Just get a bike

You don't need anything super fancy just to get around town. Usually you can get something perfectly serviceable for $80-$100.  I realize that isn't nothing. But if you're going to be using it a lot then that one time price is certainly a better deal than this is.

New Orleans’ bike-sharing program is permanently dropping its prices, in the hopes of attracting new riders as city temperatures cool off this fall.

The program, called Blue Bikes, also wants to turn people who rode for free under one of its recent promotions into longterm customers.

Riders will pay 10 cents a minute or $6 an hour starting in October, down from the original roughly 13 cents a minute or $8 an hour. New riders will also pay a one-time $5 registration fee.

The prices of monthly and annual plans will stay the same. Those are $10 a month for college students, $20 a year for low-income riders and $15 a month for other riders.

It's nice to see the city invest in better bicycling awareness and infrastructure.  But  it seems sometimes like nothing is allowed to happen unless some private company is making a profit. So efforts that should go toward promoting better facilities in general get channeled into ensuring that the contractor can operate.  For example, we could just make sure it was safe for people to ride where they needed to go and park when they got there regardless of whether they paid $6 an hour to ride that day. But instead we're doing subtle things to make it more difficult to bring your own bike.  Why is that?

Because "public" transit is so 20th Century

This bike share idea has everything your worst neoliberal nightmare is made of. 

A City Hall selection committee chose Social Bicycles, or SoBi, from seven competitors, giving it high marks for its use of technology and capacity to find sponsors to fill shortcomings in its operating budget. Committee members said SoBi's proposal came closest to achieving Mayor Mitch Landrieu's main objectives: that a bike share program be accessible to low-income residents and that the city not pay a dime for its operations.

It's all there. Some babble about the great apps or whatever, an opportunity for ad marketing to #brands, and, of course, some platitudes about serving the public although we aren't asking the public to fund and operate this service business.  I'm sure it will be a tremendous success. At least in terms of padding some resumes and scoring some PR.

Also.. "SoBi" because please shoot me.