There’s no such thing as free parking in New York.
NYC Bike Share, a subsidiary of the Portland, Ore.-based program that runs New York’s Citi Bike program, is getting a $1 million parking ticket from the city for using parking spots for some of the program’s 330 docking stations. According to the Wall Street Journal, a provision in the contract requires that the company pay for the revenue the city is missing out on by taking up those spaces.
The city says it lost about $1 million in revenue in 2013.
NYC Bike Share has been in talks with the city’s transportation officials to remove the clause from the contract.
Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the parking provision, which was negotiated during the Bloomberg administration, is an unusual inclusion in a bike share contract.
“This is highly unusual in the bike-sharing world and I’m not aware of other municipalities doing this,” Paul DeMaio, a consultant in Washington, D.C. and who oversees a portion of the area’s a Capital Bikeshare, told the Wall Street Journal. [WSJ] — Claire Moses