METROPOLITAN NEWS: Andy Riga
Bixis are grey, Chattanooga is blue, if the Brits buy our bikes will you go boo-hoo?
Welcome to the all-bixi edition of Metropolitan News. For a few hours this week, it appeared Bixi had changed its tune on the advertising it started placing on bikes two years ago. A website that looked and sounded official announced the bike-sharing service was going to “withdraw ads from Bixis and replace them with more than 500 different extracts from poems, songs, novels, essays, etc. This important decision was taken after a long reflection triggered by the furor caused two years ago by the addition of ads to bikes.” Bixi Poésie (bixipoesie.ca) turned out to be a hoax — an elaborate one that involved the anonymous culprits plastering colour-co-ordinated stickers over ads on hundreds of bikes. See the blog for photos. Some reaction on Twitter: @Davidegmarshall perhaps 5 to 10% of space could be set aside. I have no prob w/ advertising but civic participation is a great thing too. @perdlespedales Pourquoi ne pas fusionner le côté ludique de la poésie aux annonces publicitaires? @Mandie___ Cultural protest. Better than swear words or graffiti but still vandalism. @trelayne #Montrealers sure are good culture jammers @Sarah0s I saw at least two other stations in the plateau with at least 10 bikes each. I love it!
@peggylcurran roses are red, bixis are blue, I sure wish cycling with poems was true!
Pardon me boy is that the Chattanooga Uh-oh? This week, Bixi said technical glitches in new software it recently developed for new bike stations has led to a delay in the launch of Bike Chattanooga in Tennessee. It’s unclear when it will launch, but Bixi says it’s working on the problem and it will not affect New York City’s Bixi system, which will use the same software when it begins operations this summer. The Chattanooga news prompted this reaction from a reader:
anon: The whole Bixi system is a distraction. With Bixi, our governments are spending a small fortune in tax dollars to supply bicycles to the population. Citizens who like to cycle already have bicycles. There is no shortage of bicycles in our cities. What is missing are safe places like public bike lockers or monitored parking lots where you can feel safe to leave your bike all day.
Quebec has ordered the city of Montreal, which controls Bixi, to sell off Bixi’s international operations. One potential buyer is Serco Group, the British company that operates London’s Bixi-inspired bike service. Fearing Bixi will be lost to foreign interests, 10 prominent Montrealers have written an open letter to Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Laurent Lessard. “Bixi is the pride of Montreal and Quebec,” they wrote. They say it’s imperative that all Bixi operations remain in Quebec. Bixi and its suppliers employ about 450 people. Signatures on the letter include those of the heads of Tourism Montreal, Vélo Québec, Équiterre, Communauto and the Urban Ecology Centre. To read the letter, visit velo.qc.ca.
Helmet advocate Jack Kowalski called me this week to say the big Bixi news is actually in Old Montreal, not Tennessee. Not surprisingly, his news involves helmets. He’s offering free bike helmets to Bixi users in Old Montreal and the Old Port. About 50 helmets are available for Bixi users to borrow; all you have to do is drop off a piece of ID at Kowalski’s storefront operation at 47 de la Commune St. That’s the headquarters of his company, Lachine Rapids Tours. He picked up the helmets over the years while researching his sideline: promoting the idea that motorists and car passengers should wear helmets in cars (drivingwithoutdying.com). Kowalski said he came up with the free-helmet idea two weeks ago when he saw a bare-headed tourist riding a Bixi in Old Montreal. “I said to myself: ‘All this traffic – someone has to help these people. If the city won’t do it, I’m going to do it.’” Reader Kyle Macdonald (Twitter handle: @oneredpaperclip), for one, is against mandatory bike helmets. The helmet issue is the potential downfall of bike-sharing – Vancouver’s been debating this for 4 years now. Studies show fewer people ride bikes when helmet laws exist. Less bikes = less safe for cyclists. Look at cities with most cyclists: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. No helmets. Much safer per capita to cycle there than here. Helmet laws prohibit Vancouver from launching bike-sharing. Melbourne Bixi is barely used, much the result of mandatory helmets.