[URBAN NOTE] "City urged to buy out BIXI Toronto cycling company"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Steve Kupferman earlier shared the news that Cycle Toronto--the Torontonian cyclists' union--wants the City of Toronto to buy out Bixi Toronto, thus resolving that organization's financial problems that I blogged about yesterday. The Globe and Mail's Jessica Chin notes that so far, this isn't flying.

In the wake of news Tuesday that the city is reviewing its deal with BIXI after revelations of some financial problems in a city report, Cycle Toronto says that the bike-sharing program should be viewed as an important part of the city’s transit system.

Executive director Jared Kolb said the private sector alone doesn’t do a good job at providing transit.

[. . .]

“Whether it’s in New York, in Paris, or in Britain, in London, cities are partnering with the private sector, but they’re buying the systems, they own the systems,” he said. “That’s not what we have here in Toronto.”

“It’s working well in other cities with respects to the city owning and contracting it out to a private operator, for instance.”

In the Ottawa-Gatineau region, the bike-sharing system is owned by the National Capital Commission (NCC), a Crown corporation responsible for development and improvement in Ottawa. The program was launched in 2011, and cost the city $3,050,000, according to NCC spokesperson Jean Wolffe.

[. . .]

Mayor Rob Ford called BIXI’s financial troubles “unfortunate.”

“That’s why I am always careful when people come and ask us for money,” he said Wednesday.

“I’ve always been a little reluctant,” he said later when asked if the city should be involved in such ventures. “Sometimes you have to, but there has to be guarantees in place if they can’t pay. I want to find out what guarantees were in place when we got into this agreement.”