Bixi, now with ads

Increasingly municipal governments seem to need advertising revenue to get any public infrastructure built. Since the City of Toronto had already sold its public soul to Astral Media, it has been Councillor Adrian Heap's position that no bikesharing system could be set up in the City without Astral's help or approval, despite the fact that a bikesharing system could conceivably be operated with no advertising revenues. Any day now we should be hearing from the City what Astral Media is proposing for Toronto's bikesharing system. (Would City officials take the same position with any extension of our transit system? Unlikely. The only thing that seems to stand in the way is that the TTC is already a public entity, and that a heck of a lot of public space would need to be given up in order to pay for it all.)

This author as well as the Toronto Public Space Committee got pretty interested in Montreal's Bixi program, being implemented by the municipal government's parking authority. It looked like Montreal still thought of the public realm as public. They had also promised us that there would be no advertising revenues needed to operate Bixi, unlike similar operations such as those run by JCDecaux and Clear Channel. It would be run purely on user fees. Bixi has also garnered interest in other cities including Philadelphia, where they recently demoed their bikes. There was a chance that Toronto would take bikesharing seriously and put in a system worthy of this city.

Despite Bixi's assertions that they could operate the system without advertising revenue, they decided to slap some on anyway. According to Astral's document they've got 5 packages of 40 advertising faces for $55,000 gross per package. That comes to $275,000 gross for all advertising revenue for the entire season. That doesn't seem like all that much money coming to Astral, let alone to Bixi. I'm not sure what's the big benefit for Bixi.

At least Bixi is still a public entity and not run by an advertising company unlike in Paris where JCDecaux appears to be extorting the citizens of Paris for more money.

From Astral's website:

BIXI is Montréal's new public self-serve bike-sharing system. With 300 docking stations in six city districts, this innovative program will make nearly 3000 bicycles available to Montrealers for short trips between April and mid-November.

Astral Media Outdoor is proud to partner with BIXI to create this new green and sustainable urban advertising network. BIXI offers advertisers 200 advertising faces in the heart of the city, with more than 75% located in downtown Montréal.