This morning the New York City Department of Transportation issued its long awaited Request for Proposal for a mega bike-sharing system. The request asks for bike-share operators to use the New York Planning Commission feasibility study, Bike-share Opportunities in New York City, as a guide to plan a program. The study suggests that the system start with 10,000 bikes and 600 stations. It should be multi-borough, but begin in the Manhattan Central Business District and expand into other boroughs of the City.Although the request only calls for a five year initial contract, the system could grow to rival the size of the Hangzhou, China's Public Bicycle Service mega system of 50,000 bikes (see The Bike-sharing Blog July 2009 for more info). If all goes well without any flat tires or broken spokes in negotiations, we could be using one of the great bike-share systems in one of the greatest cities of the world by maybe this time next year.
