Winnipeggers may soon be able to pick up a bike in the Exchange District, ride to Osborne Village and drop it off at The Forks.

Bike rental systems have already been set up in cities like Montreal and Paris. Ottawa, Boston and London, England all have plans for similar systems. City of Winnipeg officials are considering setting one up for downtown. The idea is still in its very early stages, but it already has bureaucrats and cycling advocates spinning.

David Hill, chief operating officer for the Winnipeg Parking Authority (WPA), said the idea came out of SpeakUp Winnipeg, the city’s public consultation project to help create new plans for urban growth.

Hill has watched YouTube videos of other cities’ systems and is excited to test the idea here.

“I’ve just seen these things in action and they seem to do good things for people,” he said.

A bike rental system would make people healthier and enhance the urban environment by reducing traffic congestion, he said.

Hill said the system would probably work similarly to the BIXI (“bike taxi”) system Montreal implemented earlier this summer. That system now has 5,000 bikes in 400 locations.

Users pay for a bike with their credit card at one site and drop it off at any other site. They are then billed for the time.

Each bike is equipped with a GPS tracker to prevent theft. If a bike is not returned, the user is billed for the cost of replacing the bike, which Hill said is about $4,000.

“ You wouldn’t think Winnipeg is a big biking city ... but it is.

David Hill, chief operating officer, Winnipeg Parking Authority

Over the next year, Hill plans to study where bike parking congregates. He hopes to have a proposal ready by next spring and a pilot project by next summer.

Any potential rental system is a long way off, however, said Kevin Nixon, active transportation co-ordinator for the city. He said a bike rental system has not been a big topic in his conversations with cycling advocates in the city.

“It’s certainly not on our radar, big time,” he said.

The systems are not without their problems. In Montreal, after two months, one in five bikes had been damaged and 15 per cent of bike racks were defective.

Although he hasn’t heard of any plans for Winnipeg, Bike to the Future co-chair Kevin Miller said he would support anything that encourages active transportation in the city.

“A bike rental system would be a big plus for Winnipeg,” he said. The success of any system would depend on there being a “critical mass” of users, he said.

Hill is confident there is enough support here for the system to work.

“You wouldn’t think Winnipeg is a big biking city because of the nasty weather, but it is,” he said.

Published in Volume 64, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 22, 2009)