A Canadian company that equips and supplies bike-sharing systems in major cities around the world sought bankruptcy protection on Monday.
, Public Bike System Co., which owns the BIXI bike-sharing system, cited almost $50 million in debt. Bike-sharing, however, is not doomed. In fact, this method of transportation has more than doubled in the last year in the United States.聽
“I don’t think that [the news of the bankruptcy] is necessarily the death knell of bike sharing systems,” says professor of urban planning at Rutgers University John Pucher. “If you look at public transport systems, [a lack of profit] certainly has not been the death knell of public transport in the U.S.”
In the short-term, bike-share users with memberships should not be worried about seeing their stations disappear.聽, which operates most of the PBSC’s American bike-share stations,聽聽that operations will continue without interruption.
, Montreal mayor Denis Coderre assured residents that the BIXI will still be in operation this summer.
“I just see this as a chance for cities to learn鈥攚e can’t run our transportation systems like a business, it doesn’t really work that way because then we run the risk of not serving the people that need to be served,” . “I don’t see this as being a very big bump in the road for bike share.”
See the map below to see if the bike-sharing program in your city is supplied by PBSC.