"May've been mislead" You mean "deliberately lied to" and "commuted fraud."

Millions of dollars just thrown the fuck away. God. This just get's better and better.

Is it possible that membership dipped in January because it's winter and shitty and rainy out? Even hardened bicyclists will take the bus on rainy days... What is the liklihood that membership will pick up again now that it's spring? Any stats from other city bikeshare programs?

I'm not pro or con Pronto, except that more people on bikes = better, and that any transit service (roads, buses, rail, bikeshare, sidewalks) has to be subsidized.

I'm definitely con lying though. Lamesauce.

@1 "Commuted fraud." Please say that was intentional.

Nobody uses Pronto - most of us already knew that.

I use Pronto to get to and from work every day. There is no other transportation option that's even close to being as fast for my daily commute.

Imagine!

I suspect the reason for the tight lips is that they don't know who to blame. I work for an agency not unlike SDOT, and it's surprisingly easy to come up with bad data. This could be on a staffer, or this could be intentional manipulation.

@2 no, annual membership is not a seasonal figure.

@6: There is no other transportation option that's even close to being as fast for my daily commute.

Yes there is, just buy a faster bike.

Ansel, you may like to eat the bullshit that Pronto offers up, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are so willingly deceived.

If 3,000 is counting 2015 annual memberships for a service that launched in October 2014, it probably means they had a peak of 3,000 during some point of 2015 and they've had enough non-renews to have lost 35% or so from that peak.

Maybe you can rationalize it as people delaying their renewal until after fall/winter passes, but it's equally as likely that a lot of people found the hassle of the 30-min system, hefty bikes, and the tally of how many times they've actually used it unappealing to the point of not being worth an $85 annual membership. In the data challenge, they kept the data at a "trip" level and didn't take it down to the "per user" level where one might observe something like "over half the annual members used Pronto less than a half dozen times". A competent city council would have had their financial guys explore usage, particularly when being fed suggestions in the presentation that expansion to double the bikes was going to go with having 10,000 annual members.

People should be fired for this but they won't be.

Seattle's inept flailing and wasteful attempts to be recognized as a "world class city" are hilarious.

The city could have bought or given a Pronto bike to each of those members for their use or the amount of money they had spent.

Why are we not supporting bike ownership? We are a bike town with great bike advocacy....and we should improve the infrastructure for the people that own bikes, not for the occasional sing songy biker to engage in it's cutesy tourist appeal. We work too much on making it nice for the tourist, how about making it work for the people that live here....and go to the Bikeworks web page(Columbia City) they give bikes to kids and teach/train them to care for their own bikes!...or go to your neighborhood bike store and support them!

@ChefJoe I think you are vastly overrating the ability of agencies - in every city everywhere - to work together. There is stone cold zero chance that a "financial guy" would be invited to explore Pronto or any other agencies data; or even allowed in the building unsupervised. EVER.

And yet when this news initially broke on Slog folks had high hopes for the city taking over the program. Grumble grumble my hard earned taxes on this?

@15 Pronto was sold as being not just for tourists, that residents would use it to get around town for short errands, meetings, lunch, etc. I didn't buy it then and don't now, but that was what they were selling.

Didn't renew; nothing to do with the weather!