Nearly two months after its start to the season, BIXI Montréal has already recorded several usage records. No less than 1.3 million trips were recorded in May, a monthly peak for the organization.
Posted at 2:59 p.m.
“We are currently experiencing an extraordinary start to the season,” summarized BIXI general manager Christian Vermette on Monday afternoon. He says that “several new records have been set, whether in terms of the number of monthly and daily trips or that of active members”.
In addition to the 1.3 million trips in May, a significant increase of 92% compared to the same period last year, the bike-sharing service has indeed exceeded 50,000 daily trips for the first time since its creation. , more than 10 years ago.
Thus, as of May 31, at least two days of more than 50,000 trips had been recorded, including one of 53,180 individual trips. On average, there were 41,000 BIXI trips per day during the month of May. This is almost double compared to last year. In 2021, at the same date, this figure was rather 21,000.
BIXI also reports that “the number of active members is more than 56,000 for the month of May 2022, another meteoric increase compared to 36,870 in May 2021”.
The flip side, however, is that many Montrealers these days report not having access to a bike on several access points. On Twitter, BIXI also clarified on Monday that its bikes are “especially popular this year” and that “like many Quebec organizations, we are facing a labor shortage”.
Bikes into works of art
To celebrate these records, the organization will unveil some fifty “bicycles transformed into unique works of art” during the 10e edition of the MURAL Festival, which is scheduled for June 9 to 19.
This year also marks the achievement of an important symbolic milestone for BIXI, since since Montreal became the first city in America to inaugurate a large-scale bike-sharing service in 2009, 50 million trips have already been made in the metropolitan area.
At the end of last January, the Legault government had confirmed the payment of several million dollars for the acquisition of 725 electric BIXIs, as well as the creation of 83 stations for the Montreal network of self-service bicycles.
Montreal thus won half of an envelope of 6.5 million aimed at “diversifying the offer by providing users with electrically assisted bicycles, in particular in places where the topography limits access to active transport”. Remember that a quarter of BIXI Montréal’s revenue comes from a recurring contribution from the City of Montréal, under the municipal budget.