Amid reports of financial trouble with the Bixi bike-sharing programs in Montreal and Toronto, questions are being raised about the future and long-term viability of the Capital Bixi system.
The bright red Bixi bikes have been a fixture on the streets of Ottawa and Gatineau since 2011. Residents and tourists alike can ride one of the 250 bicycles between 25 stations in the core of the capital region. There are a total of 17 Bixi stations in Ottawa, including 10 in Centretown.
According to Jean Wolff, an NCC spokesman, the smaller scale of the Capital Bixi system is partly why the NCC is not worried about the future of the program.
“We are not concerned by what is going on in Montreal or Toronto or anywhere else. They are not our issues,” insists Wolff.
Another reason he says he thinks that Ottawa is different from the failing models in other cities is that the NCC owns all of the Bixi infrastructure in the capital region. The agency has a service contract with Montreal’s SVLS – Société vélos en libre service – until 2015.
Wolff says the plan from the beginning was for the NCC to develop the Bixi program on behalf of the Ottawa-Gatineau region and then pass the service contract and the operation to an outside buyer.
Although there have been expressions of interest from buyers interested in taking over the Bixi infrastructure, no further details are being released.
Despite the different business model and smaller scale of the Capital Bixi system, the Ottawa Citizen reported in July that the program still lost $76,000 on operations last year. However, according to NCC statistics, bike usage in the system is increasing.
In the first year of operations, with only 100 bicycles in the system at the time, there were 21,698 rentals. In 2012, under the expanded fleet, 44,335 bikes were rented and this year, between April 15 and Sept 23, 39,000 bikes were rented. According to Wolff, this number will only go up, as the 2013 season is not over yet.
Alex deVries, vice-president of Citizens for Safe Cycling, says that negative comments about the program’s deficit are unfounded.
“There is an expectation that a program like Bixi will be self-sustaining, but we don’t have that same expectation of public transit,” he says. “Nobody expects OC Transpo to turn a profit, but somehow we have the expectation that Bixi should turn a profit or come at no cost to the municipal government.