Montreal Launches Bicycle-Sharing Program…6 Months in the Future
It all started innocently enough:
MONTREAL — Montreal unveiled its new self-service bicycle system Sunday.
But then it started to sound a bit iffy:
The program, named Bixi, will allow residents to borrow bicycles from one station and drop them off at another.
And then things took on a more definite form:
The service, based on similar public bike systems in European cities like Paris and Barcelona, will be available in the spring of 2009.
So, really, nothing that could be ridden actually launched yesterday. I stand corrected again! From the Bixi.ca website, we have:
40 bike prototypes at 4 mobile stations are currently being demoed in the streets of Montréal by the Bixi Bike Squad. They’ll have your head spinning.
What also launched, in addition to the 40 trial bikes, was the marketing campaign for the new system, ‘BIXI’ (Bike + Taxi). Maybe even some building of the actual system started too.
I had at least one very good Canadian friend back in the day, and I was amazed at how we could completely fail to communicate some very simple concepts when we both spoke decent English. We were both native English speakers, but I was an American English speaker, and my friend was a Canadian English speaker. Obviously, my friend was not educated in proper English. 
In any case, more details of the planned program can be found here.
One interesting aspect of the yet-to-be-named bicycle program is that it was selected by the population, using an online voting scheme.
I don’t know if the program will count as a ‘North American first,’ since DC has a bike-sharing program, but we’re excited nonetheless.
Incidentally, the folks who run the DC SmartBike bicycle-sharing program, Clear Channel, are the people in the lead to run our program here in San Francisco - if and when the bicycle injunction is lifted.
The English version of the City of Montreal website is here, but it does not appear to have a ‘BIXI’-specific page yet and the English Bixi site is here, and a very nice site it is.
…OK, Canada-US relations are back on track.
…and light, aluminum-based bikes! That could be key in hilly cities like our lovely SF.
[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
