By Alex Aylett.

Bixi – Montreal's innovative approach to bike sharing – just keeps expanding.

The system began in Montreal in 2009. Plans to bring it to Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Chicago, London were reported last Fall.

But it seems that Melbourne and Minneapolis have beaten at least some of them to the punch. Both cities concluded negotiations with the Montreal based non-profit that manages Bixi earlier this month. Bikes are scheduled to be rolling in Melbourne in May and in Minneapolis by June.

There are also plans to allow Bixi users from one city to use bikes in other Bixi cities. What a great idea.

The system is based on a network of solar powered bike rental nodes that can be easily installed and moved depending on usage. The nodes also update bike availability info in realtime allowing users to check bike availability online from home, iPhones, or other mobile devices. This combination of easy installation and internet integration made Bixi instantly popular. Combined with other forms of public transportation, Bixi can be a useful component in an overal multi-modal transport strategy.

Another contributor to Bixi's hometown success is the fact that since 2000 Montreal has also added 700km of commuter friendly bikepaths.

This originally appeared on OpenAlex in February 2010, and subsequently on worldchanging.com.

For more on BIXI and other innovative business models:

• Bixi: the Bicycle-Taxi for a Bright Green City | Daniel Haran
  
• Gradually Greening: Test-Driving Zipcar | Karl Schroeder
  
• Local Food Plus: A Model for Food Citizenship in North America | Kathryn Cooper

We tried bike sharing in Edmonton. Within one year, the volunteer group had lost 95 percent of its bikes to theft. The bikes were painted bright red and designed to be unattractive to thieves, but it seemed people just enjoyed stealing the bikes. Not because they wanted the bikes, you understand, but because (a) they could and (b) if you can't eat or ($%@ something, there seems to be a wide-spread human impulse to $#%^ all over it.
I would love to see bike sharing come back to Edmonton, but we need a solution that takes this kind of thing into account.

Posted by: G- on May 13, 2010 12:12 PM

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