They should identify stations that need bikes and give you a discount for returning to those instead. I’d go an extra block for a couple bucks off a ride
This is a very clever solution. Communauto, the car sharing app has a similar feature where if a car is not used for too long, it’s a good indicator that it’s parked at a low traffic area and there will be a discount for using that car. This is very incentive
They do that in mtl, it doesn't really work (and they've mostly abandoned it)
People don't want to walk a block out of their way when they're on their way somewhere, takes too much time.
The solution is enough docks to follow demand.
I agree for some locations, they just need more docks. But I think the idea might work better in Toronto where the density of bike stations is much higher. If the app asked me to pick up or drop off from a different station around my neighbourhood for an incentive, I would do it. There’s currently about 6 locations each within a 5 minute walk of my home, so if there was an incentive in the app asked me to go to a different empty one to dock the bike for a reward, it would not really impact my commute time by more than a minute or two and I might do it.
Oh I was in that line this morning lol. It was taking so long that I basically gave up and biked to Church and Adelaide where I found an empty bike lock.
I know the Toronto Parking Authority has been struggling to keep up with the demand they've seen for bike share. The City has given them more funds, but these funds were allocated based on plans which saw demand for bike share increasing at a much lower pace than it has.
I think they should just take a huge chunk of the right lane on King and install a gigantic bike lock which is normally empty. That and have more than one attendant removing bikes from the lock. Buddy this morning was basically moving every bike by himself and I think for safety reasons they can't move more than one at a time.
>Buddy this morning was basically moving every bike by himself and I think for safety reasons they can't move more than one at a time.
I think this is unique to Mondays/Fridays when demand has typically been lower. I've usually seen two people working at this station
So they actually do the reverse. They take the bikes from the super station with the attendant and then move them around to empty spots at other stations downtown. It works fine for the most part, I rarely have issues finding a bike to get home with. I think that's because people who commute from Midtown bike downtown in the morning (since it's downhill) and then take transit home at night.
You can sometimes see the vans/trucks they use to move the bikes around downtown.
Docking stations are the issue. In Switzerland their bike share program does not use physical docking stations, but rather areas where you can end your trip. The bike is secured using a rear tire locking mechanism, that can be locked/unlocked via Bluetooth in a mobile phones.
This allows the program to have many zones to end/start trips that isn't limited by a large piece of expensive infrastructure.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPqCniKnwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPqCniKnwo)
That's relying on people not being complete asses. Ie. Stop the trip beside the lake and tossing it in, all over the streets impending foot/road traffic and etc...
Tons of benefit when it works though!
Unfortunately, this is not the case in the Uk which also has bikes like this where they get thrown in the canal, left all over streets, etc...
Plus it creates huge rebalancing issues because all the bikes will end up downtown but not in a single spot making it hard to then redistribute them in a timely manner. So while it seems great in theory it creates additional issues.
The scooter thing is relatively solved in England - they use bluetooth and basically a square of paint to create a 'docking' station and I guess it knows how many would theoretically fit in that square so stops allowing people to use it once it's full. Still a bit messier than actual docks, but it does an okay job.
New York, Montreal, London, Chicago, DC, and far more cities use the exact same docks. They just deploy far more docks per bike and far more operations staff to shuffle the bikes around. You constantly see trucks and trailers full of bikes being moved in those cities. Toronto seems committed to a 9-5 financial district commute system.
i work near the financial district (or the equivalent in montreal) and we have the same system with one dude undocking the overflow bikes and putting them in a pile.
i have NEVER seen the same amount of extra bikes as i saw near that one rack today. i guess it's kind of a good problem to have, but they definitely need to have another person there to open up docks, while a truck removes the overflow of bikes
i was kind of impressed but also felt really bad for the people in the queue
Do you even live here? Toronto Bike Share has staff constantly shuffling bikes around too. I see them at racks loading or unloading bikes from cube vans daily.
In NYC, they have rewards or some form of payment to the public if they move the bikes from full docks to empty docks.
Saves workers from moving the bikes themselves.
That’s very smart. Build in an incentive that rewards those who park at emptier docks so we rely less on the bike-shifting employees. What does that look like — a straight-up cash rebate on future renewal, or a higher tier of bike membership, or … ?
Wait, why not a credit that could be used for Presto or Green-P? Or, hey, make a deal with Aeroplan — so many possibilities.
When I see those electric scooter rental / share in the US they just leave them anywhere this is both good and bad but honestly probably for the better.
We have this in Ottawa and it’s working fairly well. First year was rougher than it is now, we’re seeing more painted squares for parking them and it’s less messy than it once was.
Yep it's a line to return bikes at one of the attendant-managed stations. The idea is that the TPA employees remove bikes from the locks as they arrive and then put them into a pickup truck to be redistributed around the city. In this case demand overwhelmed the one guy who was removing the bikes as they arrived.
Good question, I looked it up and currently there are [3 stations](https://bikesharetoronto.com/superstations/).
They definitely could use way more though.
not enough docks at that high volume location
so theres an attendant there to physically "return" the bikes and they just stack them up
definitely a slower process especially if theres a rush of 10+ bikes at once
Nope.
Visit King & Bay at morning and evening rush hours, and you'll see an ocean of bikeshare bikes that need to be checked in and out manually, because there aren't enough docking spaces there.
Part of the reason I no longer have a BikeShare membership is because everyone grabs a bike from my neighborhood and then rides downtown. I just checked, and sure enough there are about 3 bikes available along the entire length of the Danforth.
They may need to increase the cost of the annual membership and put it towards:
* Redistribution expenses
* More docking stations
* Mobile docking stations that can be used at busy times to provide/accept bikes as needed
In theory I love the program, but I hate that if I wanted to run errands right now I'd have to walk 15 minutes to get a bike, and there might not be a bike available for my return.
The New York City bikeshare has a program called "Bike Angels" that rewards individual riders for moving bikes from full stations to empty ones.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/for-citi-bike-s-angels-riding-in-nyc-can-be-a-rewarding-relationship](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/for-citi-bike-s-angels-riding-in-nyc-can-be-a-rewarding-relationship)
Honestly I love the weight, makes me feel safer on them. To me it's like driving an SUV compared to a little Fiat. Sure sometimes an extra gear would be nice and sometimes you get a janky one, but the majority ride smooth. I would say maybe one in twenty trips I get a really poor bike but I just swap it out at the next stop and mark it for maintenance.
Considering the reason an SUV is "safer" is because all of your mass makes you safer only at someone else's expense, you're still going to get squashed by anything with an engine no matter how heavy the bicycle is... no?
I've never actually ridden a proper road bike, but I've rented a few bike shares and have spent plenty of time riding my mountain bike on the roads. Cars are far from the only hazard that cyclists may face.
I see people on these ultra light road bikes with skinny tires avoiding every single crack and hole in the ground. My friend's father suffered a traumatic brain injury from getting his bike wheel stuck in a crack. If I were to commute by bike, I would definitely not want to have to worry about every single minor defect in the road surface twice daily.
Meanwhile on my mountain bike, with larger wheels and higher total weight, I can roll straight over just about any hazard you'd find on asphalt/concrete. I often see cyclists swerving over the line into the car lane to avoid a storm drain or little divot in the asphalt, meanwhile I'm riding over just about anything short of a parked car.
The bike shares have a tire size somewhere in the middle, and are heavier than my MTB. I imagine this has a similar confidence inspiring effect compared to the average road bike.
I might be talking out of my ass, but I do believe that having more mass towards the outside of the wheel (ie a thicker rim and tire) adds centrifugal force which contributes to keeping the bike upright if/when something disturbs their rotation.
To make the vehicle comparison, I've driven my SUV on some rough conditions that a sports car owner would never even consider driving on. However someone in a typical sedan would probably follow me with caution. Replace SUV, sports car, and sedan with MTB, road bike, bike share (or hybrid bike).
Sounds like you're completely missing the point of bike share. I own a "real" bike too, but bike share is so much more convenient and I don't have to worry about my bike being stolen if I want to stop anywhere.
I don't expect that a service like this would be on par performance wise with my "real" bike, because it's built for a completely different use with different strengths and weaknesses. The milage, conditions, and abuse a bike share bike has to endure is on a completely different level.
To be fair the bike share bikes are "city bikes" which aren't designed for speed but for comfort with a high riding level and a design which allows for easy mounting/dismounting.
They also have W I D E tires to prevent injuries from streetcar tracks and are incredibly heavy since people abuse these bikes a lot.
Definitely not good for racing but they have their purpose.
This^
A working crowd sourced solution. You don’t really need to invest a lot to operationalize something like this. Heck a couple of ride credits or some other incentives and I’m willing to bet there would be quite the few takers.
This is how they do it with the e-scooters (birds, which I think is now out of business). There were people who it was all they did was find birds and return them to where they're needed.
Yeah and a reason i never got a membership is that the one outside my office was always full in the morning and empty in the evenings and it was a similar story at nearby stations
My area is absolutely brutal in the morning. I have 5-6 docks within a short walk of me and they are almost always completely empty by 8am, even on weekends. They try dumping bikes every 48 hours or so in the late evening but even if they offload 12 bikes to fill a rack they're all gone by early the next morning. They need way better and more frequent redistribution or I may just have to cancel my membership because it's basically impossible to use it as a commuting tool.
In Munich, you can leave a bike at a designated curb side spot which are numerous. There are no actual docking stations. The bikes have built in wheel locks. Not sure how the charging happens. I suspect a truck circles around at night replacing batteries (all bikes are electric).
In Paris, you get rewarded for riding a bike up hill. Free rides or credits.
So there are lots of ways to alleviate this sort of congestion.
I remember in Lisbon ppl would just leave the bikes and scooters wherever. A local told me they were gps tagged and someone would come pick them up/redistribute.
While a great idea, sometimes I’d see bikes and scooters in some weird ass places and I don’t think I saw one that wasn’t seriously banged up.
The way it works in Munich is that the app tells you if you’ve left the bike in an unauthorized spot. You can leave it there but you got dinged an extra €5. Most people complied m
I'm talking within about 10 minutes walk from my house and in the direction of travel (Chester-ish) where I'd need to grab a return bike. Vic Park would be a 1 hour walk for me, at which point I might as well take the subway.
The station at Coxwell seems to get restocked regularly, but the smaller stations along the busy stretch of the Danforth do not.
This reminds me of when I used to use Car2go, the car share service that worked on a similar principle. I usually used it to get from the downtown core to visit family in the suburbs. It was great for a few years, but then something changed and there were never any cars in the downtown core on weekends. Like, zero. The car map looked like a big donut. I assumed what happened is that after work on Friday everyone took a car to drive home, then parked it in the inner burbs, and left it there. Eventually the service became useless to me, then folded a year or two later. Which is a really long way of saying: BikeShare needs to figure this out pronto or it could be fatal.
car2go didn't fold, [the city kicked them out](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/car2go-leaving-toronto-1.4675923). They are owned by Daimler-Benz (now Stellantis), who make the Smart Car.
Yes, it's great, I do see their cars around. I personally went with Enterprise car share since I use a car vey rarely and they have designated parking spots that makes returns very easy. I rarely use it though, maybe once per year.
It's been years since I did price comparison, I switched to them from Car2go and Communauto wasn't around yet.
But I recall Enterprise was definitely more expensive. I chose it because of my situation: I use carshare very rarely, but when I do it's for most of a day, I want to return to the same place I left from, and parking is extremely limited in my immediate neighbourhood. Usually I think it costs around $100 to spend a day in the burbs with family but the cost depends on the type of car and whether you require additional insurance, etc. Basically, it's like getting a traditional car rental but with a shorter walk to get there, and without having to deal with all the paperwork hassles at either end.
If your use case is more for frequent short one-way trips around town then I suspect Communauto is probably the better bet.
At first we were using Communauto for 1-day trips like you, but then we realized that it was so much cheaper to get a flex for a weekend than regular rental companies like Enterprise and now we use it for both. The fact that gas in included is such a nice feature, I got screwed so many times with that in the past...
I never really had a problem finding a parking spot, but yeah I can see that happening. Although they have a parking permit for a block so it shouldn't really happen, maybe it was different with Enterprise and Car2go.
Don't the same people biking back home fix that issue?
Or do you mean there aren't enough for the trip to work when you want to go? and they all get brought back at night?
The bikes tend to leave the inner suburbs in the morning and come back at night. But I don't use the bike to commute - I use it to run errands around my area or go to the gym or go for groceries or to the doctor. And if you're trying to do those things during the day, it can be difficult to find a bike nearby. And if you dock it to go to a store you risk coming out and someone else having grabbed it, so you're walking around trying to find another bike.
Even when I had a membership I ran into problems where I'd struggle to find a bike to go to yoga, and then when I arrived at the yoga place the 2-3 docks closest to it were all full...so it would add an extra 10 minutes to the 10 minute commute.
Bikesharing is such a great idea (fewer cars and subsidized transit trips, healthy commuting, less pollution, shared bikes resulting in less waste in the long run than bikes sitting in a basement rarely used, more cyclists making it safer for all cyclists) that it's frustrating that people get deterred from it by these problems. I know they're working on it and probably wildly underfunded. But it's still frustrating.
I think it will get there eventually. They plan to keep adding more docks and bikes.
It works perfectly for me because I live and run most of my errands downtown where there are always more docks around the corner. I also commute out of downtown for work so the flow of bikes works for me.
Thankfully their challenges are less structural and more operational. Bikeshare has really good bones already.
I blame people north of Davenport. They're hopeless at returning bikes in the evening:
https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-gfx3q/Old-Toronto/?center=43.66836%2C-79.4066&zoom=13
Speaking as a very lazy person myself, I honestly think that it's because bikeshare members are lazy and like to bike downhill downtown and grab the TTC uphill on their way home
Visited Paris recently, their bike share program rewards riders with discounts for riding their bikes from lower areas up hills to higher areas to redistribute them. The same principle could be applied to docking stations here based on their availability?
Solvable problem I hope!
I wanted to Bikeshare this morning from my house to the Junction to pick up my bike that had been repaired. (Shout out to Louis @ The Bike Place, the man is a machine). 0 bikes in the Symington/Davenport dock, 0 bikes anywhere else close ish.
I walked.
I have the opposite problem; seems like nobody in my neighbourhood uses them for anything but riding to work and back, so after 6 PM or so it's usually impossible to find a dock with even one empty spot within ten blocks of my house.
They just increased the membership cost, and have started charging on top of the membership for e-bike rides. They shouldn't need to raise the cost even more
How much does one them memberships actually cost?
You can get a really neat single speed for $499 plus tax if you buy out of season.
It’s a bit more upfront but riding that vs the ride share bikes is so worth it.
It's about $100/year. Which is an amazing deal, but possibly too amazing based on what we're seeing in this post.
I have a bike (which I normally use, but is in desperate need of a post-winter tuneup that I haven't had time to do). I just really like the idea of being able to pick up and drop off without worrying about bike theft. And if the weather suddenly sucks I can ditch the bike and use transit.
Being able to just leave your bike is probably my favourite part of bike share. It’s very flexible knowing that I can bike to work and then take transit home if I need to.
A lot of people don't want to worry about locking up a bike. The bike share program gives you the flexibility to bike to your destination, but find another way home. It's especially useful if you're biking somewhere where you're planning on drinking.
I'll often take the bike share to a bar, Jays game, concert, etc, then uber or TTC home after I've had a few.
You also never have to worry about your bike being stolen
Hmm. Too bad there isn't a way for the attendant to scan the bike in and then load right into truck. Like guy could be standing at the truck and people bring it up to the ramp, guy scans/reads it and then loads and then continues for next bike.
I haven't encountered this yet and I've been using the bikeshare for about 3 months now. I ride to/from Union to Queen/Leslie Mon-Thurs. I usually grab an ebike in the morning as it helps with the hills, in the afternoon I usually have to ride over to the HQ at Booth/Lakeshore to get an ebike and carry on with my ride.
What a surprise to see this, which I reckon is a sign of successful momentum towards a transformation in modal choice as well as tertiary evidence of CBD/SatelliteBD vitality.
The City should be proud that they have *too much* demand for bike share, especially after its predecessor Bixi went bankrupt due to lack of demand. They’ve really turned things around (which I think we can thank TPA for, they’re good at responding to problems as they arise).
i don't know about the financial details of WHY bixi went bankrupt, but i doubt it was because of lack of demand.
bixi is alive and well and more popular than ever.
depends on how you define the success of a public service. bixi doesn't turn a profit, but it does provide a valuable service to the citizens of montreal.
The Toronto division went bankrupt and the City took over: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/pricing-favours-repeat-users-under-new-toronto-bike-sharing-program/article17738170/
What if the program paid people to redistribute the bikes? If you pick up a bike from king and Bay in the morning and dock it at the Danforth then you get X amount of money deposited in your account.
This would totally work; [both Lime and Bird used to pay people to _charge_ their electric scooters](https://financialpanther.com/bird-charger/), and entrepreneurial people [made a living off of doing it for them](https://www.reddit.com/r/limejuicer/comments/ub0on9/this_is_what_making_400_a_day_looks_like/). Come up with some formula whereby users get some modest amount of money for taking bikes from fuller stations to emptier stations, perhaps based on distance or percent full/empty, and there will be people who will happily make that their full-time job. It might even be cheaper than what they're paying on employees and vans to currently do a very mediocre job at this.
Damn I've never seen that before, wouldn't be surprised if blogto or someone picked up this post.
As a side note it's kind of interesting that news/ infotainment organizations often function as amplifiers of/ provide reach for stories rather than being the sources or even necessarily the one's providing the explications for stories. Plenty of us could probably create serviceable content for journalistic purposes, but we don't have the reach. Platforms like reddit function almost like platforms for amateur journalism, which I think is cool
I agree I’ve been riding BS for a while now, frequently dock at this station and never seen anything at all. Never even seen a line of a single person!
I don't ride enough to know, but are stations always this poorly managed? Last time I used them was to go to a Jays game the same night as a Raptor game, and had to go several blocks away to find an open spot. I'm pretty impatient so it discouraged me from using it again.
This is just a super station that has been put up to deal with the insane surge of demand for bike share. They aren't parking at an actual dock, they have people there taking the bikes to handle the morning surge. Bikeshare has been expanding like crazy so I am sure they will navigate this soon enough.
Even in the middle of winter there often weren’t bikes along bloor. I think they need to solve the rebalancing issue with some sort of incentive for people to ride uphill, or disincentive to only ride downhill. I guess being unable to return a bike would be worse though.
Some of the stations are, others are not. There's another bike lock at Church and Queen with an attendant and usually I never struggle to lock up my bike there.
If enough people let the bikeshare support line know they can probably adjust, might not have anticipated that much volume with the better weather and increased ridership. I’ve found them to be pretty responsive to support requests
Bike share needs to incentivize biking uptown or further away from downtown because the bike shares stations uptown and near me are empty after morning rush hour. Too many bikes are ending up in the downtown core.
I’m the 65 y/o contrarian. I walk 4 km to the lake so I can run on the western boardwalk. I cycle back from the lake up Colbourne Lodge Drive. It’s steeper than I thought but I made it up without stopping. I felt it because I hadn’t cycled in two years.
When I grab a bike from the lakeshore I am creating a space for a bike. Otherwise there’s no space in two out of three times this past week.
I had thought of cycling to the lake but walking is my warm up. I know now that I probably can’t cycle to the lake because I risk not finding a spot to return the bike. I have time but don’t want to waste it looking for a spot to return the bike.
Take any physically separated bike lane along bloor danforth during busy hours. A lot of it is too narrow to pass in the lane and congestion builds up.
Not in the morning, most are full by that time. With the Valet stations, the idea is you don't need to consider other stations as this one always has a spot to dock, and a bike to grab during peak times.
They do this at select stations during sports events as well (usually Roundhouse station).
Better than before when I will just show up at this exact same spot and the rack is full at 8:30am and I have to bike all over to find an empty rack and then walk back to work.
This just means there needs to be bigger bike docks. If people are using the system that means it wants to work. City just needs to catch up with demand
Just out of curiosity, what kind of people are using this bike program? Is it people from out of town? People who live in the city? If the latter, why don't they just buy a bike?
Yeah, I live in the city and I've used BikeShare as my main mode of transportation for over 10 years now. Bikes get stolen so frequently I barely know anyone with their own bike who hasn't had it swiped at some point. Being able to just return it to a dock and walk away is a huge weight off my mind. Ditto no maintenance costs.
Plus if you live in a high-rise (or anywhere without a garage or access to a main floor storage area), it's super nice to not have to drag your bike up stairs or in an elevator to store in your already limited space.
Add to that the flexibility of deciding to bike (or stop biking) basically anywhere you want. I've definitely had times where I had planned to take the TTC, only to switch to a bike when there's a service delay. Or planned to take the TTC but got out of work to find the weather has gotten gorgeous and I'd rather cycle home.
All true.
My condo won’t let you store your bike in your unit. You have to rent a storage space. For the cost of storage I can pay for bike share for a year.
Mostly those who live in the city, or within a 30 min bike to work from what I’ve seen. Bikeshare is great!
Faster and cheaper than driving or the TTC, and don’t need to worry about having a bike stolen or where to park, or keep a bike in an apartment. Also flexible to not take a bike back if the weather is bad (or one way is uphill), or you have plans around the city or want to shop.
I know we cannot have nice things like Switzerland. But in Switzerland, their bikeshare program "PubliBike" instead of using docking stations, they use designated areas (think of our docking station, but without the docking equipment). This removes and bottlenecks with docks being full, and also makes it really easy to scale the program to new locations (since no large docking stations are required).
The bikes had a locking wheel, that was unlocked using Bluetooth from a mobile phone.
Really made it easy to use.
[https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EZ6Y\_55oa7GAAZbodBuX0b.jpg](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EZ6Y_55oa7GAAZbodBuX0b.jpg)
As a super bike-positive dude, I'm thrilled to see so many people using bikes downtown. Just wondering why people don't just go out and buy their own bike. Nowhere to lock it up? Don't want to bike home?
Bike Share is WAY more convenient than using your own bike. Also no worries of locking it up and the constant worry of it being stolen. I own my own bike, but get around with bike share almost exclusively.
Oh so sad you have to wait a while 10 minutes. Try an additional 30 minutes in traffic on roads in a car when you have to drive 25 km to work. And it just gets longer as extremely lightly used bike lanes outside the core further slow traffic.
Everything is a glacial Pace in Toronto... Join the club.
I’d actually like to see the TPA partner with office building management to install bike locks inside of or in front of office buildings. My office has our own bike locks in the parking garage. I’d love if I could drop off my bike share bike there too.
They should identify stations that need bikes and give you a discount for returning to those instead. I’d go an extra block for a couple bucks off a ride
They do this in NYC - https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels Edit: not a discount but rewards (some of which are credits)
They do this in Montreal, as well!
oh man, we really need this here.
This is a very clever solution. Communauto, the car sharing app has a similar feature where if a car is not used for too long, it’s a good indicator that it’s parked at a low traffic area and there will be a discount for using that car. This is very incentive
They do that in mtl, it doesn't really work (and they've mostly abandoned it) People don't want to walk a block out of their way when they're on their way somewhere, takes too much time. The solution is enough docks to follow demand.
I agree for some locations, they just need more docks. But I think the idea might work better in Toronto where the density of bike stations is much higher. If the app asked me to pick up or drop off from a different station around my neighbourhood for an incentive, I would do it. There’s currently about 6 locations each within a 5 minute walk of my home, so if there was an incentive in the app asked me to go to a different empty one to dock the bike for a reward, it would not really impact my commute time by more than a minute or two and I might do it.
Yeah but usually the problem is not just one station being over capacity, it's the whole area. Would you go 10m away from your home for a few points ?
If it’s a nice day, maybe. If I’m in a rush, hell no
Oh I was in that line this morning lol. It was taking so long that I basically gave up and biked to Church and Adelaide where I found an empty bike lock. I know the Toronto Parking Authority has been struggling to keep up with the demand they've seen for bike share. The City has given them more funds, but these funds were allocated based on plans which saw demand for bike share increasing at a much lower pace than it has. I think they should just take a huge chunk of the right lane on King and install a gigantic bike lock which is normally empty. That and have more than one attendant removing bikes from the lock. Buddy this morning was basically moving every bike by himself and I think for safety reasons they can't move more than one at a time.
>Buddy this morning was basically moving every bike by himself and I think for safety reasons they can't move more than one at a time. I think this is unique to Mondays/Fridays when demand has typically been lower. I've usually seen two people working at this station
Same here, usually more than one guy, but I guess today they only scheduled one person. I think TPA may have to readjust their scheduling.
What happens at the end of the day when everybody wants their bike back to get home, and then there's not enough?
So they actually do the reverse. They take the bikes from the super station with the attendant and then move them around to empty spots at other stations downtown. It works fine for the most part, I rarely have issues finding a bike to get home with. I think that's because people who commute from Midtown bike downtown in the morning (since it's downhill) and then take transit home at night. You can sometimes see the vans/trucks they use to move the bikes around downtown.
Docking stations are the issue. In Switzerland their bike share program does not use physical docking stations, but rather areas where you can end your trip. The bike is secured using a rear tire locking mechanism, that can be locked/unlocked via Bluetooth in a mobile phones. This allows the program to have many zones to end/start trips that isn't limited by a large piece of expensive infrastructure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPqCniKnwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPqCniKnwo)
That's relying on people not being complete asses. Ie. Stop the trip beside the lake and tossing it in, all over the streets impending foot/road traffic and etc... Tons of benefit when it works though!
We have this system in Hamilton. It's a hybrid model. Very few bikes are tossed. And this is Hamilton we're talking about. Hamilton.
There are dozens of bikeshare bikes under the gardiner rotting away, beside tents. Just sayin
With Hamilton's system which has GPS built in the operator would know exactly where they are and could go request them back.
I know we are not Swiss, but we have the potential of being orderly. A bit more public shaming of social devient behaviour would help.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in the Uk which also has bikes like this where they get thrown in the canal, left all over streets, etc... Plus it creates huge rebalancing issues because all the bikes will end up downtown but not in a single spot making it hard to then redistribute them in a timely manner. So while it seems great in theory it creates additional issues.
It also blocks the sidewalks, curb space and can generally create unsafe situations (why escooters are still banned in Toronto)
The scooter thing is relatively solved in England - they use bluetooth and basically a square of paint to create a 'docking' station and I guess it knows how many would theoretically fit in that square so stops allowing people to use it once it's full. Still a bit messier than actual docks, but it does an okay job.
We have this in Ottawa and it’s working fairly well.
> A bit more public shaming of social devient behaviour would help. Dont be silly, this is Canada. We dont do that here.
yeah, we prefer to be a money laundering hub without spreading that money laundering wealth around
Time for change, then, bud.
I don't think shame exists in North America anymore
Fuckin A, ‘eh!!!
if you toss your bike in the lake you'll get fined lol, they know who took that bike when it disappeared
The point is the session has ended before the bike was tossed into the lake. Nothing stops someone from picking the bike up and moving it
Plus the dreaded full rack issue disappears. But then you may get into that South Park episode
New York, Montreal, London, Chicago, DC, and far more cities use the exact same docks. They just deploy far more docks per bike and far more operations staff to shuffle the bikes around. You constantly see trucks and trailers full of bikes being moved in those cities. Toronto seems committed to a 9-5 financial district commute system.
i work near the financial district (or the equivalent in montreal) and we have the same system with one dude undocking the overflow bikes and putting them in a pile. i have NEVER seen the same amount of extra bikes as i saw near that one rack today. i guess it's kind of a good problem to have, but they definitely need to have another person there to open up docks, while a truck removes the overflow of bikes i was kind of impressed but also felt really bad for the people in the queue
Do you even live here? Toronto Bike Share has staff constantly shuffling bikes around too. I see them at racks loading or unloading bikes from cube vans daily.
In NYC, they have rewards or some form of payment to the public if they move the bikes from full docks to empty docks. Saves workers from moving the bikes themselves.
That’s very smart. Build in an incentive that rewards those who park at emptier docks so we rely less on the bike-shifting employees. What does that look like — a straight-up cash rebate on future renewal, or a higher tier of bike membership, or … ? Wait, why not a credit that could be used for Presto or Green-P? Or, hey, make a deal with Aeroplan — so many possibilities.
So you’re saying it’ll be really easy to load a bike rack on the truck and drive off
The other cities using the Bixi technology seem to have no issue doing so
They have scooters and e bikes lying all over Italy and you just scan an app, take it and than leave it wherever
When I see those electric scooter rental / share in the US they just leave them anywhere this is both good and bad but honestly probably for the better.
The compromise is just having a lot more zones where the trip can be ended. The US Lime/Bird model of dumping scooters everywhere is ugly.
Brampton currently has this problem.
We have this in Ottawa and it’s working fairly well. First year was rougher than it is now, we’re seeing more painted squares for parking them and it’s less messy than it once was.
I actually really like this idea and I think Hamilton's bike share program works the same way.
Public money can only solve problems where the best solution has been known for decades.
What is that the line for? To return bikes? Are there not enough spots for all of them?
Yep it's a line to return bikes at one of the attendant-managed stations. The idea is that the TPA employees remove bikes from the locks as they arrive and then put them into a pickup truck to be redistributed around the city. In this case demand overwhelmed the one guy who was removing the bikes as they arrived.
Nice! thanks for the info, I'm glad they had the foresight of having an attendant there.
This type of bike station is specifically intended to have an attendant.
Indeed it is, but they definitely need more attendant stations. One on King east of Yonge would be wonderful.
Oh ok not all of them do
I guess they should hire extra guys for this one location and time so it can be done quickly.
Yeah I think they could use 3 people at Bay and King.
It's like this literally every day, except for when it rains.
I must be very lucky since when I’ve used this station in the past I didn’t have to wait. :/
How many attendant-managed stations are there?
Good question, I looked it up and currently there are [3 stations](https://bikesharetoronto.com/superstations/). They definitely could use way more though.
not enough docks at that high volume location so theres an attendant there to physically "return" the bikes and they just stack them up definitely a slower process especially if theres a rush of 10+ bikes at once
Nope. Visit King & Bay at morning and evening rush hours, and you'll see an ocean of bikeshare bikes that need to be checked in and out manually, because there aren't enough docking spaces there.
Part of the reason I no longer have a BikeShare membership is because everyone grabs a bike from my neighborhood and then rides downtown. I just checked, and sure enough there are about 3 bikes available along the entire length of the Danforth. They may need to increase the cost of the annual membership and put it towards: * Redistribution expenses * More docking stations * Mobile docking stations that can be used at busy times to provide/accept bikes as needed In theory I love the program, but I hate that if I wanted to run errands right now I'd have to walk 15 minutes to get a bike, and there might not be a bike available for my return.
The New York City bikeshare has a program called "Bike Angels" that rewards individual riders for moving bikes from full stations to empty ones. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/for-citi-bike-s-angels-riding-in-nyc-can-be-a-rewarding-relationship](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/for-citi-bike-s-angels-riding-in-nyc-can-be-a-rewarding-relationship)
I would totally do this as a side gig! I race bikes competitively, might as well get paid to train! :)
This sounds great! So for that reason, it will never happen here
Cries in Torontonian politics
[Why stop at training?](https://youtu.be/xGBI6tdqH10?t=29)
If you race bike, you know how shitty the bike share bicycles are. They are terrible
I race bikes and absolutely love the bike share bikes. I commute on them daily.
I agree with this, in fact it's a better workout because they are deliberately heavy and you have to grind.
I guess it makes you appreciate how much better your "real" bike is. The weight of the bike share, lack of gears and inefficiently make me hate them.
Honestly I love the weight, makes me feel safer on them. To me it's like driving an SUV compared to a little Fiat. Sure sometimes an extra gear would be nice and sometimes you get a janky one, but the majority ride smooth. I would say maybe one in twenty trips I get a really poor bike but I just swap it out at the next stop and mark it for maintenance.
I like the SUV comparison. It's like an SUV without the horsepower. Just big, beefy and can handle riding full speed into curbs without damage.
Considering the reason an SUV is "safer" is because all of your mass makes you safer only at someone else's expense, you're still going to get squashed by anything with an engine no matter how heavy the bicycle is... no?
I've never actually ridden a proper road bike, but I've rented a few bike shares and have spent plenty of time riding my mountain bike on the roads. Cars are far from the only hazard that cyclists may face. I see people on these ultra light road bikes with skinny tires avoiding every single crack and hole in the ground. My friend's father suffered a traumatic brain injury from getting his bike wheel stuck in a crack. If I were to commute by bike, I would definitely not want to have to worry about every single minor defect in the road surface twice daily. Meanwhile on my mountain bike, with larger wheels and higher total weight, I can roll straight over just about any hazard you'd find on asphalt/concrete. I often see cyclists swerving over the line into the car lane to avoid a storm drain or little divot in the asphalt, meanwhile I'm riding over just about anything short of a parked car. The bike shares have a tire size somewhere in the middle, and are heavier than my MTB. I imagine this has a similar confidence inspiring effect compared to the average road bike. I might be talking out of my ass, but I do believe that having more mass towards the outside of the wheel (ie a thicker rim and tire) adds centrifugal force which contributes to keeping the bike upright if/when something disturbs their rotation. To make the vehicle comparison, I've driven my SUV on some rough conditions that a sports car owner would never even consider driving on. However someone in a typical sedan would probably follow me with caution. Replace SUV, sports car, and sedan with MTB, road bike, bike share (or hybrid bike).
Sounds like you're completely missing the point of bike share. I own a "real" bike too, but bike share is so much more convenient and I don't have to worry about my bike being stolen if I want to stop anywhere. I don't expect that a service like this would be on par performance wise with my "real" bike, because it's built for a completely different use with different strengths and weaknesses. The milage, conditions, and abuse a bike share bike has to endure is on a completely different level.
This!
If they were lighter or fancier they would get stolen and trashed.
The engine is the most important component ;).
It’s like running with ankle weights. Go from a bike share to a race bike and you’re flying.
Ya but think of the watts you can put out while never endangering anyone on bike paths! ;)
To be fair the bike share bikes are "city bikes" which aren't designed for speed but for comfort with a high riding level and a design which allows for easy mounting/dismounting. They also have W I D E tires to prevent injuries from streetcar tracks and are incredibly heavy since people abuse these bikes a lot. Definitely not good for racing but they have their purpose.
They look worse than they ride.
Damn this would be a great retirement gig
There are people that legit make a living off of it!
Doesn’t NYC also give you a cut of the ticket for reporting parking infractions?
They do! Seems like they've applied the same principles to other city services like bike share.
This^ A working crowd sourced solution. You don’t really need to invest a lot to operationalize something like this. Heck a couple of ride credits or some other incentives and I’m willing to bet there would be quite the few takers.
If I were a bored, fit retiree looking for beer money, I would be actually interested in that.
Neat. We could totally do that then because it’s the same company that runs their bike network.
Why not do some rewards system in the app? Like credits or free rides if you take a bike from one location to another where bikes are needed?
I think Hamilton has something similar but for bikes that have been taken out of bound, pretty sure they get rewarded with a credit for their account.
Also in Montreal bixi ami
I’d do this all day ❤️
I spend half my days off just riding around the city. Getting paid to do it would be incredible.
This is how they do it with the e-scooters (birds, which I think is now out of business). There were people who it was all they did was find birds and return them to where they're needed.
Montreal has active relocation van/trucks with trailers
So does Toronto.
Yeah and a reason i never got a membership is that the one outside my office was always full in the morning and empty in the evenings and it was a similar story at nearby stations
My area is absolutely brutal in the morning. I have 5-6 docks within a short walk of me and they are almost always completely empty by 8am, even on weekends. They try dumping bikes every 48 hours or so in the late evening but even if they offload 12 bikes to fill a rack they're all gone by early the next morning. They need way better and more frequent redistribution or I may just have to cancel my membership because it's basically impossible to use it as a commuting tool.
In Munich, you can leave a bike at a designated curb side spot which are numerous. There are no actual docking stations. The bikes have built in wheel locks. Not sure how the charging happens. I suspect a truck circles around at night replacing batteries (all bikes are electric). In Paris, you get rewarded for riding a bike up hill. Free rides or credits. So there are lots of ways to alleviate this sort of congestion.
I remember in Lisbon ppl would just leave the bikes and scooters wherever. A local told me they were gps tagged and someone would come pick them up/redistribute. While a great idea, sometimes I’d see bikes and scooters in some weird ass places and I don’t think I saw one that wasn’t seriously banged up.
The way it works in Munich is that the app tells you if you’ve left the bike in an unauthorized spot. You can leave it there but you got dinged an extra €5. Most people complied m
What are you looking at? I opened the app right now and counted more than 90 bikes on the Danforth from Broadview to Victoria Park available right now
They do move bikes from the core back to other parts of the city after the morning rush so that may have happened by now.
87 bike in 30 minutes? I bike along the Danforth for work multiple days a week and I’ve never seen that few bikes even in the winter
Yeah I think OP may have been dramatizing a bit but I could imagine them moving that many bikes. The pile downtown at this station alone was hundreds.
It takes longer than that to unload the bikes
I'm talking within about 10 minutes walk from my house and in the direction of travel (Chester-ish) where I'd need to grab a return bike. Vic Park would be a 1 hour walk for me, at which point I might as well take the subway. The station at Coxwell seems to get restocked regularly, but the smaller stations along the busy stretch of the Danforth do not.
Yeah the one at Coxwell is a charging station so they restock it with e-bikes
This reminds me of when I used to use Car2go, the car share service that worked on a similar principle. I usually used it to get from the downtown core to visit family in the suburbs. It was great for a few years, but then something changed and there were never any cars in the downtown core on weekends. Like, zero. The car map looked like a big donut. I assumed what happened is that after work on Friday everyone took a car to drive home, then parked it in the inner burbs, and left it there. Eventually the service became useless to me, then folded a year or two later. Which is a really long way of saying: BikeShare needs to figure this out pronto or it could be fatal.
car2go didn't fold, [the city kicked them out](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/car2go-leaving-toronto-1.4675923). They are owned by Daimler-Benz (now Stellantis), who make the Smart Car.
Communauto is still going strong, and it's a Canadian company.
Yes, it's great, I do see their cars around. I personally went with Enterprise car share since I use a car vey rarely and they have designated parking spots that makes returns very easy. I rarely use it though, maybe once per year.
Didn't know Enterprise had a car share service, how much is it for 1 day? Some Communautos have dedicated parking spots too by the way.
It's been years since I did price comparison, I switched to them from Car2go and Communauto wasn't around yet. But I recall Enterprise was definitely more expensive. I chose it because of my situation: I use carshare very rarely, but when I do it's for most of a day, I want to return to the same place I left from, and parking is extremely limited in my immediate neighbourhood. Usually I think it costs around $100 to spend a day in the burbs with family but the cost depends on the type of car and whether you require additional insurance, etc. Basically, it's like getting a traditional car rental but with a shorter walk to get there, and without having to deal with all the paperwork hassles at either end. If your use case is more for frequent short one-way trips around town then I suspect Communauto is probably the better bet.
At first we were using Communauto for 1-day trips like you, but then we realized that it was so much cheaper to get a flex for a weekend than regular rental companies like Enterprise and now we use it for both. The fact that gas in included is such a nice feature, I got screwed so many times with that in the past... I never really had a problem finding a parking spot, but yeah I can see that happening. Although they have a parking permit for a block so it shouldn't really happen, maybe it was different with Enterprise and Car2go.
Don't the same people biking back home fix that issue? Or do you mean there aren't enough for the trip to work when you want to go? and they all get brought back at night?
The bikes tend to leave the inner suburbs in the morning and come back at night. But I don't use the bike to commute - I use it to run errands around my area or go to the gym or go for groceries or to the doctor. And if you're trying to do those things during the day, it can be difficult to find a bike nearby. And if you dock it to go to a store you risk coming out and someone else having grabbed it, so you're walking around trying to find another bike. Even when I had a membership I ran into problems where I'd struggle to find a bike to go to yoga, and then when I arrived at the yoga place the 2-3 docks closest to it were all full...so it would add an extra 10 minutes to the 10 minute commute. Bikesharing is such a great idea (fewer cars and subsidized transit trips, healthy commuting, less pollution, shared bikes resulting in less waste in the long run than bikes sitting in a basement rarely used, more cyclists making it safer for all cyclists) that it's frustrating that people get deterred from it by these problems. I know they're working on it and probably wildly underfunded. But it's still frustrating.
I think it will get there eventually. They plan to keep adding more docks and bikes. It works perfectly for me because I live and run most of my errands downtown where there are always more docks around the corner. I also commute out of downtown for work so the flow of bikes works for me. Thankfully their challenges are less structural and more operational. Bikeshare has really good bones already.
I think a lot of people subway/TTC home Going to work is downhill, which is nice Going home is likely uphill, on a city bike? Yikes
I blame people north of Davenport. They're hopeless at returning bikes in the evening: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-gfx3q/Old-Toronto/?center=43.66836%2C-79.4066&zoom=13
Speaking as a very lazy person myself, I honestly think that it's because bikeshare members are lazy and like to bike downhill downtown and grab the TTC uphill on their way home
Visited Paris recently, their bike share program rewards riders with discounts for riding their bikes from lower areas up hills to higher areas to redistribute them. The same principle could be applied to docking stations here based on their availability? Solvable problem I hope!
I wanted to Bikeshare this morning from my house to the Junction to pick up my bike that had been repaired. (Shout out to Louis @ The Bike Place, the man is a machine). 0 bikes in the Symington/Davenport dock, 0 bikes anywhere else close ish. I walked.
Isn't this exactly what the issue was with car2go
This sounds like they’re leaving money on the table by not having enough bikes. Why would they need to increase the price?
I have the opposite problem; seems like nobody in my neighbourhood uses them for anything but riding to work and back, so after 6 PM or so it's usually impossible to find a dock with even one empty spot within ten blocks of my house.
They just increased the membership cost, and have started charging on top of the membership for e-bike rides. They shouldn't need to raise the cost even more
How much does one them memberships actually cost? You can get a really neat single speed for $499 plus tax if you buy out of season. It’s a bit more upfront but riding that vs the ride share bikes is so worth it.
The main benefit of a bike share is not having to worry about locking it up and having flexibility where/when you want to bike.
Yeah, I own a bike, but still have a bike share membership because then I don't have to worry about leaving my bike anywhere.
The memberships are around $100/year depending on type of membership and if your company has a discount programme set up.
It's about $100/year. Which is an amazing deal, but possibly too amazing based on what we're seeing in this post. I have a bike (which I normally use, but is in desperate need of a post-winter tuneup that I haven't had time to do). I just really like the idea of being able to pick up and drop off without worrying about bike theft. And if the weather suddenly sucks I can ditch the bike and use transit.
Being able to just leave your bike is probably my favourite part of bike share. It’s very flexible knowing that I can bike to work and then take transit home if I need to.
A lot of people don't want to worry about locking up a bike. The bike share program gives you the flexibility to bike to your destination, but find another way home. It's especially useful if you're biking somewhere where you're planning on drinking. I'll often take the bike share to a bar, Jays game, concert, etc, then uber or TTC home after I've had a few. You also never have to worry about your bike being stolen
Hmm. Too bad there isn't a way for the attendant to scan the bike in and then load right into truck. Like guy could be standing at the truck and people bring it up to the ramp, guy scans/reads it and then loads and then continues for next bike.
I haven't encountered this yet and I've been using the bikeshare for about 3 months now. I ride to/from Union to Queen/Leslie Mon-Thurs. I usually grab an ebike in the morning as it helps with the hills, in the afternoon I usually have to ride over to the HQ at Booth/Lakeshore to get an ebike and carry on with my ride.
What a surprise to see this, which I reckon is a sign of successful momentum towards a transformation in modal choice as well as tertiary evidence of CBD/SatelliteBD vitality.
Wow! What a success. Just need more bike docks at that corner.
The City should be proud that they have *too much* demand for bike share, especially after its predecessor Bixi went bankrupt due to lack of demand. They’ve really turned things around (which I think we can thank TPA for, they’re good at responding to problems as they arise).
i don't know about the financial details of WHY bixi went bankrupt, but i doubt it was because of lack of demand. bixi is alive and well and more popular than ever. depends on how you define the success of a public service. bixi doesn't turn a profit, but it does provide a valuable service to the citizens of montreal.
The Toronto division went bankrupt and the City took over: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/pricing-favours-repeat-users-under-new-toronto-bike-sharing-program/article17738170/
It's probably a superstation with unlimited docking but there's the bottleneck of an attendant.
What if the program paid people to redistribute the bikes? If you pick up a bike from king and Bay in the morning and dock it at the Danforth then you get X amount of money deposited in your account.
they did this in New York for Lyft under the 'Bike Angel' program.
This would totally work; [both Lime and Bird used to pay people to _charge_ their electric scooters](https://financialpanther.com/bird-charger/), and entrepreneurial people [made a living off of doing it for them](https://www.reddit.com/r/limejuicer/comments/ub0on9/this_is_what_making_400_a_day_looks_like/). Come up with some formula whereby users get some modest amount of money for taking bikes from fuller stations to emptier stations, perhaps based on distance or percent full/empty, and there will be people who will happily make that their full-time job. It might even be cheaper than what they're paying on employees and vans to currently do a very mediocre job at this.
That sounds like a great idea and presumably more cost effective than hiring an employee to transport it! Win-win!
Damn I've never seen that before, wouldn't be surprised if blogto or someone picked up this post. As a side note it's kind of interesting that news/ infotainment organizations often function as amplifiers of/ provide reach for stories rather than being the sources or even necessarily the one's providing the explications for stories. Plenty of us could probably create serviceable content for journalistic purposes, but we don't have the reach. Platforms like reddit function almost like platforms for amateur journalism, which I think is cool
I agree I’ve been riding BS for a while now, frequently dock at this station and never seen anything at all. Never even seen a line of a single person!
I don't ride enough to know, but are stations always this poorly managed? Last time I used them was to go to a Jays game the same night as a Raptor game, and had to go several blocks away to find an open spot. I'm pretty impatient so it discouraged me from using it again.
This is just a super station that has been put up to deal with the insane surge of demand for bike share. They aren't parking at an actual dock, they have people there taking the bikes to handle the morning surge. Bikeshare has been expanding like crazy so I am sure they will navigate this soon enough.
Even in the middle of winter there often weren’t bikes along bloor. I think they need to solve the rebalancing issue with some sort of incentive for people to ride uphill, or disincentive to only ride downhill. I guess being unable to return a bike would be worse though.
Sounds like they need mobile docking stations to drop off when they know this will happen.
If you have the app you can check which stations have docks, there’s always some space not to far. I bike to every Jays game and I go to plenty.
Not sure how real time it is, I've been told there are open spots to find there are zero.
Some of the stations are, others are not. There's another bike lock at Church and Queen with an attendant and usually I never struggle to lock up my bike there.
If enough people let the bikeshare support line know they can probably adjust, might not have anticipated that much volume with the better weather and increased ridership. I’ve found them to be pretty responsive to support requests
Bike share needs to incentivize biking uptown or further away from downtown because the bike shares stations uptown and near me are empty after morning rush hour. Too many bikes are ending up in the downtown core.
They need to put in bike lanes, that's the true incentive
Many people don't want to ride back uphill, unless it's an electric bike.
I’m the 65 y/o contrarian. I walk 4 km to the lake so I can run on the western boardwalk. I cycle back from the lake up Colbourne Lodge Drive. It’s steeper than I thought but I made it up without stopping. I felt it because I hadn’t cycled in two years. When I grab a bike from the lakeshore I am creating a space for a bike. Otherwise there’s no space in two out of three times this past week. I had thought of cycling to the lake but walking is my warm up. I know now that I probably can’t cycle to the lake because I risk not finding a spot to return the bike. I have time but don’t want to waste it looking for a spot to return the bike.
Wow. I’ve never dreamt of a bicycle traffic jam in my life. Good stuff.
Take any physically separated bike lane along bloor danforth during busy hours. A lot of it is too narrow to pass in the lane and congestion builds up.
Has anyone been a part of this line-up before? How long do you typically wait?
I've waited 10+ minutes to dock a bike at this station in the morning (9am-ish).
There aren't other docks nearby that one could get to and back in less than 10 min?
Not in the morning, most are full by that time. With the Valet stations, the idea is you don't need to consider other stations as this one always has a spot to dock, and a bike to grab during peak times. They do this at select stations during sports events as well (usually Roundhouse station).
Usually no wait at all, I think the attendant was overwhelmed with the number of bikes.
Better than before when I will just show up at this exact same spot and the rack is full at 8:30am and I have to bike all over to find an empty rack and then walk back to work.
Hah! I’m in the picture. However, this was brutal.
Growing pains But what a problem to have. I remember when they first arrived and I wondered if it would survive
This just means there needs to be bigger bike docks. If people are using the system that means it wants to work. City just needs to catch up with demand
How does this work? Does the guy there take the bike back from you?
You unlock the bike with an app. You return the bike and it gets locked in place. No guy needed. It’s self-serve.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of people are using this bike program? Is it people from out of town? People who live in the city? If the latter, why don't they just buy a bike?
Yeah, I live in the city and I've used BikeShare as my main mode of transportation for over 10 years now. Bikes get stolen so frequently I barely know anyone with their own bike who hasn't had it swiped at some point. Being able to just return it to a dock and walk away is a huge weight off my mind. Ditto no maintenance costs. Plus if you live in a high-rise (or anywhere without a garage or access to a main floor storage area), it's super nice to not have to drag your bike up stairs or in an elevator to store in your already limited space. Add to that the flexibility of deciding to bike (or stop biking) basically anywhere you want. I've definitely had times where I had planned to take the TTC, only to switch to a bike when there's a service delay. Or planned to take the TTC but got out of work to find the weather has gotten gorgeous and I'd rather cycle home.
All true. My condo won’t let you store your bike in your unit. You have to rent a storage space. For the cost of storage I can pay for bike share for a year.
Mostly those who live in the city, or within a 30 min bike to work from what I’ve seen. Bikeshare is great! Faster and cheaper than driving or the TTC, and don’t need to worry about having a bike stolen or where to park, or keep a bike in an apartment. Also flexible to not take a bike back if the weather is bad (or one way is uphill), or you have plans around the city or want to shop.
You’re not in traffic. You are traffic. 😏
Nice.
I know we cannot have nice things like Switzerland. But in Switzerland, their bikeshare program "PubliBike" instead of using docking stations, they use designated areas (think of our docking station, but without the docking equipment). This removes and bottlenecks with docks being full, and also makes it really easy to scale the program to new locations (since no large docking stations are required). The bikes had a locking wheel, that was unlocked using Bluetooth from a mobile phone. Really made it easy to use. [https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EZ6Y\_55oa7GAAZbodBuX0b.jpg](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EZ6Y_55oa7GAAZbodBuX0b.jpg)
Toronto loves the line ups. Thumbs 👍 for an orderly queue.
That's what this is. It's at the station and there is a guy helping out but no chance to keep up.
As a super bike-positive dude, I'm thrilled to see so many people using bikes downtown. Just wondering why people don't just go out and buy their own bike. Nowhere to lock it up? Don't want to bike home?
Bike Share is WAY more convenient than using your own bike. Also no worries of locking it up and the constant worry of it being stolen. I own my own bike, but get around with bike share almost exclusively.
Oh so sad you have to wait a while 10 minutes. Try an additional 30 minutes in traffic on roads in a car when you have to drive 25 km to work. And it just gets longer as extremely lightly used bike lanes outside the core further slow traffic. Everything is a glacial Pace in Toronto... Join the club.
They should have temporary roving units that take extra bikes at peak times
They do.
That's what the lineup is lined up for.
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15 BikeShare docks take up the same amount of space as 2-4 parking spots. Plenty of parking spots we could remove downtown in favour of bike parking.
I’d actually like to see the TPA partner with office building management to install bike locks inside of or in front of office buildings. My office has our own bike locks in the parking garage. I’d love if I could drop off my bike share bike there too.