Montreal's Bixi program offers 3,000 bikes for rent at 300 stations. (Corinne Smith/CBC)Montreal's new self-service bicycle sharing program is open for business.

The $15-million Bixi program was officially launched Tuesday at city hall, where Mayor Gérald Tremblay took the first ride.

"It was conceived and fabricated in Montreal, in Quebec," he told a crowd of onlookers gathered for the Bixi launch. "It's a unique product that should make us proud."

Three-thousand bikes are available for short-term rental around Montreal's downtown core.

The bikes, which cost $2,000 apiece, are made of aluminum and are theft-proof, according to their designers.

The bikes contain a GPS chip, and if rented and not returned will "slow down, and the brakes will lock automatically," explained Julian Joseph, a Montreal high school student who's part of a team hired by the city to repair the bike fleet.

Some 300 stations have been set up to store and pick up bikes.

Cyclists can subscribe to the service at a cost of $78 for a year, $28 for a month or $5 for a day. The first 30 minutes of each rental are free.

Bixi, a term coined from "bike" and "taxi," is modelled on bike sharing programs in Europe, most notably the Vélib network in Paris.

The city of Montreal has patented its model and hopes to sell it to other cities, Tremblay said.

The mayor said he first hopes the program will be so successful in Montreal that more bikes will be needed.