Seattle Bikeshare Going Public

"The City of Seattle 2016 Proposed Budget [pdf] allocates significant funding to support the expansion of the city's bike share stations and fleet, serving a much greater geographic area," reports Sarah Oberklaid. If the City Council approves the $5.1 billion proposed budget, "$5 million [would be] dedicated to fund the expansion of Pronto bike share with the potential to leverage an additional $10 million through federal grants."

The federal grants mentioned there include a "a potential $10 million Federal Transit Authority (FTA) Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant, for which the City recently submitted an application [pdf]." Oberklaid notes that the city's TIGER grant application lays out the argument in favor of expanding the city's bikeshare system, which can be summarized as more service, in a larger diversity of geographic and demographic areas, and increased use of the system.

Also noteworthy is the city's investment in the system, where some city's around the country have stopped short of investing money in bikeshare. Josh Feit reported earlier (as the second item in the article) that the city is negotiating to takeover management of the system from Motivate, as part of the $5 million investment.