[asdajksah2123]

> This prevents me from renting a Bixi bicycle in Montreal.

While I suspect this is a screwup on the part of Bixi, you're making the mistake of confusing bikeshare with bike rental. Don't worry though, you're in good company, including many companies that operate bikeshare.

Bikeshare is meant to be a transportation service to get people from point A to point B. More often than not tourists don't use it that way and even when they do, they would be better served using bikes that are not part of the bikeshare system so they're able to go slower than a commuter would and enjoy the sights on the way, as well as stop randomly to checkout something that might look interesting.

Tourists are almost always better off renting a bike for a day or even a few hours than using the bikeshare system.

Many bikeshare systems would in fact be better served restricting access only to long term members.

[rerx]

I disagree. As a tourist I would usually prefer to use bike share, similarly to the systems I'm used to at home.

Getting and returning bikes at dedicated rental shops is quite a hassel, typically much more expensive, and unnecessary if I just want a simple city bike.

In fact I suspect that it's often intentional that tourists have a hard times registering for bike share systems. They would greatly impact the business of preexisting bike rental shops.

[stokesr]

While I myself am a long-term user of my local bikeshare network and more often than not see tourists renting private bikes by the day, I have to disagree with the idea of restricting access for short-term users.

It's always been super handy for when friends come to visit and we can all take the same method of transportation, and it means they can afford to park further out of town where the free car spaces are and cycle into the city centre.

[CalRobert]

Tourists also like to go from point A to point B. I use citibike in NYC when I'm a tourist for this use case.

[nicbou]

Bike rental places were driven out of business by Bixi.