The Bloomberg administration's planned bike-share program has been plagued by questions about its viability, according to an article in Saturday's edition of The New York Times by Christine Haughney.

Community board members have raised concerns about whether bike-share kiosks and racks would encroach on sidewalk areas, or swallow parking space and some of the more seasoned bike-share companies did not bid on the project, the article said.

Alta Bicycle Share, one of the two finalists vying to run the operation, has run into financial problems in Montreal where government officials provided $108 million in financing to its partner, Public Bike System Company, in part to cover losses incurred by Bixi, the city's bike-share program, the article said.

New York City issued its request for proposals for the program in November and it called for a 30-station test program to start later this summer and for the official program, featuring 10,000 bicycles at 600 stations, to start next April1, the article said, adding that the city "emphasized that not only would it not finance any part of the program, but is also expected the winning bidder to share its profits."

The article said that Sean Sweeney, who runs the SoHo Alliance and is chair of the landmarks committee of Community Board 2, said that "we want our sidewalks back; the sidewalks in SoHo are not for sale," adding that "our sidewalks are precious to use because they are so narrow."

Other cities have given advertising companies unlimited opportunities to use the bike-share program, but New York specified there could only be one advertising sponsor per bicycle and on each station computer unit, the article said.