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"The money would come from the contingency reserve fund, where money is mainly used for unexpected expenses."

Oh! The contingency reserve fund, where we get money we need more money, because we hadn't expected that we were going to spend money on that.

That in this case is a bicycle-sharing program, called B-Cycle, here in Madison, so it's just another project the City Council thinks it would be nice to have. It's regular old spending on a fancy (and probably terrible) supposed improvement, that in no way seems to be an "unexpected expense."
The proposal includes the installation of 35 stations and would bring 350 bikes to Madison in May.

The tentative user fees range from $10 day passes to $65 annual passes, and there is a proposed student annual price of $45.

Users would use credit or debit cards to pay for the passes.

Chicago, Denver and some European cities are among those with bike sharing systems already installed. According to [Director of Operations for B-Cycle Danielle] Dejean, in Denver the use of the rented bikes replaced 43 percent of car trips.

According to Dejean... Sorry, I don't believe it!

"Bike sharing is synonymous with world-class cities," Dejean said.

So get a bike-sharing system and be a world-class city.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).