NYC Bike Program kicks off

Finally! New York City's bike program has started and it seems to be a success. For now it is only open to the annual subscribers and only 6,000 bicycles are deployed but it will soon expand to the general public and boast 10,000 bikes.

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, left, on Monday morning with Michele F. Imbasciani of Citibank, a sponsor of New York's new bike share program.

Times reporters raced around the city to see which was faster: bike, subway, cab or bus and the results are posted here:

Spoiler alert, the bike beat the subway and bus almost every time, and often the cab.
I've given Bloomberg his share of poor reviews in this blog but, to give the man credit, he pulled off this project and I wish it nothing but success.

Dear PM Advisor June 24, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

What is your advice when you badly need people for your project, and you got a very good resume, technically the person sounds very good, has mechanical engineering background. Communication skills are very poor with strong Chinese accent (phone interview). When your new employee arrived you are shocked. He has very strong neurological disorder. Can't communicate at all. Probably autistic. Covered with psoriasis and bowing and shaking all the time. Looks very scared.
From the moment he arrived, he grabbed IQ, OQ protocol and started to correct it.  Good quality results.
But client is shocked: Who is this person, Who hired him? He looks like an invalid. We can't trust him with our equipment.

What would you do in this situation. He is a good engineer, but bad PR.

Natasha in South Carolina.

Dear Natasha,

From the looks of the deliverables on this project, Installation Qualification and Operation Qualification protocols, it looks like you are running a validation project, not the next Project Runway. As such, the client is hiring a mind, a set of experience and someone who can do the work, not the next Fabio. It seems like this guy fits those requirements. He could be a quadriplegic with Ebola and still be perfectly acceptable as long as his deliverables are up to par.

The client seems to care what he looks and acts like. Is that fair? Unfortunately, if Jackie Psoriasis is sitting in a cubicle on-site, it does happen. They will get nervous and find excuses to get rid of him. And this can affect your job as a consultant with this company. They question your ability to hire good people to do their work.

Your job, as project manager, is to insulate the client from him. You have the social and presentation skills that he lacks. So be that intermediary, have him work remotely and show off the worker's results. Soon they'll forget about his appearance.

And in future, you always need to meet your fellow consultants before they arrive on the job site. If they are not fit for public display, seat them off-site and have them filter their work through you. You can show the client that you are saving them money by not having to pay for travel costs, cubicle space and commuting time.

If they insist that no-one works off-site, explain that the person has a disability that does not affect their work. Plan out his deliverables an a piece-work basis and bill the client accordingly. If they get billed fairly for good work, they'll ask for him again.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Bloomberg's Nanny State

An ad running in today's papers protests Bloomberg's latest ban

When does government leadership go too far to protect the citizens? New York's Mayor Bloomberg has clearly shown us the line when he crossed it this week. He has spent years approaching this line, changing rules in New York City meant to make the residents healthier. He banned the restaurants from using trans-fats, banned smoking indoors and then in public parks, he added bike lanes and then a bike rental program.

But in each case he stayed on one side of the line that can be defined as: Allow people the right to choose whether or not to act healthy to themselves.

He crossed it this week when he declared that sugared sodas could not be sold in amounts greater than 16 fluid ounces. (475 ml) One can still buy diet drinks or even fruit juices in larger amounts but not sugared coffees or sodas. (I guess we can't share that large soda at the movies anymore.) It also didn't help when the following day he was touting National Donut Day.

A day after a proposal by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to fight obesity, Entenmann’s celebrated National Donut Day in Madison Square Park.  By N. R. KLEINFIELD

That crossed a line with no end. As the Consumer Freedom advertisement asks, 'What's next? Limits on the width of a pizza slice, size of a hamburger or amount of cream cheese on your bagel?'

The other side of the argument is: 'Why should healthy people pay the public costs of treating obesity?' But I believe that most of the public health care costs are caused by poverty, not obesity. And banning large sodas is not doing anything to solve this problem.

What do you think?

NYC Bike experiment

After spending millions and aggravating thousands of people creating a network of bicycle lanes in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg announced the unveiling of its own bicycle share program. This third generation program strives to avoid the pitfalls of previous cities' experiments and move NYC into the future of green transportation.

According to this post within Wikipedia, there are over 300 of these bike share programs worldwide and they have gone through three generations.

1. Free bikes are painted a distinctive color and distributed unlocked for anyone's use. (These programs invariably fail due to theft and vandalism)
2. A small deposit is paid for the use of the bikes at stations. (Since the deposit is small compared to the value of the bike, these bikes usually fall prey to theft)
3. The third generation uses credit card deposits, membership within the program and credit card withdrawals that pay for lost or damaged bikes

The NYC plan is sponsored by Citibank who, in exchange for advertising on the bikes, kiosks and elsewhere in the city, will pay for the bikes and kiosks and setting things up. This ambitious project will have 600 stations boasting 10,000 bikes, making it the biggest program in the US. Click on this interactive map to see the proposed stations for the first phase.


The locations were picked in concert with the public. http://a841-tfpweb.nyc.gov/bikeshare/station-map/

The system is administered by Alta which runs the Capitol Bike program in Washington DC. It is self-sustaining through use of membership that can be purchased for 24 hours to one year. Riders are only charged if they use the bike for more than 30 minutes and the price moves up steeply from there, encouraging quick turnovers.

Let's hope for the best for this project.

Mayor Bloomberg able to laugh at himself

Bloomberg during one of his many press conferences assuring the public he was taking steps needed to keep them safe

For those of us subjected to hours of Mayor Michael Bloomberg droning on in front of the television cameras last week, assuring New Yorkers that he was preparing them for the coming hurricane, a lighter moment appeared when he switched to a garbled version of Spanish. Here's a clip:



I wasn't the only one amused. Ms. Levin, a fluent Spanish speaker herself, created an online persona called @ElBloombito, who proceeded to tweet messages to his followers warning them in Spanglish of the dangers ahead. Read the article for details but here are some of the funnier tweets:

“Hola Newo Yorko! El stormo grande is mucho dangeroso!”
“Fill los bathtub con agua por preparando el no agua,”
“Los floodwaters!”

By Sunday morning, @ElBloombito had about 2,000 followers. By Tuesday afternoon, there were nearly 15,000, among them Mr. Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg). Atta-boy Bloomberg! way to not take yourself too seriously.

More tweets:
Saturday night: “Remain in la casa para much rain y lighningo y thundera! El Bang Bang!”
Sunday morning: “Ay Ay Ay! Yo forgoto to evacuato el isla de Rikers!”
Sunday evening: “El FDR es el cerrado por que muy aqua mucho. Necesito un boat de row!”
Monday: “Los trainos y el bussos son muy operation. Go to worko. No excuso.”

On Monday, Mr. Benítez asked Mr. Bloomberg about @ElBloombito at a news conference. The mayor, smiling, said: “Tengo 69 años. Es difícil para aprender un nuevo idioma.” (Translation: I’m 69 years old. It’s difficult to learn a new language.”)