Should TTC take over Toronto’s Bixi bike program?
Toronto Transit Commission chair Karen Stintz says she wants staff to look at the possibility of integrating the struggling Bixi bike sharing system with the TTC.
Stintz said she will make a motion at this week’s council meeting requesting staff explore the idea.
“I absolutely see Bixi as being an integral part of public transit in the city,” the councillor for Eglinton-Lawrence told CP24 on Sunday.
It’s a natural fit, said Jared Kolb of Cycle Toronto.
“When you look at trips within our city, what public bike systems like Bixi do is they fill in the gaps for trips that are too short to take transit or too far to walk – that two-kilometre sweet spot,” he said.
Once the Presto fare card is launched across the TTC – something that’s supposed to happen by the Pan Am Games in 2015 – it could also be used to access Bixi bikes, suggested Kolb.
There may also be opportunities to better integrate Bixi with subway stations. At the Spadina station, for example, the bikes are at Madison Ave., a block east of the subway.
Montreal’s transit system has looked at taking over the much larger Bixi operation in that city. But a report in March suggested the Societe de transport de Montreal wasn’t interested in taking over Bixi’s deficit.
Montreal’s Bixi program includes 5,000 bikes on the street and last summer it topped out at 50,000 members. In Toronto, Bixi operates 1,000 bikes at 80 stations. The company says it needs about 3,000 bikes to be financially viable here.
“The order of magnitude seems to increase as you increase the density of stations,” said Kolb.
City staff want Toronto to take over the troubled program here because the company is at risk of defaulting on a $3.9 million loan. Bixi launched here in 2011 with a $4.8 million city loan but it has only paid back about one quarter of that.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam has suggested that developers be given a break on the number of parking spots they need to install if they accommodate a Bixi station in their underground garage. Developers would save between $50,000 and $70,000 per parking space.
