News

Many Montrealers were thrilled when May arrived, not just for the warmer weather but particularly for the reopening of BIXI, the City’s public bike sharing system.

Why the excitement? In its first “year” of operations (essentially May to November 2009), BIXI made almost 5,000 bikes available at 400 stations around central Montreal and encouraged users to bike around town as an alternative to taking cars or even public transit.

Montrealers jumped on their BIXI bikes: by the end of October 2009, 10,000 members had signed up and BIXI celebrated its one millionth bike trip. BIXI utilization in the first six weeks of 2010 topped 600,000 rides. In short, Montrealers quickly made BIXI a part of their lives and, as a direct result, greatly changed the transportation landscape in their city while contributing to the environment and their own physical well-being.

After moving to Montreal in July, 2009, my family and I became almost instant fans of BIXI. Despite some initial frustration, mainly trying to understand bike docking and how the rental worked – basically, one pays $5 for each 24-hour period (or $28 for a month) and then every ride of 30 minutes or less is free (incremental charges are applied for longer rides). We soon found ourselves taking BIXI everywhere; sightseeing, shopping, running errands, going to the movies, all were easy and pleasant with BIXI.

The BIXI bike-share stations can be found every couple of blocks in the downtown core. So, if no bikes were available at one station, we would walk 5-10 minutes to another station and almost always find an available bike. Likewise, if parking was full we could quickly find an alternative station to park.

The world has taken note of BIXI’s success. The company has already signed contracts with Melbourne and Minnesota to help them launch their public bike systems. Minneapolis, Minnesota became the first US city to launch a BIXI system on June 10 or this year. London and New York are also studying the best of BIXI for their own systems to be launched this year.

BIXI placed 19th on Time magazine’s list of the best inventions of 2008, took home the gold for best new product in the energy and sustainability category of the 2009 edition of the Edison Best New Products Awards, and earned bronze in the transportation category of the International Design Excellence Award (IDEA). BIXI also won the gold medal at the 2009 Canadian public sector leadership awards.

BIXI did a number of things well: bikes were quickly redistributed from stations with excess bikes to those with a shortage; design changes were quickly implemented to improve security and customer support; more stations and bikes were quickly added during the year to meet unexpected demand. The bikes are very well designed and include great baskets and built-in lights to increase their functionality.

Addressing Barriers

The City of Montreal deserves kudos: in the past two years over 140 kilometers of bike path have been added, bringing the total to an amazing 552 kms.