public bike

I got an email from the Mayor this morning (as did James at Urban Country). Mayor Miller isn't abandoning public bikes and is directing staff to look for other funding options. He mentions Bikeshare, which was run by the Community Bicycle Network and had a hard time getting enough funding from the city to sustain itself too:

Thank you for your email letter.

We appreciate you taking the time to write.

Until 2006 Toronto was home to the innovative and award-winning Bikeshare community bicycle-lending program. Following its collapse the City began developing a business case for a public bike program.

The City considered launching such a program using the Vienna business model (which is also used in Lyons and Paris) where it is provided free to the City and affordable to users because it is supported by revenue from billboards on the bike stations. After much deliberation it was decided not to increase the number of billboards on the street and launched a competitive process to find a company to provide a non-ad-supported version.

A public tender was issued and City Council gave staff authority to negotiate with BIXI, which is owned by the Montreal municipal parking authority, to develop a detailed business plan for launching and operating a Toronto public bicycle system at no cost to the City. Unfortunately, the outcome of these negotiations did not guarantee that there was no risk of costs being incurred.

Sooner or later public bikes will return to Toronto. What type of public bike program would people like to see for Toronto?

CBN's Bikeshare closed down all its hubs at the end of 2006, but the requests haven't died out. Since joining the board, I've answered a number of emails from people wanting to start up a bike sharing program in their community or university campus. For example, a college in Philadelphia, university in Tel Aviv, are all getting into the community bike sharing game.