Need a bike? (They're free)

Christine Haughney has an article in The New York Times about a new city program:

The Bloomberg administration announced it had selected a Portland, Oregon company to run an ambitious bike-share program in New York City, but don’t break out the spandex cycling shorts just yet. Amid unease about exactly how the city will integrate six hundred rental stations and ten thousand bicycles into the crowded streets and sidewalks of New York, the official rollout date of the program has been pushed back until the summer of 2012.
Many other kinks and details are still to be worked out, like the pricing structure and the exact locations of the rental stations. Also missing are the requisite major sponsors to help defray the cost of the program. But when fully implemented, the program would become the largest bike-share effort in the country.
The selection of Alta Bicycle Share was announced at a news conference at a pedestrian plaza in the Flatiron district, where a sample bike station— a kiosk and a rack of sturdy, utilitarian bicycles— was on display. The bicycles were not built for speed: they have only three gears, and none of them are fast. Think Crown Victorias on two wheels.
“It’s a heavy bike. It can handle the city streets pretty well,” said Caroline Sampanaro, who works for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives and who has ridden these types of bikes in Paris and Washington. “It’s designed so even the very best bike rider can only go so fast.”
The program will encourage participants to purchase long- or short-term memberships that include an unlimited number of trips of up to 45 minutes; additional fees will apply for longer trips. A yearly membership will cost one hundred dollars or less; other pricing details have yet to be made final.
The rental stations will be situated in Manhattan, south of 79th Street, and in selected neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Alta said it was exploring options for adding stations in other areas of the city.
During Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure, New York’s streets have gradually been transformed, becoming ever more hospitable to pedestrians and bicyclists. In the last four years, the mayor’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has rolled out 250 miles of bike lanes, and the bike-share program has been seen as another central element of the administration’s vision for the city.
Private sponsorship for the program is still being sought. City officials stressed that they would not be putting any public money into the program and that it would be financed through membership fees and sponsorships.
Sadik-Khan, a tireless fund-raiser with many friends in the city’s elite business circles, has made many entreaties for the program and held a formal event for potential donors in March at the Upper East Side home of Thomas L. Kempner Jr., the chairman of the Central Park Conservancy.
Bloomberg spoke at that event, urging attendees to support bike sharing. But the mayor, who has never shown much interest in cycling himself, demurred at suggestions that the program be called Mike Bikes, in the fashion of the Boris Bikes in London, named after that city’s mayor, Boris Johnson. The mayor was absent from the bike-share news conference, though a mayoral spokesman said Bloomberg would attend future events.
Alison Cohen, president of Alta Bicycle Share, said at the news conference that she was trying to find fifty million dollars to run the program, characterizing sponsorship as “an unparalleled opportunity for instant exposure”. She added that she was looking for a maximum of four sponsors.
Sadik-Khan has worked for years to convince skeptics in and out of City Hall that bike sharing would be a positive addition to the city streets. An announcement was held up this summer after a behind-the-scenes tiff with the City Council that was resolved after the city agreed to hold public hearings and allow the Council some oversight on the program. Stiff criticism of Sadik-Khan’s programs in the press, and a high-profile legal challenge to a bike lane in Brooklyn, made it more difficult for officials to plan the rollout of another ambitious bicycle initiative. Nonetheless, the program is scheduled to move forward; Alta will conduct a limited test in the spring, employing a smaller number of stations at sites yet to be chosen.
Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said the agency would “work with communities on locations” for kiosks, “with the intent of siting them primarily on sidewalks, plazas, and other public areas.” He added that, in some neighborhoods, the city might use “locations in what are currently parking spaces.” The city has posted an interactive map on its website and invited New Yorkers to submit suggestions for where they would like bike-share stations to be placed around the city. By Wednesday afternoon, the map was filled with hundreds of recommendations, including one near City Hall, posted by the mayor himself.
The location of the rental stations has been the most contentious issue surrounding the bike-share program; in its request for proposals issued last November, the Department of Transportation required that the winning bidder not excavate streets to build its stands or allow the bikes to take up too many parking spaces. The department said contractors also had to consult with city officials on all sponsorship plans, to avoid making the bikes into rolling advertisements reminiscent of Ricky Bobby’s racecar in the film Talladega Nights. And, if the winning bidder made any money on the venture, it had to share profits with the city.
Six bidders submitted proposals in February, and city officials narrowed them down to two finalists: Alta and B-Cycle. Alta Bicycle Share runs programs in Washington and Boston, as well as in Melbourne, Australia. Its supplier of bicycles and related equipment, Public Bike System Company, provides bikes to programs in Melbourne in Australia, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto in Canada, Boston, Minneapolis, and Washington in the US, and London in the UK. B-Cycle, which is affiliated with the bicycle manufacturer Trek, has been associated with programs in Denver and Chicago.

Rico says it smacks, to him, of ten thousand bikes just waiting to be stolen (they're more trusting in Portland), but maybe he's wrong...