City Series: PBSC in Montreal
November 18, 2020 — City seriesCanada
Working with famed industrial designer Michel Dallaire, who created the ICONIC bike, we built Montreal’s bike share solution to be removable during the snowy winter season.
Montreal’s Bike Share: BIXI in Brief
BIXI -a contraction of the words “bicycle” and “taxi”- is PBSC’s bike sharing system in Montreal. It began as the first of its kind in 2008, becoming a reference for countless cities. With Montreal’s numerous, gorgeous cycling lanes and city parks, our bike sharing program was just what was needed to improve transportation in our great city.
Like many of PBSC’s systems across the world, Montreal’s BIXI fleet is a mix of thousands of regular and electric bikes: the ICONIC and the E-FIT.
In recent years, BIXI has become increasingly popular, with growing ridership and strong support from both Montrealers and their mayor Valerie Plante, who sees it as a vital part of her cycling plan.
Today the system keeps breaking records:
- 9,092 bikes distributed across 750 docking stations.
- 320,000 cyclists used BIXI, travelling more than 15 million kilometres, for a total of 5.8 million trips (2019)
- 80% growth in ridership and a 309% growth in sales in a five-year period.
About Montreal’s Bike Share
Montreal is host to a great number of creative industries and artists of varied backgrounds. It is, and always has been, a nest for innovation and creation. The city has also been recognized for its leadership in sustainable, intelligent mobility and transportation.
When we launched our Montreal bike share program, we knew the system was needed. We were proven right when we counted more than 3000 bikes and 300 smart stations in our hometown a year later. This number also kept growing steadily and still does after nearly a decade since its inauguration.
In summer 2020, we even reached a new summit when we launched our large-scale e-bike fleet, the biggest to date in North America. With a users’ satisfaction rate of 95%, we knew we found the right solution to improve Montreal’s public transport system.
Over a decade later, our bike share program is now available in more than 40 great cities worldwide. We are proud to provide Montrealers with an eco-friendly, sustainable transportation solution.