Nice Bike Program Rahm

Divvy bikes still disappearing at a rate that would amaze even Houdini:

• On July 12, after multiple reports of stolen cycles on social media (and five days of me pushing for answers from the bike-share network and the Chicago Department of Transportation, which oversees the program), Divvy finally sent me a statement acknowledging that it had experienced "a recent series of thefts from stations." I was assured that it was "retrofitting all [its] docks with stronger, more tamper-proof lock mechanisms."
  
  But as more people have learned how to remove the blue bikes from their docks illegally, the theft problem seems to have only gotten worse. [...]
  
  In late August the crime blog CWB Chicago reported that, while there were only seven adult arrests for possession of stolen Divvies during the first half of 2018, there was a massive spike in arrests this summer, with 120 cases between July 1 and August 16 alone.

How bad is it?

• Luc Sabbatini, the CEO of PBSC, fired back that the Divvy program had been mismanaged. "The Chicago situation is unique to Chicago," he wrote. "We do not have issues with missing bikes anywhere else, including Brazil, which could be the toughest market in the world. As of August 26th we only have seven bikes missing for a long period within all our systems around the world, when the number is over 500 in Chicago alone!"

So 507 bikes missing world wide....and 500 of those are in Chicago? Someone somewhere is making a whole shitload of money off the taxpayers for this debacle.