When telling the story of the Holocaust, one effective way to overcome our sheer inability to comprehend the scope and scale of such atrocities is to zoom in on one or two stories: share one particular experience, in all its brutal specificity, and we have at least a small way into the event—the small details illuminate the larger whole.

One theatre company from the Netherlands, Hotel Modern, takes a related approach in KAMP (CAMP). The production depicts a typical day at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but instead of zooming in into a closeup, it shrinks everything down, literally, into miniature. It’s the accumulation of thousands of small details that has the impact in this case.

Eleanor McMahon thinks it’s time to change the conversation around cycling in Ontario.

McMahon is the founder of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, who will be hosting the fifth annual Ontario Bike Summit this week in Toronto. She says that we need to stop talking about things like bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure as a zero sum game between cars and bikes.

“We do polling, and our polling tells us that 89 per cent of Ontarians are both drivers and cyclists,” she says. “The notion that it’s cars versus bikes is overblown, and it’s really not working anymore. Deciding to change the conversation means going out of our way to poke holes in that idea and say from the get go ‘We don’t buy into that philosophy, and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true.’ ”

“It should be dissolved. It’s a failure.”

—Toronto mayor Rob Ford speaking to reporters today about the future of bike-sharing program Bixi, which is facing an operating shortfall. Bixi opened in Toronto with some help from the municipal government, which guaranteed the company’s loan. On advice from staff, city council may soon look at renegotiating the terms of that loan in light of Bixi’s financial woes. As a result, several councillors are floating ideas for completely overhauling how Bixi would work: Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) wants to work with developers to create incentives for installing new bike stations, and TTC chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) wants to investigate making Bixi part of the TTC.

Photo by Mi*Li, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Yesterday, we learned that Bixi Toronto is having trouble sustaining itself financially, possibly because the bike-share system is still too small to attract a healthy user base. Now, Cycle Toronto (formerly known as the Toronto Cyclists Union) is calling on the City to resolve the problem by opening up its wallet.

The weird thing about Bixi Toronto is that the City hasn’t actually invested any significant amount of money in it. The whole system was provided by a private not-for-profit called the Public Bike System Company, which was founded as an offshoot of Montreal’s parking authority. To set up Toronto’s Bixi system, PBSC took out a $4.8 million loan, with the City as a guarantor. The idea, at the time, was that the company would pay off its own debt, mainly with user fees. There was never any money dedicated to expanding the system.

Cycle Toronto, in a press release issued earlier this morning, suggests that the best way of getting Bixi Toronto out of its financial hole is for the City to buy it by paying off the remaining debt (which would cost about $3.9 million). The City could then spend taxpayer money on expanding the geographic boundaries of system, so it could serve more users.

“It costs the City roughly $1 million for a new bus,” says the release. “For the cost of 15 buses, we can purchase the program and expand to 3,000 bikes.” There are currently 1,000.

Following through on this idea would have the added benefit of uncoupling Bixi Toronto from PBSC, which has had some financial troubles of its own. Even so, we probably don’t need to tell you that this won’t be an easy sell at City Hall. Who wants to be the first to broach the topic of publicly funded bikes with Mayor Ford?

In any case, the arrangement between the City and PBSC will have to change somehow. Right now, the City’s plans are confidential, but we should know more next month.

Photo by enedkl from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Bixi Toronto launched on May 3, 2011, to much fanfare and after much anticipation. Many residents embraced the city’s new bike-sharing program, eager to have a way to ride around without dealing with the stress of stolen wheels or finding a place to lock up.

Today, there is word coming out of City Hall that Bixi is in at least some financial trouble—though it isn’t clear yet how much, or whether this will affect the long-term viability of the program.

The details are murky right now: as is the case with all financial arrangements, many of the particulars are confidential. What we do know is that City staff issued a report today, advising that “BIXI Toronto’s current business plan is experiencing difficulty in covering its operating costs, primarily due to the cost of servicing a 100 percent debt-financed asset-base.”

This affects the municipal government because it guaranteed the loans which enabled Bixi to start up in Toronto, in the amount of $4.8 million. In order to protect the City’s financial interests, staff are outlining options for restructuring the arrangement with Bixi; those options are also confidential, however, and so we have no way of knowing just how much trouble Bixi might be in.

City staff and councillors, bound by the confidentiality of those agreements, couldn’t shed much light on the subject. “My understanding,” said Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), who is chair of the City’s public works and infrastructure committee, “is we gave them a loan guarantee and they’re borrowing money but they can’t make the payments on the loan… Council’s going to have to deal with where it wants to go forward and how it wants to move forward with the future of Bixi.” And this all may, he went on, be part of a larger issue with Bixi, which is based in Montreal; as he understands it, the central organization “has been told to divest itself of Bixi Toronto.”

Bixi officials were not immediately available to comment.

City staff were careful to emphasize that, while Bixi is facing financial problems, in terms of actual uptake and use, things have been going well: “From an operational perspective the BIXI public bicycle program has been very successful. In a very short time it has become an important part of the transportation mix in the downtown area with 4,630 paid subscribers and more than 1.3 million bicycle trips generated since the program launched. BIXI is also a key component of the transportation plan being developed for the Pan Am Games.”

Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) is a big proponent of Bixi, and says that the problem may be that the system is much smaller than it needs to be in order to hit a threshold of financial viability. “The original [City staff] report suggested that we needed to get up to a certain number of bikes and stations to make it sustainable at all, so why is this a surprise that it’s not sustainable at a third of the [size]?” He remains convinced that Toronto needs a bike-sharing system, and thinks most of his colleagues on council won’t use this financial issue as an excuse to try to shut Bixi down. “I don’t suspect that will be the case—it’s been fairly successful. A lot of tourists use it, a lot of local folks use it, so if we’re talking about trying to attract tourists and make this a city that people want to come and visit, this certainly is one of those pieces.”

When City staff first set out a vision for a bike-sharing program in Toronto, they laid out something that was much more ambitious in scale than what we ended up with. That plan [PDF] called for 3,000 bikes servicing an area that stretched from High Park in the west to Broadview in the east, and from Bloor to Lake Ontario. The agreement with Bixi, when it was eventually settled on, included a plan for the 1,000 bikes we have now as an initial phase, with an eye to expanding the system as time went on. That expansion never came.

City staff’s new report on Bixi’s finances will go to the executive committee at City Hall next week for further debate; we anticipate much of that discussion will take place behind closed doors, so it may be a while yet before we know exactly what’s in store for the bike-sharing program.

SPOTTED BY: Laurence Lui

WHERE: The Bixi Station on the south side of Front Street, along the Federal Building between Bay and Yonge streets.

WHEN: Sunday, November 25 at 8 p.m.

WHAT: Walking home last night, occasional Torontoist contributor Laurence Lui spotted this construction/cycling conflict at the main Bixi station that serves Union. As of last night, the hoarding was blocking off about half of that Bixi station, with many of the bikes there rendered inaccessible.

Spotted features interesting things our readers discover in their journeys across Toronto. If you spot something interesting, send a photo and pertinent details to tips@torontoist.com.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past twelve months. From December 12–23, the candidates for Mightiest and Meanest—and new this year, a reader’s write-in option! From December 26–29 you’ll be able to vote for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year, and we’ll reveal the results December 30.

When Bixi Toronto launched in May, we were surprised at how quickly we fell for the sturdy, practical rides that popped up at solar-powered stations across the downtown core—turns out that the bike-share system appeals to even habitual TTC users and bike owners. Stormy when you leave home? Take the TTC or a taxi, and when the sun’s shining later, you can hop on Bixi and pedal home. Planning to paint the town red? Bixi out, dock it and forget it; you won’t have to return for your wheels the next day. Your friend lacks a bike? Lend them yours, rent a Bixi bike, and away you both roll.

A recent experiment by OpenFile concluded bicycling, used in conjunction with other forms of transit, is the best way to traverse Toronto. Perfect for flexible usage, Bixi’s affordable for casual users, who can access the system for 24 hours for $5, and for dedicated users, whose $95 annual membership pays off after just 19 days of usage. This Globe & Mail infographic points to a successful start: Bixi bikes in Toronto are ridden almost three times as often daily as in Montreal. For smartphone users, bikes and empty docks are easy to find with the SpotCycle app, or Bixi’s own station map. That’s why we recommended using Bixi during Nuit Blanche, when Toronto is notoriously hard to traverse by car or the TTC.

The system isn’t perfect. Some customers complain on Facebook that the instructions are confusing; only the first 30 minutes are included. Beyond that, extra charges apply, though you only have to dock at a station for two minutes to reset the clock. We’ve seen people taking Bixi bikes on the Toronto Island ferries, and hoped they knew their credit cards would take a significant hit for several hours out (to Bixi’s credit, they often credit first-time users for their rookie mistake).

Another issue: expansion, which is crucial for attracting new subscribers. Bixi recently re-assigned lesser-used stations, as well as some they needed to remove to accommodate snow clearing, west to Bathurst Street and east to Parliament Street (from Cabbagetown to the Distillery District), resulting in a 50 per cent zone increase. But no new bikes were added; this was more of a strategic redeployment. For that, Bixi will need the support of City Hall. Financed by users and sponsors, Bixi Toronto (unlike in Montreal) isn’t looking for financial support from the City, but does require municipal approval for station placements. Future expansion also relies on the bike lane program’s progress; the Bixi bikes, built for comfort over speed, aren’t suited to jockeying in automobile traffic—they do better when you give them space.

For now, though, we still thrill to see people coasting by on a Bixi bike. This winter, we look forward to dressing in layers, hopping on a Bixi bike, and bypassing the cramped TTC rides many commuters have to endure. Care to join us for a spin?

Out of the 80 stations and 1,000 bikes that will constitute the first wave of Bixi Toronto, 50 stations and 300 bikes were activated for use yesterday. Some subscribers who might have braved the rain for a day one ride were still waiting for their keys to come, but Public Bike System Company official Gian-Carlo Crivello reassured those attending that 1,200 keys were mailed last Wednesday and will arrive soon. Among other tidbits the audience was told about the bike-share program: local employees of sponsor Desjardins are eligible for a 50 per cent discount off an annual membership; co-sponsor Telus will donate one dollar from each annual membership to the Heart and Stroke Foundation; the bikes will be maintained by Mount Dennis-based Learning Enrichment Foundation; and a smartphone application called Spotcycle will allow users to track bike availability at stations. Concerns about theft were dismissed based on the low rate of missing bikes in Montreal, but it was revealed that the bikes won’t be equipped with tracking devices.
Speaking for the City, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East)—who actually voted against the Bixi program during the last term of council—stressed the ease of use, affordable membership cost, and health benefits Bixi Toronto would bring the city, as well as pointing it out as a fine example of a public/private partnership. “For a guy like me who lives in the suburbs and has to drive downtown, you now have an opportunity to take one of these Bixi bikes to a meeting,” he noted. “You can take it to your lunch appointments—if you’re bicycling from point A to point B, it allows you to order something different on the menu because you know that you’re burning off those calories during the lunch period and afterwards.” We await future studies on the effects of Bixi Toronto on the waistlines of downtown workers.

Since media were allowed to test the bikes, we couldn’t resist trying one. We were shown the light pattern to watch out for after inserting the key into the station (flashing yellow, a pause, then green to go), then mounted the bike. After worrying that the seat was raised too high, and using our feet to break during the first awkward pedals, riding quickly became comfortable. As we did 360s in the middle of the intersection of Gould and Victoria, we noticed the bike’s smooth handling and wished we could have wandered off for a typical half-hour trek.
We also discovered how resilient the bikes are. As the crowd thinned, we wandered by a row of a dozen Bixis that weren’t tethered to a docking bay. Suddenly, there was a crashing sound. One inadvertent swing of our backpack caused the row of bikes to tumble like dominoes. They were quickly propped back up without any signs of damage. If the Bixi bikes can survive a clumsy reporter, they should handle Toronto’s roads just fine.
Photos by Remi Carreiro/Torontoist.