New York pedestrians just won a six-month reprieve from City Hall’s latest bicycle boondoggle.
After weeks of secrecy — and a flatly disingenuous denial of a Post story reporting ongoing problems — Mayor Bloomberg has suspended his bike-sharing program.
So-called software problems, he admitted, have forced a delay of the program’s rollout, originally set for last month, to next March — at the earliest.
Which should prompt a sigh of relief from pedestrians gearing up to dodge even more kamizake cyclists.
All of which should be leaving Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan more than a little red in the face. (Not that either is capable of embarrassment.)
Now, it’s not as if any of this should have come as a surprise: Alta Bicycle Share, which was selected to run the program, has been having similar problems elsewhere.
Just this week, in fact, Chicago delayed the opening of its Alta bike-sharing program until next year, as well.
Bloomberg and Sadik-Khan had the chance to run a test of their program last spring but declined — citing the company’s superb track record.
But as The Post’s Jennifer Fermino reports, glitches in Chattanooga — which uses the same software planned for New York and which also launched months later than expected — are creating myriad headaches.
Some kiosks won’t accept a credit card; others give out the wrong code to unlock a bike. As one tester said: “They’ve yet to figure out a way to make it idiot-proof.”
And that city’s program involves only 30 bike-sharing stations; New York’s is to have 420 to start, dispensing 7,000 bikes, and is supposed to grow to 600 stations with 10,000 bikes by next summer.
Bloomberg, for his part, vows not to actually start the program “until it works.”
Mighty big of him.