NYC bike-loan program seeks bailout program from bailed-out bank. You can’t make this stuff up — and in the Bailout Age, you don’t even need to:
The city’s stalled bike-sharing program is asking for financial help even before it begins, The Post has learned.
Alta, the company that was supposed to have put 10,000 bicycles on the street starting today, has asked the lead sponsor to accelerate payments of $3.5 million in case the program is delayed until next spring and runs out of cash, sources said.
“They want the money earlier than they would’ve gotten it,” one source said.
The sponsor, Citibank, is considering the request, a source said.
The problem is with their software. Although if it’s an instant inventory management bug as I suspect, then it’s the kind of problem Amazon and many others solved on an international scale more than a decade ago. Hell, my grandfather solved it on a local scale back in the ’70s.
So they can’t keep track of 10,000 bikes that don’t exist yet. Yes, by all means, give them more money sooner.
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