Self-service bikes like Bixi are no longer the preserve of cities. This service has been offered since this summer in many villages in Quebec. This service is growing so fast that touring the Gaspé Peninsula on these machines could soon become a reality.
The first full summer of bike sharing in Gaspésie is not over yet, but it has already been announced that the number of participating municipalities will increase. Currently, 32 bikes are spread across the region: 12 in New Richmond, 8 in Carleton-sur-Mer, 4 in Sainte-Anne-des-Monts and 8 in Gaspé. About ten new bikes will be added to this fleet by the fall in two different locations, Maria and Chandler. All of these bikes have electric assistance—because of the steep hills.
Just like the Bixi in Montreal or the àVélo in Quebec City, the Gaspé bicycles attach to terminals and allow you to travel within villages. The maximum duration of a trip is 90 minutes, but packages are available for the day, month or season. Soon, the terminals will be grouped together within “large zones,” anticipates Marie-Andrée Pichette, the person behind the project at the Régie intermunicipale de transport Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine (REGIM). “Our goal is to deploy it widely enough to allow someone to travel practically the entire length of the Gaspé Peninsula with these bikes,” she says.
The stations are sometimes located near tourist sites to offer another means of transportation to vacationers. Otherwise, they are right in the heart of the village so that residents can get around in a way other than by car. A statistical report on usage will be published later in the fall, but the craze seems to be there. “Some will say that it’s a first test to see if they’re going to buy an electric bike,” notes Mme Pitcher.
Small and medium-sized towns
His region is not the only one to embark on the bike-sharing adventure. The MRC of Nicolet-Yamaska, in Centre-du-Québec, deployed bicycle “lockers” to house self-service bikes called Bili in three municipalities in early July. Six others will join the network by the end of the summer.
For now, mainly intended for tourists, the service will eventually be installed in the 16 municipalities of the MRC to allow locals to travel from one city to another. “We would like to include businesses, shops, to make it a means of active transportation,” says the prefect, Geneviève Dubois. People are ready to change their ways of doing things. It’s a great structuring project.” Her MRC is already thinking about developing more extensive bike paths to facilitate traffic.
We have gone elsewhere in the way we develop our municipalities. We offer people ways to move around differently, to live differently.
The initiative sometimes comes from a single municipality, such as La Pocatière, in Bas-Saint-Laurent, which hopes to launch its service by the cold season. Bike sharing could have started earlier there, had it not been for the bankruptcy last year of the bicycle supplier, the company Bewegen.
“We should receive the bikes by this fall and deploy them at the end of the fall, if not at the beginning of the spring,” says Mayor Vincent Bérubé. Three terminals will be installed in strategic areas (near the CEGEP, near the shopping centre and next to the arena). A fourth terminal will be installed during a “phase 2”, on the seafront, more intended for tourists.
Not profitable, but almost
These pilot projects are not profitable. Financial assistance from Quebec is essential to purchase these fleets of public bicycles, most of which are manufactured in Beauce.
The operating budget could be profitable if acquisition costs are ignored, according to Marie-Andrée Pichette. Her organization is also considering hiring a full-time employee to maintain its bicycle fleet.
“It’s socially profitable,” says Geneviève Dubois, for whom the municipal administration should no longer only deal with waste or snow removal. “We’ve gone elsewhere in the way we develop our municipalities. We’re offering people ways to get around differently, to live differently.”
The profitability of public transportation is a false debate, adds Magali Bebronne, program director at Vélos Québec. These bikes are a service to the population, not a business to accumulate profits. “We see it for example with the Bixi bikes in Montreal that break all their records every year. It’s because there is support from the municipality.”
It’s stuck because of the Internet
Renting an electric bike costs around $5 per trip (the first hour is free in the Nicolet-Yamaska MRC) and requires installing an application on your phone.
This is often where the mechanics of the system get stuck, since several sectors of the Gaspé, for example, have only limited access to the cellular network. Without a reliable Internet connection, it is impossible to unlock the bike. In other regions, the reliability of applications and QR codes also remains to be perfected.
Bike-sharing is booming across the continent. The number of e-bike systems has increased by 27% in North America since 2022, according to an industry review published in early August. North Americans took about 172 million trips on shared bikes or scooters in 2023, a 10% increase from the previous year. By comparison, Europe saw about 600 million trips on shared vehicles in the same year.