TORONTO

It really is simple.

If more Torontonians put more backsides on Bixi bikes, we wouldn’t be here. Again.

News that (yet) another financial restructuring has been conjured to underwrite the future of the largely ignored bike-sharing enterprise should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody.

The plan is a debt and equity shuffle from Bell Media. It will be providing around $5-million to ease the financial load on City Hall until a new buyer and/or operator can be found for Bixi.

In return, Bell Media’s obligations to provide 20 automated public toilets under its current street furniture partnership with the city will drop to nine, of which two have already been installed.

Is that a win-win? Not if you’re a taxpayer.

In the first place, you have to wonder why City Hall wants to be involved with a losing financial venture. Don’t forget a proposal in May for the TTC to step up and take over Bixi was rejected out of hand because the numbers are so bad.

Since the communal bike-sharing scheme was launched in 2011, it has been a very expensive solution in search of a problem.

Bixi — administered by the Public Bike System Company — has struggled to meet both its debt repayment schedule and day-to-day costs.

Cold, mathematical logic reveals the dilemma.

The bikes are failing because not enough people use the service. If more people rode more bikes at more times of the day, Bixi would be a rip-roaring success. It wouldn’t need to be subsumed into an instrumentality like the Toronto Parking Authority (TPA).

Bixi just doesn’t generate the numbers to survive on its own.

Much like Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch, it has ceased to exist in the viable financial sense. It has expired, died, joined the choir invisible, shuffled off this mortal coil and is now an ex-bike share solution.

Candice Malcolm, of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says Bixi stands as an enduring example of how not to run a community transport scheme.

“Bixi sounded like a good idea at the time,” Malcolm said. “But City Hall eventually had to provide funds in the form of the start-up loan and it has never been able to meet its fiscal projections.

“Too much debt couldn’t be serviced from day one. As usual it will be the taxpayer left on the hook to set things right.

“There just isn’t the demand for the service.”

Here’s why.

Toronto’s commuters like their cars. Despite the fact that our road infrastructure is barely up to the task of moving lots of people all at the same time, we commute five days a week.

The GTA is massive. The thought of a bike commute to the downtown core is just not an option for anyone who lives in Mississauga, Vaughan or Oshawa. They drive not by choice but because they have to.

I drive, you drive, we all drive. Unless you are a member of the downtown elites who walk or take a streetcar from outside their front door there is precious little other choice.

Yes, in a perfect world we would all bike to work and back. We would also bike on weekends into the countryside and joyously commune with nature.

Families would bike together in large groups (is there a collective noun for a group of cyclists?) and we would leave our stinking cars behind.

There would be a Bixi stand at the end of every street alongside a public school, a teaching hospital, a police station, a fire hall and a playground for children.

That is not going to happen because we live in the real world.

No matter how you twist it, bike sharing like Bixi that isn’t used is just a very expensive form of outdoor advertising.

Ultimately, it gets down to user-pays: if you want a bike, good for you. Go and buy one.

Just don’t expect me to subsidize your personal choice of transport while you indulge your fantasy of saving the planet.