A plan for saving BIXI Toronto seems to be shaping up. Councillor Minnan-Wong may be on to something with an idea to scrap the expensive self-cleaning toilet contract with Astral Media in exchange for Astral Media paying down BIXI Toronto's outstanding loan. Even Councillor Vaughan thinks it's a good idea. The self-cleaning toilets seemed to be a great idea during Miller's term but it turns out that they aren't nearly as popular as BIXI.
Yesterday was the first day of New York's new 6000 bike-strong bikesharing system, Citi Bike. Toronto was early into the bikesharing game, first with CBN's BikeShare and later with BIXI Toronto.
Public Bicycle System Company, the maker of BIXI systems worldwide was required by the province of Quebec to be sold off in a loan agreement with the City of Montreal. CBC reports that Serco, a large UK-based multinational that operates a whole range of government services from air traffic control to prisons to London's bikeshare system, is interested in purchasing BIXI.
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:
The requested image size is not available for this photo on Flickr (uploaded when this size was not offered yet). Try another size or re-upload this photo on Flickr.
I just received BIXI Toronto's July newsletter and these are the milestones they've reached in just over 2 months:
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.
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".
[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.
Recent comments