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Hundreds of green bicycles were introduced to the streets of Seattle on Monday morning. …
Pronto Cycle Share and the program’s initial round of 500 bicycles hit the streets thanks to a combination of public and private financing. Some of the money includes grants from King County and the City of Seattle. Corporate sponsors also make up some of the funding for the program. …
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Helmets are provided as part of the rental in cabinets at the bike stations and are returned there for cleaning and inspection before being reused, said Holly Houser, Pronto Cycle Share executive director. The Seattle program is the first in the U.S. that includes helmet use as part of the rental.
Annual memberships for the bike share program range from $85 to $125. The first half hour of usage is free and there is a charge beyond that for use of the bike.
Kudos for not letting the helmet mess derail their launch. The helmet vending machines still aren’t ready (won’t be for at least 5 months). For now, they have bins where people can take helmets and return them, on the honour system. We’ll see how well that works.
More from the Stranger:
“Seattle’s mandatory helmet law is, in all likelihood, going to make it harder for bicycle share to succeed over the long-term, or at least to recoup its startup costs, and that’s too bad. For now, Pronto is offering helmets for free in bins at each station and trusting that users will return the used ones to a separate section within the bin.”