Red-faced city officials finally admitted yesterday that the ambitious bike-share program won’t begin until next spring — an about-face from earlier denials that the program was just behind schedule.
Mayor Bloomberg blamed the holdup on software troubles, saying the extra time will help Alta Bicycle Share work out the bugs.
“The software doesn’t work. Duh,” the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show. “We’re not going to put it out until it does work.”
The Post first reported last month that the share program might not be ready this year, putting in jeopardy one of the mayor’s signature transportation initiatives.
A Department of Transportation spokesman claimed at the time that the report was “inaccurate.”
Now officials say it won’t be until next March that they roll out 7,000 bikes in 420 stations.
“Hopefully, the software will work by then,” Bloomberg said.
Eventually, the number of bikes will swell to 10,000 at 600 stations in Manhattan, Long Island City and parts of northern Brooklyn.
Alison Cohen, Alta’s president, yesterday said she was disappointed the program wasn’t finished on time.
She told The Post that the system currently was “not performing to the standards that we need for New York City.”
“We knew that to launch the largest solar bike-sharing system in the world . . . was going to be tough,” she said.
Alta has struggled to get off the ground in other cities as well, including Chicago, San Francisco and Chattanooga, Tenn.
Officials in Chicago and San Francisco have blamed their delays on bureaucracy, while Chattanooga has been mired in software glitches since opening last month.
Meanwhile, Boston and Washington — two cities with successful bike-share programs run by Alta — operate under a different software program than the one due to be used in New York.
Despite that, the DOT had a chance to run an earlier test of Alta’s operations but chose not to, claiming the firm had a superb track record.
Bloomberg revealed that the city reconsidered the test, which he described as a “partial launch,” but ultimately decided that the onset of winter would interfere with its plans.
He pointed out that the taxpayers won’t lose a cent because the bikes are being privately funded by Citibank, which, he said, “couldn’t have been more helpful” in agreeing to the delay.
Although the city isn’t on the hook for any of the funding of the program, it will get a split of any profits, according to Alta’s contract.
