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Toronto Bike Share

I do as well. One road bike, one city bike, one bixi. It's great for hot days like this week - I grabbed a bixi and coasted downhill to work, then took the subway home. I sometimes get an electric bixi to go home, which whisks you from the financial district to Bloordale in 20 minutes flat. Ten minutes faster than the subway, and an hour faster than driving :)
 
afransen said:
It's a bit of a gateway if one friend uses it and they want to go somewhere else together. You can get an Uber, take transit, or use a Bikeshare bike. It's actually quite a pleasant and fast way to get around downtown, and will only get more so as infrastructure becomes more comfortable (safe-seeming and easy to use).
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I've seen this first hand at work events, when a few of us grab conveniently located bixi bikes and can often convince one or two noobies to join us.
 
That's interesting setups. I have a personal bike but I essentially never use it (not once this year) so I'll probably be selling it.
 
I have a bike that requires a couple hundred bucks of repairs after I got hit in Mississauga last Fall. I can probably go several years without repairing it.

evandyk said:
Most bikes are quite a bit faster than bixis, so I still prefer to use my own if I know I'm making a two way trip.
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I totally get this but I mainly ride deep in the city where exceeding Bixi speed carries more risk with all the chaotic surroundings.
 
And the electric bixis do really close that gap, now that they're much more widely available, and priced at a point where you don't really have to think about the cost when grabbing one (ie it won't be free, but it will be less than a TTC fare).
 
I'll just plunk this here:

1718991471954.png
 
innsertnamehere said:
for all the hoopla Bike-share gets, that's really not all that much ridership. Like 3% of the TTC's daily ridership.
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That's true; but.....its worth noting that Bikeshare only has 9,000 bikes, so they averaged 3.3 rides for every single bike they have in one day. That's the sort of number that could justify more bikes.

*****

For comparison, Citi Bike's numbers in NYC, showed their all time monthly record was last August at just over 4,000,000 rides that month. Which is about 130,000 per day.

That's across 26,000 bikes, and 1,915 docking stations, which compares with 805 in Toronto as of a few minutes ago.

This suggests we can probably achieve a maximum of around 5 rides per bike, current expansion plans + developer funding should get us to about 1,100 docks and 11,000 bikes by summer '26.

That would see ridership at 55,000 per day (on a peak day). If we can ramp up expansion and achieve anything close to current cycle infra plans, by 2027, we could be peaking closer to 9% of TTC ridership which I think would be a stunning achievement.
 
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We know Bikeshare has struggled to meet demand in Midtown in recent years, presumably a combination of insufficient stations/bikes but also the need to reposition more frequently.

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So I thought I'd take a look at south--west Scarborough to see how things are going:

1719336194207.png



Of the 17 stations pictured above, that are within Scarborough:

7 have zero bikes available at 1:15pm today

4 have 2 or fewer bikes available.

6 have 3 or more bikes available.

That would seem to suggest there is some demand there and it could be served a bit better.

Looks to me like there's a need for an infill dock on VP between St. Clair and Parma Court, another on St. Clair east of Pharmacy, one more on Birchmount south of St. Clair, plus one on Warden somewhere near Taylor Creek Elementary.
 
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