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I was really excited about Boston’s plans for a bike share program. There was news a while back that the city had selected Bixi, the company that operates Montreal’s program, as the vendor for Boston’s program. According to this post, the program was supposed to start in May. Well, May is about to end, and I have not heard a single thing about the program in a long time, nor have I seen any site work around the city preparing for the installation of the bike kiosks.
Something fishy is going on…
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May 28, 2010 at 3:18 pm
nathanael
There was this update in the Phoenix earlier this month.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/life/102060-rent-a-ride/
May 28, 2010 at 3:44 pm
rollinginboston
Interesting.
The fact that they are still hammering out the kinds of details mentioned in the article makes me a bit skeptical that this is actually going to happen this summer. I’m guessing that it would take a work crew at least a full day to install the kiosk and perform all of the associated infrastructure connections such as power and data to the station, not to mention the sitework. Honestly, I could see it taking multiple days. Now if you multiply that by 150 stations…are we going to be inundated by hundreds of Bixi workers at once installing these things this summer, or will it be a slow trickle of progress, Boston-style? I think the safe money is on the latter (but oh how I hope I’m wrong).
May 31, 2010 at 10:52 am
John_in-NH
If its the true Montreal bixi there is no infrastructure connections actually, its all internal solar powered, with batteries and wireless transmitters for credit cards and online station updates. You literally clear a car parking spot and plop it down. In Montreal it takes less than a week to bring in the entire system for the winter and the same time to lay it out again in the spring. Talking with Nicole, she still is planning on the role out this summer, as is ALTA planning who is doing the coordination… I have not checked back in the past 3 weeks though…
June 7, 2010 at 1:54 pm
dotriderblog
It’s probably because the illusion that a bike share would be free and paid for by advertising is a farce and it is now a FACT that the Mayor of Boston’s Boston Bikes has WASTED a good part of the time they had over the past two years trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If you attended the Mayor’s Bike Summit you would have known the details were getting the bike share idea down when Nicole Freedman went on about the detail of insuring a helmet was available to be rented at a separate location near the rental kiosks. (Who would have thought Mass State Law would have made that a necessity?) GIVE IT UP NOW! STOP SUPPORTING BIKE SHARE! Get behind a total assault on ALL transportation projects to insure they get complete street attention and keep the heat on City Hall. Obviously Nicole was hired to keep the heat off the Mayor. Let’s forget about poor old Nicole (who compromises with transportation officials too much for the lip service we hear from these same officials about how ultra-powerful she is) and turn the heat on Tim Tinlin and Mayor Menino. That’s the ONLY way to get things sped up. Trust me!