiser Permanente could come up with better advertising than this doomed-to-fail venture.
Bikedoggle.
Sorry, maybe I’m dumb –but can anyone explain this “last mile” concept to me?
I get off the Max and grab one of these things and ride it the “last mile” home…
Then what? I throw it away?
“Portland initially announced bike share would hit the streets in Spring 2013, but Alta’s had unforeseen trouble corralling sponsorship money.”
I’m pretty sure that Alta didn’t even start fundraising until the Spring of 2013, and raising this much money takes a ton of time–the naming rights for the Rose Garden (Moda Center) took 15 years to sell. I’m pretty sure that 9 months of trying to secure sponsors for this a multi-million dollar investment isn’t “trouble.”
Bike sharing is designed to solve a series of transit issues. In cities, it has become a solution for the “first mile, last mile problem” by helping commuters travel the short distance between their homes or offices and public transportation.
Re: Last Mile
So once I get home, I should hang onto the bike and use it the next time I go to work? Wouldn’t I be running up a large tab by keeping it overnight –or over the weekend?
I’m not trying to be petulant here –I’d really like to know, because this talking point doesn’t make sense to me.
Yet it seems to make perfect sense to a whole lot of smart people, and I’d love it if one of them could explain it to me.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to having a flexible way to get around downtown. Some things I can do on foot downtown, but some are just a little too far to walk, and the bus network doesn’t quite work for them.
I think bike share downtown will let me ride the bus there more often – right now I always ride my own bike instead.
Considering the fact that DCs Bikeshare program (run by Alta) is in the black and considering the insane amount of subsidies we give to motor vehicles (which has many negative consequences), I think Portland should embrace and fully fund bike share as a one more better alternative in our list transportation options.
If people are truly concerned about transportation subsidies then they should first target their wrath at costly, deadly automobile subsidies which are in several orders of magnitude higher than modest, efficient and clean bike share.
Euphonius: It wouldn’t literally take you to your home, but ideally there would be a docking station somewhere very near your home. Depending on where you live, that probably won’t be the case early on, when most stations are anticipated in and around the Center City. But the city has promised to make bike share an equitable affair as it grows, so the expectation is that stations will crop up in some of the less-tony neighborhoods farther from downtown. That should be the goal, at least.
The city’s already applied for grant money from the state to start an expansion (though there is some speculation PBOT might have been less than honest about it’s sponsorship arrangement when applying, as Baby Gorilla has pointed out).
So, the “last mile” solution for now is that when I get home on the bike, I throw it in the back of my gas guzzler, drive it to a docking station, and drive home. Sounds reasonable.
Tourists won’t put these on the front of buses, taking the two precious spaces that bike/bus commuters need, will they? No? That’s a relief.
Aren’t the docking stations located at bus stops? “Last mile” only makes sense if the docking station is closer to my house than the Trimet stop is.
And Portland must have 10,000 bus stops! So doesn’t it seem that the only way “last mile” is any practical help for commuters is if there are more docking stations than bus stops?
Ah, more tax dollars spent by the entire Portland Metro region to benefit the few close-in and tourists.
Kinda like streetcars and the tram.
Euponius, no goddamnit! You ride it the “last mile” then once you get home you don a kilt and pick up a pair of bagpipes and cruise around your neighborhood! Do I have to explain everything to you people? Midwest Vandy: “Ideally there would be a “docking station” somewhere very near your home”…bahahhaaha..I can see meth heads and low life thieves with their eyes sparkling at this veritable bounty!
Poor jokes aside this is stupid and will not be a success at least not in the way some of you hope. Assuming it ever actually gets implemented. There are FAR better things to spend city money on. Try improving roads in SE Portland. I don’t even live there but it’s a joke. Just stop with some of this silliness
“The PBOT director is a daily bicycle commuter, but said she’ll use bike share to complete midday errands rather than her bike.”
This is complete and utter bullshit. Dirk, do you mind being completely lied to, or is it on a case by case basis?
Problem with this is that the Bike People already have bikes, and either very expensive ones or junky fixies, and they don’t need it.
MichelleP might have a point – someone who needs to run an errand in another part of downtown too far to get to walking during a work break. I don’t know if it can support the project, though.
One OTHER use for a bikeshare is in areas outside the central city – MAX stop to workplace. But those areas are outside the “cool zone” of downtown, the Pearl, and inner NE/SE, so they won’t fly with bikeys or a City Council that think Portland stops at Interstate or 60th Avenue.
One million for sidewalks in Outer SE Portland and 4 million for bike share in the Pearl and on Hawthorne. Oh, such equity, Ms. Treat.