News   Oct 11, 2024
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Toronto Bike Share

anyone care to speculate as to whether bike share toronto will extend beyond the 416 at some point? it's quite common in other metros sliced up into smaller municipalities for the bike share system to cross boundaries, but I'm not sure how it would work here given the TPAs role with bike share. I know other cities in the GTA are considering systems of their own but I think we ought to avoid repeating the mistakes we've made on the transit front by having a system as fragmented as it is.
Lime and Bird are already in Mississauga and Brampton. I don't see why Bikeshare cannot expand there as well.
 
Lime and Bird are already in Mississauga and Brampton. I don't see why Bikeshare cannot expand there as well.
Bike share operates at a loss, so they'd have to subsidize it. I think that's why the Ok'd lime/bird because it meant the city got a boost for free.

Aside from some trails there aren't really any good biking routes I'm familiar with. Also I don't think either are comparable, giant swaths of Mississauga are closed off. (most of Dixie is a no ride zone even though they have a separated bike trail)

I really hope that's the case. Not sure how it could be structured. Maybe the other municipalities could fund the capital and operating subsidy to TPA, but I imagine some integration with each city's parking authority is important.
The system is incredibly labor intensive, you'd have to find a fair way to bill for a bike that moves from 1 city to another when picked up by a truck.
 
The system is incredibly labor intensive, you'd have to find a fair way to bill for a bike that moves from 1 city to another when picked up by a truck.
I don't think repositioning between cities will be a big deal as I see no reason to believe bikes would flow in an unbalanced way between Mississauga and Toronto, for instance. I think most of the rebalancing is 'uphill' as people are more inclined to take an acoustic bike downhill vs uphill. If the pool is shared, there is no reason a specific bike needs to be moved from the west end of Mississauga to Scarborough, for instance. And a big part of the cost is I imagine the loading and unloading, not so much the driving between stations.

Bike share operates at a loss, so they'd have to subsidize it. I think that's why the Ok'd lime/bird because it meant the city got a boost for free.

Aside from some trails there aren't really any good biking routes I'm familiar with. Also I don't think either are comparable, giant swaths of Mississauga are closed off. (most of Dixie is a no ride zone even though they have a separated bike trail)
Most of Mississauga has pretty good off-street trailers (though somewhat circuitous) and good multiuse paths along arterials.
 
I don't think repositioning between cities will be a big deal as I see no reason to believe bikes would flow in an unbalanced way between Mississauga and Toronto, for instance. I think most of the rebalancing is 'uphill' as people are more inclined to take an acoustic bike downhill vs uphill. If the pool is shared, there is no reason a specific bike needs to be moved from the west end of Mississauga to Scarborough, for instance. And a big part of the cost is I imagine the loading and unloading, not so much the driving between stations.


Most of Mississauga has pretty good off-street trailers (though somewhat circuitous) and good multiuse paths along arterials.
I noticed that the stations around Humber Bay are often full pretty early into the evening rush-hour, if they do expand, hopefully they’ll put enough stations around the border so that it’s not an issue.

Also, I realized I never posted a map of the bird no ride zones. It feels weird even streets with a multiuse trail are a no go zone!

IMG_1080.png
 
I suppose this is another advantage of using the physical card. I never have GPS problems with unlocking bikes.
I just put my physical card back in my wallet. Tired of using their downgraded app that doesn't generate 5 digit codes. Annoying to have to carry an extra card, but less annoying than to get my phone to scan their QR codes, if they're not scratched off.
 
Bikeshare update:

+5 stations since my last update, bring us to 841 stations across the City.

near downtown, Bathurst + Lakeshore has been added.

1725713343591.png


The rest are up in North York, one on the west side, at Finch and Wilmington:

1725713433054.png


The rest on the east side with these 2 north of the 401:

Sheppard/Hawkesbury (Bayview Village Mall)

1725713505347.png


And Sheppard/Leslie:

1725713537883.png


Finally, these 2 south of 401, serving the office park/light industrial area of Duncan Woods:

1725713642420.png


And:

1725713673162.png
 
Bikeshare update:

+5 stations since my last update, bring us to 841 stations across the City.

near downtown, Bathurst + Lakeshore has been added.

View attachment 594554

The rest are up in North York, one on the west side, at Finch and Wilmington:

View attachment 594555

The rest on the east side with these 2 north of the 401:

Sheppard/Hawkesbury (Bayview Village Mall)

View attachment 594556

And Sheppard/Leslie:

View attachment 594557

Finally, these 2 south of 401, serving the office park/light industrial area of Duncan Woods:

View attachment 594558

And:

View attachment 594559

checked the lakeshore/bathurst one. Its just moved from fleet street. not a new station
 
I just put my physical card back in my wallet. Tired of using their downgraded app that doesn't generate 5 digit codes. Annoying to have to carry an extra card, but less annoying than to get my phone to scan their QR codes, if they're not scratched off.
You can use the mobile website to generate a 5 digit code if it is scratched off.
 
I think it's time I signed up for this. The other day I had to take an Uber from work at University and Dundas to pick up my son from school in the Lansdowne and College area, and had to endure murder-inducing gridlock at 3 pm, and got to shell out 31 bucks for the privilege. Disgusting. While I was sitting in the stationary car I couldn't help but curse myself for not just hopping on a Bikeshare to bypass all the cars, for a much cheaper price.
 

Notable here is the growth adjusted for the number of stations, we're now about 80 stations higher than year-end 2023, though for statistical comparison, you would weight that down to maybe 40.

So growth of 5-11% in the number of stations, depending on how you weight, but growth of 22% (adjusted to date) over the previous year.

I think this makes an excellent case for the accretive benefit of reaching more origins/destinations and densifying lighter parts of the network.

I think the numbers are also below potential based on the number of areas that completely run out of bikes each weekday morning.

This suggest there is already present demand with instant growth available with more docks/bikes.
 
I'm going to start a semi-regular series here of posting areas that are largely out of Bikeshare Bikes at the end of AM Peak each day.

My purpose is to encourage those of you living in said areas to email Bikeshare and ask for some combination of more docks, and/or extended docks w/more bikes to meet demand, and to make that easy for you by providing the evidence.

Herewith, post one, look at the north-west core:

1725982149813.png


Currently served by 9 stations, 5 have zero bikes at the end of AM Peak, 3 others have only 1 bike left. I can see clear coverage gaps on Davenport, Lansdowne and Dufferin, while Keele looks better, it clearly needs more docks.
 
Yup, your first map zeroes right in on my experience. :p It's not unusual to find Symington-Davenport out of bikes, even well before the AM peak (e.g. 7:30am). I end up going down to Dupont and Symington, though that one also gets emptied out frequently (map shows just 1 bike now).

Oddly enough, I used to have the opposite experience: I'd get home and have to park further away because the Davenport-Symington dock was full.
 
Yup, your first map zeroes right in on my experience. :p It's not unusual to find Symington-Davenport out of bikes, even well before the AM peak (e.g. 7:30am). I end up going down to Dupont and Symington, though that one also gets emptied out frequently (map shows just 1 bike now).

Did a quick survey using Streetview to ascertain any easy locations to add docks/capacity.

A lot of narrow sidewalks in this area......but.

I it appears to me that there is space in the Wiltshire ROW south off Davenport, east side for a station; that there is room to expand the station at the south side of Earlscourt Park by several docks.

I also see room on the St. Clarens ROW, east side, south of Davenport; and on Foundry at Davenport Village Park.
 

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