I see what you did there, citing 3-year old articles on the start-up problems of then-brand new bike services. Of course, as you can see from other comments, those bike services no longer have those problems, and appear to even be quite successful. It's sort of like the difference between Groupon 3 years ago and Groupon today, but in reverse.

I hate the idea of promoting cycling (roads are for cars, not bikes), but there's nothing about what ViaCycle is doing that suggests it is doomed to failure.