BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West

With Bixi bike stations now operating in Pierrefonds-Roxboro, questions are being raised as to when the bicycle-sharing service could be expanded to other parts of the West Island.

The short answer: No time soon.

The reason is cost.

According to Ste. Anne de Bellevue Mayor Paola Hawa, the quote from Bixi to her town to provide bike-sharing stations in the village hovered around $250,000 for startup fees, plus about another $50,000 a year to maintain the service.

“We said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ ” Hawa said in an interview with The 1510 West.

“It makes no sense,” Hawa continued. “At that price, I could afford to buy each and every resident of Ste. Anne a bike.”

Questions about the prospects of expanding the Bixi network to other areas of the West Island were put to several of the region’s mayors during a recent meeting of the Agglomeration of Montreal council.

In response to one question posed at the June agglo meeting, Hawa said the bike-sharing service might be available at the Anse à l’Orme REM commuter train station when that service goes into operation later this year.

In an interview, she admitted that would only really accommodate train users who would look to use the service if they were headed to the Grand Parc de l’Ouest, where a new Bixi station was installed earlier this summer as part of the network’s expansion into the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro. It would not be practical for residents looking to get around in Ste. Anne because there would be no station to drop the bike off in the village core of the town.

For the same reason, it would not be practical for students headed to John Abbott College, she said.

Senneville Mayor Julie Brisebois also cited cost as a prohibited factor in extending the bike-sharing service into her town.

“There is a significant cost to adhere to Bixi,” Brisebois said, responding to a question during the agglomeration meeting in June. “Our small municipality has to study that very carefully.”

Hawa added that the permanent electrical infrastructure for a bike-sharing station has been installed in Place des Eau Vives, the new public greenspace on Ste. Anne Street that provides an additional access point to the waterfront boardwalk. But while the cost of extending the Bixi remains exorbitant, the town will install regular bike racks to give bicycle owners a place to park and lock their bikes.

Bixi is operated by a non-profit organization created by the City of Montreal in 2014. It took over the service after the original operator, which had introduce the service to the Montreal area filed for bankruptcy. Since that time, Bixi has expanded its network off the island, into Laval and Longueuil. It set up its first eight stations in Pierrefonds-Roxboro in June. The costs of that expansion were covered by Bixi, said Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough Mayor Jim Beis. It is not considered an agglomeration service.

It is not yet known how popular the bike-sharing service has been in Pierrefonds-Roxboro. In an interview Monday, Beis said statistics are not yet available.

“They are being used,” Beis said, referring to the rental bikes.

He explained that the borough, as part of the City of Montreal, does not incur cost for the user-pay service. But he questioned why it is not an agglomeration-wide offering.

“They have police. They have fire. They have buses. Why not?” he said, referencing all the shared services provided to demerged cities through the Agglomeration of Montreal.

“This is another example of (the central city) being short-sighted,” Beis said.

He is hoping that Bixi will add stations to the REM stations in Pierrefonds-Roxboro, but has not heard of any definitive plans to do so.

Inquiries to Bixi about possible expansion into demerged suburbs by The 1510 West have gone unanswered.