Seattle's bikeshare found itself in a negative feedback loop of low ridership, lean revenue, and limited facilities.
[Updated March 1, 2017] Bikeshare programs went from novelty to ubiquitous in the last decade. Even small cities like Rapid City, South Dakota and Clarksville, Tennessee now have their own programs. But somehow Seattle, one of the country's denser, more active-transit-friendly cities, saw its bike share program die. "Pronto! isn’t the first bike share system to cease operations, but it might be the most prominent non-pilot program to shut down," Andrew Small writes for CityLab.
Small's article conducts an autopsy of the Seattle's Pronto! program and finds a number of causes of failure. One was a lack of density of stations, which made the system impractical for many who did not live or commute to places close to Pronto! stations. Another is the city's helmet laws, which made spontaneous rides less easy to achieve. There was also a lack of funding. Small argues that membership was expected to fund too much of the program. Small points to problems with the amount of government funding and the difficulty of getting corporate funding after the program failed to meet its membership goals.
[The story has been updated to correct the location of Rapid City.]
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