Why Bike-Share Fans Should Be Concerned About a New Allegation in Minnesota

The troubled company that provides the equipment for bike-share systems in many cities in the United States, Canada, and beyond has a new problem this week: an unhappy customer in Minnesota. In a move first reported in the Montréal Gazette, Nice Ride Minnesota, which runs the bike-share system in Minneapolis–St. Paul, has filed a "notice of a material breach" of its contract with PBSC, the Montréal-based company that supplies hardware for the Nice Ride program.

It’s just the latest cloud in an already obscure financial picture for the Montréal-based PBSC (also known as Bixi), which supplies bikes and stations for similar programs in New York, Washington, D.C., Melbourne, Australia, London, and many other major cities. As we wrote earlier this month, PBSC has had a long history of money and management woes, and has required bailout loans from the city of Montréal, which created and operates the company. According to the most recent numbers, it is $42 million in debt, with a $6.5 million deficit and $5 million in outstanding payments.