clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Open thread: Will you miss Pronto?

New, 7 comments

Also, how about those electric bikes?

pronto cycle share Tony Webster/Flickr

It’s Pronto Cycle Share’s last day in our fair city. The city will be packing up the stations and green bikes for some yet-to-be-determined seller over the next couple of weeks.

The system never made it far out of the city center. They eventually expanded to the U-District, but never quite made it to the city outskirts—including many low-income neighborhoods

The program ran for nearly two and a half years, although its last year or so has been thanks to a controversial city purchase back in March 2016.

When the city axed funding for Pronto during the January budgeting process, we also lost funding for a potential system to replace Pronto: An electric bike system built by Canadian firm Bewegen.

While we have no prospects for a new bikeshare right now, staff from the Seattle Department of Transportation told KUOW this week that the city hasn’t ruled a program out for the future.

So what do you think? Are you going to miss Pronto? Do you have dreams of a better bikeshare? Do you want to revisit electric bikes someday?

Or is it a terrible idea—do we have too many hills? Is it unfeasible to put a robust, equitable, solvent bikeshare system in Seattle?

Let us know in the comments.