Hearst and his partner, Ben Gluckstern, launched a bike-sharing program called NY Cycles in 2009.
VOA: standard.2010.01.31
By selling ad space on the bikes themselves and on bike-sharing stations, bike-sharing providers (sometimes municipal transit authorities, sometimes private companies, sometimes a joint venture between the two) discovered they were able to cover their costs.
It also spawned a modern wave of bike-sharing, this time done more professionally: Worldwide, there are now 300 other bike-sharing programs modeled after the Parisian system.