Oonee, The Bike Parking Company, Files Formal Protest After DOT Snub

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The city unfairly disqualified Brooklyn bike parking start-up Oonee from its much-awaited program to build 500 secure storage facilities for two-wheelers, the company claimed in a letter to the Department of Transportation that accused officials of doing the program on the cheap.

DOT last week announced California-based company Tranzito would take on the effort — after years of delays. City officials did not give so much as an interview to homegrown firm Oonee, which applied with a group of experienced partners that have worked on similar efforts in global cities.

The formal complaint [PDF] claims that DOT focused too much on getting a cheap contractor that offered "lower-complexity proposals," and didn't give a fair shot to the bid submitted by Oonee, along with its partners Cyclehoop, Deloitte, French manufacturer Altinnova and engineering firm Arcadis.

As part of DOT's request for proposals process, the cost of the bike parking sheds was only supposed to count 15 percent toward the agency's decision, compared to 50 percent for "relevant experience" and 23 percent for the vendor's "approach," according to DOT.

As such, Oonee founder and CEO Shabazz Stuart, was stunned that his company was snubbed, especially since it has already done smaller-scale programs in New York and New Jersey.

"This is going to be the next Citi Bike ... and [DOT] is saying we don’t need any experts from New York, we don’t need any experts from London, we don’t need any experts from Paris," Stuart told Streetsblog. "That doesn’t strike us as a process that will yield the program that New Yorkers deserve."

The city program was supposed to roll out this year, but faced 18 months of delays as City Hall and the city's Office of Management and Budget showed little interest in funding the bike infrastructure.

The holdup was a far cry from Mayor Adams's campaign promise to realize safe bicycle storage, an idea transportation leaders have bandied about since as far back as the Giuliani administration. Research has shown a lack of safe lockups reduces cycling and safety, and increases theft while hurting local businesses.

Stuart and his company have been working on bringing safe bike storage to the Big Apple for the better part of a decade, launching a storage hub outside Atlantic Terminal in 2019 and joining with DOT for a six-location pilot in 2022. Oonee also worked to unclog the government logjam by urging City Hall to advance the stalled program this year.

DOT finally announced it had selected Tranzito for the job with a month left in Adams's term, citing the company's 20-year record of working in the Golden State, including with transit agencies like BART, Cal Train, LA Metro and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

"Tranzito is the nation‘s largest bike parking program operator for a reason, we know how to work with transit agencies and cities to provide comprehensive and far reaching bicycle parking programs for over 20 years," Tranzito CEO Gene Oh told Streetsblog in a message.

However, Oonee and its group never got an interview or feedback about their proposal, according to Stuart, who added that DOT went dark on them and still refuses to provide more information about its decision, including its scoring of the applicants.

"We’ve requested a debrief now twice. We have gotten no communication from them whatsoever," he said. "If you’re proud of this program that you’re announcing, the scoring sheets are at your front desk."

An agency spokesman declined to release DOT's grading for the different vendors, because officials haven't actually awarded the contract yet and the procurement is technically still open. A five-year contract will begin in May.

"DOT’s goal was to search the globe for the best possible company with the experience and game plan to run a reliable and affordable secure bike parking at the nation’s largest scale," DOT spokesman Vincent Barone said in a statement. "The agency followed the legally required procurement process —and the highest-scoring proposal was from a company that has 20 years of experience operating secure bike parking programs."