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Hussain sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison on 20 counts of manslaughter in Schoharie limo crash

ValleyBike unlikely to return until 2024 as a new vendor is sought

 No electric-assist bicycles are available at this kiosk in downtown Springfield, MA or at any of the docking stations in the ValleyBike system because the program vendor is seeking a new contract and no long will do field work such as repairing the bikes and transporting them around the network of docking stations.
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
No electric-assist bicycles are available at this kiosk in downtown Springfield, MA or at any of the docking stations in the ValleyBike system. Officials say the regional bicycle sharing program will likely not return until 2024 as a new vendor is being sought by the participating communities.

Ridership had grown steadily since the regional bicycle sharing system launched five years ago.

A popular regional bicycle sharing program in western Massachusetts will not operate this year.

ValleyBike, which launched in 2018, is being temporarily shutdown while the participating communities seek a new vendor for the bicycle sharing network.

Earlier this year, ValleyBike share operator Bewegen initiated bankruptcy proceedings in its home country Canada and said it would no longer honor its existing contracts.

Efforts failed to find a short-term solution to get bikes back on the streets for this season in the member communities of Springfield, West Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Northampton, South Hadley, and Amherst.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Carolyn Misch, Director of Planning and Sustainability for the city of Northampton, the lead community for the bike share program.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.