City
It's official! BIXI to launch in Toronto May 3rd
Confirmation at last! BIXI bike-sharing will officially launch in Toronto on May 3rd. While this news doesn't come as a surprise, it was curiously quiet on the BIXI front after the program reached its minimum membership targets. Back in November, City of Toronto Manager of Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure Daniel Egan told us that the program was a go despite the need to work out some minor details, so I'll assume that the decision to wait until mid-March to make this announcement was designed to drum up more interest in BIXI as spring approaches.
The City sent out a super-boring press release today, so instead of summarizing that, here's what you need to know: BIXI will begin with 1,000 bikes, 80 stations and 1,500 docking points in an area bounded by Queen's Quay, Jarvis, Bloor and Spadina. That still leaves a huge portion of Toronto unserviced, but should the program do well, it can expand without the need to gain approval from City Council. At present, BIXI has 1,200 members, which is 200 above the minimum it needed to get rolling.
Oops. I guess that was kind of boring, too. Oh well, Hip Hip Hooray for BIXI!
For information about station locations and the subscriptions, check out their website.
Discussion
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If I am already in that downtown zone I can pretty much walk anywhere it is so small an area so why pay for a bike? Unless you want to cycle out of that area and back into it again?
You can buy a cheap bike for less than $100 that will last for years so why pay to rent one?
When I saw this in Paris last year it looked cool because they had stations all over the city so people commuted on them to work along the river etc. but from a greater distance.
If you had them at commuter hubs like out to the West towards high park and bloor west and north up near Eglington and East near the Beaches etc. I bet lots of people would leave the house on a sunny day and say screw the TTC/Car ill grab a bixi to work today.
The bikes share program only had 150 bikes and required volunteers to sign bikes out. Bixi is fully automated, you just swipe a credit card (or membership fob).
And... Forget Ford. All that counts now is our support and enthusiasm for BIXI. Yeah and some fine weather.
BIXI is gonna work and it will be a lot of fun seeing it grow.
Onward spring and summer!
If you had been to montreal in the past 2 years, you'd understand.
I'd like to know who the other 7 morans were who voted against it
I never drive home to Montreal anymore during mild weather as I never use my car when there with the wide availability of bixi.It is literally on almost every corner and the bike path network is truly impressive.
My only complaint is that they should have make the bikes pink....
That would be saaaaweeet!
I was in France in the fall, and saw a similar bike share system setup. You could rent them by the hour, half day or full day and it looked about as efficient as getting on public transit (on their public transit, not ours)
I only saw a few tourists riding them, and only in the main tourist spots. If people in Montreal are actually riding them for a fair distance, then maybe it will work here too.