BIXI Toronto

BIXI Toronto and the city of Toronto will be relocating 17 stations to accommodate snow removal operations. BIXI is taking advantage of this to relocate under-performing stations to busier locations outside of the original service area to as far west as Euclid and far east as the Distillery District.

The locations moving:

BIXI Toronto will also expand the station at Phoebe Ave / Spadina Ave by adding 24 news docking points. BIXI Toronto area has 8 km2 and with these relocations, the area will now have 12 km2. BIXI Toronto will then enlarge its territory by 50%.

For the schedule, visit our website at toronto.bixi.com or follow our BIXI Toronto Facebook page.

BIXI Toronto Statistics

BIXI Toronto has 3936 members and is really proud to almost have 4000 members after only 6 months of service!

Since May 3rd, BIXI Toronto users have done 372 417 trips. Even if the temperature is slowly going down, the average number of trips per day has almost not decreased.

BIXI Toronto wants to remind all its users that the system is up and running all year around and is the first system open all year in Canada.

Poor Gordon. He was so happy at the convenience, but at some point in the morning reality dawned. I estimate from the pricing chart that Gordon paid at least $100 for that rental (assuming he kept it at his house for about eight hours).

I just received BIXI Toronto's July newsletter and these are the milestones they've reached in just over 2 months:

• Average time/trips (for members): 12 min. 54 sec.
• Average distance/trips (for members): 2.15 Km
• Number of persons who have tried the system so far: 17,903
• Busiest day: July 1st (with 2,907 trips made)
• Total distance travelled so far: 244 998 km (50 times the distance between Vancouver and Halifax!)
• Number of trips since launch (since May 3): over 100,000

I just got back from Montreal where BIXI was born. The bikes are a bit older, and some are a bit worse for wear, but they've stood up to some rigorous use. Montreal has some great separated bike lanes, which tonnes of bike traffic, but not every street is good for cycling. They too have many streets like Toronto's but with the large coverage of BIXI you see people biking even on the less friendly streets. In Toronto we've got fewer friendly bike lanes, but BIXI is just as popular and may reach its 1 millionth ride in less than one year. A big achievement in Rob Ford's Toronto.

Councillor Mike Layton and the Toronto Cyclists Union have started a petition for expanding Bixi Toronto. People have been calling Layton every day since Bixi launched almost two months ago, according to a NOW article. The call is to expand Bixi to the original 3000 bikes planned when the program was originally proposed.

I've heard that things are looking so good that Bixi may beat expectations by reaching close to 1 million trips by the end of the year.

Some of you may have heard about the auditor general's somewhat negative report on Bixi in Montreal. Such troubles don't affect Bixi Toronto since it is incorporated separately and has a business model that doesn't rely on subsidies from Montreal.

After months of pondering about the fate of these plans to build a protected multi-use bicycle path and pedestrian promenade along Queens Quay, an article by Hamutal Dotan of the Torontoist finally gave us an update on its status.

Those who had the chance to try out the temporary Queens Quay protected bikeway back in 2006 would be sure to look forward to the bikeway being implemented permanently.

The TTC will be deciding at today's June 8th meeting whether to impose the end-of-June 2011 deadline on Waterfront Toronto. However, Waterfront Toronto still does not expect to be able to meet this deadline, even if the upcoming City Council meeting might be an opportunity to allow WT to reallocate its own money to the Queens Quay project.

In light of the launch of other cycling initiatives, it seems like Fordites (Denzil Minnan-Wong, etc.) are now trying to paint themselves as champions of cycling in the city. If that's true, surely they would support expediting the Queens Quay construction project, which would complete a much needed link with the Martin Goodman Trail.

Hint Hint Hint

Call Mayor Ford's office and tell him to support the reallocation of WT funds toward the Queens Quay revitalisation if this comes up at the next Council meeting scheduled for June 14th.

Mayor Rob Ford
416-397-FORD

There's been a lot of negative press the last while about the Public Bicycle System Company and the recent deal with the City of Montreal. It wasn't just rant radio outlets like Newstalk 1010 (which invited a rant radio host from Montreal to rant about the deal) but even the CBC was calling it a "bailout". The Montreal Gazette had a hate-on for Bixi and attempted to make it seem like a huge scandal. La Presse was a bit more sympathetic. Many forgot that the large car companies - GM and Chrysler - needed government intervention into the "free market" to keep them from failing. Those billions of dollars could have been used profitably for any number of uses that actually benefit society, environmentally and socially. People also forget that our society subsidizes cars with billions for highways, healthcare costs and environmental costs while providing next to no money for cycling, pedestrians or transit.

[Update: I've linked below to the casa map, due to popular demand. Thanks Antony]

Some people (particularly those without cellphones) have been asking for a printable map of BixiTO stations. I've cobbled one together - nothing pretty but functional.

Credit goes to Ride the City which is producing a great bike mapping site for a whole slew of cities. And credit to Bixi for publishing their data so other applications can easily be created to show the station locations as well as the activity at those stations. It enables Ride the City to show all the stations and it also allows us to look at cool activity maps like the following shot of Toronto, Saturday, May 7, 2011. Compared to other Bixi locations, Toronto is doing really well, especially given that it's not even a week old:

This guy Ryan Allan Carter created an effective, professional video of how to use Bixi, and he did all for free. His website bills himself as an on-camera personality, producer and writer from Sydney, Australia (and he's working for various Canadian media, including fab magazine and MTV Canada and MuchMusic). So I guess that explains his ability to pull together a great video. He's got all the details right.

I was going to bug Bixi Toronto to produce a good how-to video since so many people seem to be floundering on Facebook, but now there is not much point.