To ensure better availability of its bikes, Bixi launched its first “Bixi Carrefour” on Wednesday, in order to carry out more efficient preventive maintenance of its fleet and to allow damaged bikes to be put back into service more quickly.
This first Carrefour is located at Parc La Fontaine, at the intersection of Rue Rachel and Avenue Calixa-Lavallée. It was set up after statistical analyses of data on the service’s traffic.
“The analysis, planning and operations teams studied the approximately 70 million trips that have been made in Bixi’s 16 years of service. User behavior, combined with the growing popularity of recent years, led to the idea of large, decentralized multifunctional stations. We want to be ever faster and closer to people’s needs,” explains Pierre-Luc Marier, Marketing Director at Bixi Montréal.
The bike-sharing organization plans to put seven Carrefours into service by 2027, spread over a large area.
The various sites will host larger numbers of docking points—70 at Parc La Fontaine—and bike repair stations for non-member cyclists. Bixi employees will be on site to repair bikes and perform general tune-ups, in addition to informing users. These will be real “additional lungs for the network,” assures Mr. Marier.
Any Bixi bikes that users have designated as “in need of repair,” for reasons ranging from a flat tire to a loose bell, currently take more than 48 hours to get back on the track. The team has to pick them up, take them to the central service center in Little Italy, fix them, and then put them back on the road. With the new Hubs, Bixi expects to cut the repair time for minor breakdowns to eight hours.
“There are significant savings on the horizon, in addition to better meeting user needs,” continues Pierre-Luc Marier.
The most common breakdowns are related to flat tires. “And 11,000 bikes, that means 22,000 wheels!” recalls Mr. Marier. From now on, this type of problem can be resolved directly at Carrefours. However, Bixi did not want to reveal the number of complaints received annually on this subject.
“The goal is to always have as many bikes as possible available. There are plenty of things that need to be improved, especially tires. This year, we are testing different products and configurations. We are currently collecting data on this subject,” explains Mr. Marier.
The redistribution of bicycles in the network after peak hours is also a major challenge for the organization. Customers sometimes come across empty terminals, or even full terminals when it comes time to return the bicycle at the end of a trip. Teams are mobilized every day to transport bicycles from one place to another by truck.
The Bixi Friend program also provides a good boost in this area. This system allows members who activate the feature to accumulate reward points if the bike is returned to an empty or nearly empty station. “We have good growth figures for the program since we improved the rewards this year. In fact, 20% more of our subscribers have activated the Bixi Friend program. People like it. It creates a very strong sense of belonging. […] and it also has a playful aspect.”
As for the Bixi winter project, it has officially been renewed for the 2024-2025 season, but the organization is still evaluating ways to counter the problems related to the cold. Last winter, many users complained about seats that were impossible to adjust due to frost and terminals that were unusable for the same reason.
Bixi faced another problem less than a week ago, when a software outage paralyzed many terminals.