Bixi Bikes: First Thoughts

So after almost three weeks back on the Newer side of the Atlantic, and most of that time spent in Montreal, I finally broke down and got on a Bixi, the new public bike rental thing. I don't think is news to anyone who actually reads this blog (cue tumbleweeds), but I've been pondering the whole system over the last couple days, trying to make sense of how I feel about it.

First off, I am definitely a fan of efforts to a) reduce car traffic and b) get people biking around town. As Lion and I found out on our way to Atwater and back on Tuesday, renting a Bixi is actually slightly cheaper than buying two tickets on the Metro, and I think the bikes will get heavy use from people leaving bars around closing time looking for a way to get home that isn't a cab. Beyond that, the tourists that are usually, in better economic times, flooding our fair city will find these things immensely useful. However, I'm not sure who, beyond tourists and broke drunks, the Bixi system is being marketed to. For one thing, most people in this city who want to bike everywhere already own one, and so they won't be using it. The yearly usage fee is 78 dollars, which is probably more than someone would spend on owning and repairing a crappy city bike for the same amount of time. The monthly Bixi membership makes a little more sense to me, as it is theoretically aimed at people moving into the downtown core of Montreal for a month or two (students, whatever) and needing a way around, but even then buying a used bike seems smarter.

Compounding on this problem is the payment scheme, which increases the fees you incur the longer you take the bike out. I just just found this out the hard way today, when I looked at my Visa account and noticed that Bixi charged me 25.50 (!) for the very brief periods of time I used their services over Tuesday and Wednesday. It looks like, and this is my fault, I had not properly locked the bike in, and around 3 am that night someone came along and did it for me. I called and they politely fixed the charge for me, but the lesson is that you can't really use Bixi bikes for longer than half an hour at time or you're spending a lot of cash. So the Bixi system works best for people who don't have a bike but like to bike, and who don't have very far to go. A little limited, although maybe I'm misreading this.

The biggest criticism I have, though, is the current distribution of the Bixi stands themselves. It's still early, so I don't expect them to stay the way they are right now, but I've seen the exact same thing happen every day that I've gone to campus since I got back: in the morning, all the stands around McGill are full, meaning that if you come a little late, you're going to have to bike around a bit looking for a space. In the afternoon, all the stands are empty, so you'll be spending more time looking for a bike to take. These stands hold maybe 8-10 bikes max, so even if only a small portion of the population of Montreal are using these things, if 8-10 of them are doing what you're doing everyday you're going to get very frustrated very quickly. This is yet another thing that limits the practicality of the Bixi system: if you, like many other people, are looking to bike from your house down to work and then back in the evening, Bixi probably won't save you much time or effort. This is a confusing thing to see happen just because I'd think that some basic research had been done on traffic flows in Montreal before they set the stands up, but maybe they're still experimenting.

Anyway, this isn't me saying that I hate the idea - I like it a lot. I just think that there are some real big kinks that need to be worked out before Bixi can move from a novelty urban design experiment to a major fixture of public transport in Montreal.