Taking taxpayers for a ride?
Re: “Bixi concerns dominate council meeting” (Gazette, Sept. 24)
Our politicians tell us that the Bixi system is a “source of pride and our calling card” for Montrealers and (for the umpteenth time) just “one financial transaction” away from bringing a windfall of cash to Montreal.
Wake-up call to Réal Ménard, the Montreal executive-committee member responsible for transport: It is not.
Its over-hyped, money-losing ways are just one more embarrassment to us all.
The Bixi has done nothing more than take people out of the buses, out of taxis, off the sidewalks as pedestrians, and away from having to buy their own bikes.
Add to this the corruption at city hall (who is mayor this week?), too many councillors with too much time on their hands, a bloated and overpaid city workforce, our crumbling roads and infrastructure, the taxes that push people to flee Montreal in droves and, finally, our politicians who insist that we follow their lead by sticking our heads in the sand.
Our “leaders” may love to use the Bixi system (and similar debacles) as a distraction from what ails us.
Montreal will continue its descent into irrelevancy, although now, perhaps, on a Bixi bike. Mark Lipson
N.D.G.
We are becoming the poster society for corporate welfare. Our politicians never learn and continue to spend our tax dollars like drunken sailors.
We now learn Bixi is in financial trouble again, and we are on the hook to bail it out.
Maybe the illusion of success in Montreal results from the fact we can’t afford to drive an automobile in Montreal or in Quebec, what with the cost of fuel, parking and licence plates. But let’s get real here. Between the initial costs that we, as taxpayers, forked over, and then the installation and maintenance costs, the true price of running this white elephant is astronomical.
Before we spend another dime, let’s take a logical approach to this disgraceful situation.
I propose that the executives responsible for the Bixi project in Montreal go on the CBC program Dragons’ Den and pitch their plan to the panel, and see whether any of them would agree to get involved. If they all bail, then so do we. It is time to let taxpayers have a voice on what we invest in. Just recently, taxpayers paid off the 1976 Olympic Stadium debt. Why would we want to inherit another loser project? Glen K. Malfara
Beaconsfield