Not sure if this piece in the Christian Science Monitor (??) about Bixi bleeding money by redistributing bikes around the city is news – and if it is, why it’s not being reported more locally.
Updates from September, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Pop Montreal estimates from 50,000 to 70,000 people will be on site to see Arcade Fire perform Thursday night. The Quartier des Spectacles site has a list of forbidden items and some other details: expect to be searched.
Additionally: Pop Montreal coverage from Voir, Hour, more Hour, the Mirror and Radio-Canada.
Later: Live stream from CBC3. Twitter is now giving estimates over 100,000 people at the site.
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Doobious
Hats off to Aldo for hydrating the crowd. Here’s hoping that idea catches on in a big way.
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The city’s getting back to the notion of installing water meters in businesses, industries and institutions after its first attempt ended in an expensive debacle.
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“Car-free day” is to begin at 9 a.m. on a small segment of Ste-Catherine Street, once the office workers are all safely at their desks, and end at 3:30 p.m. before they have to drive home.
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Vélo Québec is agitating to get powered scooters off bicycle paths and I think they’re quite right.
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Clem
You gotta love the quote at the bottom of the article: “… Ils sont habillés en lycra …”.
So this guy is saying that how some cyclists dress makes them dangerous??? I didn’t realize my greatly shaped cyclist a.. was a danger!
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Shawn
I’m glad someone is raising this. I don’t know how much these scooters weigh (and yes, I’m too lazy to Google it and find out) but surely the kinetic energy of these heavier scooters at cruising speed means that any cyclist involved in collision is going to get creamed, and maybe killed. It would be nice if we didn’t wait for that to happen. A motorized vehicle has no place in a bike path or lane, regardless of the type of powerplant.
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Shawn
… oh right, the weight (or mass, actually) is stated in the piece.
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Tux
Well, I for one think that our small electric vehicles being relatively unregulated and unpoliced is a good thing. Lots of electric bikes are no more than a regular bike with hub motors. It’s not much more dangerous than a fast cyclist cruising along. Some of them are more like scooters and these should maybe be restricted to the roads… The problem with starting to make rules about these vehicles is that as soon as there’s some kind of regulatory body in place, we are likely to lose the advantages of there being no regulations. People who can’t get driver’s licenses, or who aren’t fit enough to ride a pedal-powered bike have electric bikes as an easy alternative. There’s no need to pass a test, no need to pay the government fees in perpetuity to own one. Just buy one and zoom off down the road. I’ve been resisting getting a license and car for years (I’m acquiescing on the license, not the car though!) and a small electric vehicle is currently at the top of my wish list. Many of the advantages of a car (speed, ability to carry some cargo, not being restricted to the areas around metro stations) with none of the onerous costs of car ownership (license fees, insurance, maintenance amounting to thousands of dollars) I feel that we should let electric bikes become MUCH more prevalent and popular so we can see what REAL problems occur when there’s a proliferation of them. I challenge anyone to find me a news story where someone caused an accident BECAUSE they were riding an electric bike. While I certainly understand the discomfort of cyclists, rollerbladers, etc at having to share bike paths with electric vehicles zooming along, I feel that rather than making rules about electric bikes, we should make rules about bike paths. Perhaps restricting the weight of vehicles and top speed of travel on them.
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Shawn
Yes, the only thing I’ve noticed and object to are those electric motorcycles. The e-bikes, or whatever they’re called, I have no beef with…
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Eric
The whole issue resides with our system not following rules and common sense. It’s simple, recommended speeds on pathways and bike lanes is 20km’s per hour. Not sure I can remember the last time I saw the vast majority of cyclists follow that rule.
Being a cyclist and engineer I can tell you that cyclists are the most dangerous groups on the pathways. Velo Quebec is a biased organization that has no interest in seeing anything but bicycles on pathways and bike lanes. The reality is (and this is fact) that there has been 3 reported electric scooter related incidents on the roadways (not just paths) in the past 3 years and over 2427 bicycle related incidents and 1864 related to excessive speeds and reckless driving. Sounds to me like the formula is simple and the Europeans have been doing this for decades and that is enforcement of the rules.
A summer blitz of giving the idiots on the roads (cyclists, electric scooter rider and automobile drivers) fines for not following the rules of the road is the cure. WOW a simple hit people where it hurts (their wallets) and you’ll soon find that our roads will be safer for all. This will make the car drivers happy, cyclists happy, tax man happy (revenue from fines), possibly create additional law enforcement jobs etc….
I prefer to cycle everywhere I go, and I can tell you that the vast majority of ebike/electric scooter riders respect the rules of the road and I believe are more careful then us cyclists. Yes me included. All we need to do is spend some time beside a pathway and you’ll see for yourself the countless number of stupid and irresponsible moves us cyclists make.
We need to get our heads out of the sand and get more of these cars off the road. We should be fighting as a group for a better infrastructure not ban or forbid advancements in smart ecological modes of transportation. I’d rather be behind and electric scooter than behind someone in an SUV breathing in their exhaust fumes.
Come on everyone let’s rethink our position here and what we are really doing. Let’s stop the complaining and come up with a solution.
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no\deli 17:44 on 2011/09/22 Permalink
The CS Monitor used to have the best international reporting in all of Newsdom. Clearly, they still do.
Singlestar 21:03 on 2011/09/22 Permalink
There are lots of trucks redistributing Bixis at many times of the day, not just in one direction. Their computers can tell which stands are empty and which stands are full, neither of which is convenient if you want to rent or return a bike. They move them around, sometimes in the middle of the night or in bright daylight. Ever since Day 1. No news here.
Joey 08:24 on 2011/09/23 Permalink
The headline refers to expenses, but the article text doesn’t. Seems like lousy editing more than “bleeding money.”
Patrick M. Lozeau 10:33 on 2011/09/23 Permalink
I always thought that BiXi should ad a gamification aspect to the service. Something like, bring back a bike an empty and collect a rebate on next years membership or more minutes on your next uses for the season.
Kyle 13:34 on 2011/09/24 Permalink
Bixi totally needs to create a “drop a bike at this station instead of this one and receive 15 extended minutes, etc” type incentive. But of course, that would take away “jobs” for the bike distributors. My vote goes towards gamification of the system. Likely much more efficient, but besides that, the important thing is to create a more balanced network withgood numbers of bikes and open spots at each station.