(June 6th Update: here’s a great article with what appear to be actual facts regarding the new bixi funding as opposed to my cries of corruption below. Doesn’t change my feeling regarding public advertising I still hate it just as much.)
For those of you not familiar with the Bixi program It can be summarized as a bicycle rental program. You can pay to rent bicycles for short trips or you can purchase a yearly pass at very reasonable rates.
The bixi program has been quoted as being quite successful and has since been duplicated in several other cities around the world. The bixi stations are normally located in popular areas or near the exit of metro stations. Launched in May 2009 it’s now in it’s 3rd year of operation. Due to our harsh Canadian winters the bicycles are placed into storage over the winter months. Here’s a picture of the typical bixi station courtesy of Wikipedia, taken by Yanik Crépeau. Take notice of the rear wheel:
When the bixi bicycles came of out storage this year they had something “new”. As far as I was considered the “new” feature was not an improvement. The bicycles now included corporate “advertisements” over the rear wheel “guard”.
I mentioned this fact in passing to my parents when they were visiting. I explained to them that the program itself was great but felt disappointed that they had decided to place advertisements on the actual bicycles. I also mentioned that in a town like Montreal it wouldn’t be long before the advertisements took some “abuse”.
While walking in the rain today I happened to spot one of the Bixi installations that had several of the advertisements covered:
The message loosely translates to “No to the marketing of public places”. I might of been walking in the rain, but seeing these rear guards covered with “No to the marketing of public places” was like being hit by a ray of sunshine. It was good to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt disappointed by their decision to add “corporate advertisements” to the bicycles. It was heartwarming knowing I wasn’t the only one who thought about defacing them. Defacing sounds illegal; let’s go with creatively modifying them with our own “advertising”.
I’m tired of being bombarded by advertising in public areas. I don’t condone the destruction of public property but I certainly support whoever took the time to paste these over the advertisements.
I don’t care one bit about which greedy corporate bastards paid to have their logo on the bicycles. I don’t want to see their logo, I don’t want them trying to sell me something. We get bombarded with enough advertisements on a daily basis through almost every facet of our lives. I hope these little protest spread; the program was doing fine without them, or was it?
This comes at the same time as the breaking news that the bixi program, run by a private company has just received 108 million dollars in government funding. Seriously folks, 108 million dollars in funding to run a bicycle rental program.
But don’t dare ask for a public commission into Montreal corruption…
mtl_dokkaebi
