Shame they didn't extend Bixi along the western waterfront. If I had a dollar every time I saw a Bixi bike far from home in Humber Bay - I'd be a rich man.
Hmm, you should contact Toronto Bike Share, and tell them. Sometimes they do add a few unexpected stations.
I think there's enough safety margin in this procurement that there is probably flexibility to add 1, 2 or 3 more docks in 'forgotten' locations. Feedback time!
I live in an area of Hamilton that has similar residential density to Toronto's Danforth street, complete with 100-year-old brick detached houses. Bikeshare systems surprisingly work surprisingly well in these kinds of neighborhoods -- lower density than downtown but higher density than suburbs.
SoBi managed to work with a mere 750 bikes over 45 square kilometers because it is a smartbike system: A sprinkling of random offdock bikes create a "shorter walking distance to nearest bike". Which makes Hamilton feel like it has 200 to 300 bike hubs during a good day when there's a lot of offdock bikes... This works better in medium-density areas.
SoBi added a bikeshare dock (using surplus stations from a seasonal trial area) near my Hamilton house late last fall partially thanks to my pleading and many others -- and because of GPS records showed bikeshare bikes frequently in my neighborhood (all SoBi bikes have GPS trackers) -- and now it's already one of the more popular "Danforth-density-location" docks (i.e. outside a campus or downtown core) as I see the dock fluctuate between 0 and 10 bikes without needing bike-rebalancing service. I had always seen many off-dock SoBi bikes docked on my street, which showed there was quite a bit of bikeshare demand in my Hamilton old-urban neighborhood.
I returned SoBi the favour by
printing and posting signs on a nearby regular bike rack (and street signpoles) to inform my neighbours and community that there's now a SoBi dock only 1 block away (so people don't have to pay the $1 convenience fee for ending a bikeshare rental off-dock). It probably helped the dock's popularity at the end...
Give feedback, possibly by tweeting to them, and/or social media pleads. Sometimes people will pile-on and agree with you (replies, retweets, etc). A photo of a pair of bikes far away from nearest dock, attached to the tweet, can help drive home the point. It might take months or years, but if the demand is apparently there and multiple people are asking, momentum on new bikeshare stations apparently do occur.
I cannot find any conceivable explanation for the stations on Danforth.
I would have simply LOVED to have these docks.
Once I moved from a Toronto downtown condo to Riverdale area several years ago (before I permanently moved to Hamilton) -- I let my BIXI membership lapse precisely because there were no stations in Riverdale area or Danforth area, when I used to live in the Riverdale area.
If there were docks on Danforth, Broadview, and Gerrard, I would have kept my BIXI membership back at the time. I would have grabbed a bike, biked up Broadview, and docked on Danforth. And vice-versa, coasting downhill home near Gerrard/Broadview. I had my own bike too, but sometimes you need a 1-way bike trip (e.g. bad weather outgoing transit trip, good weather return bike trip) or sudden spontaneous (e.g. you walk past a dock and, hey, why not).
I actually use bikeshare services more often (commuter connector, spontaneous, 1-way, etc) than I use my own bike (for long trail rides). Overall, total bike use has slowly increased since bikeshare services got introduced in GTHA -- meaning my owned bike time hasn't decreased but total bike usage has increased thanks to bikeshares, and will continue to do so as both Toronto and Hamilton improves bike infrastructure.
Bikeshares are very spontaneous-friendly, although smartbike systems (e.g. SoBi) moreso than smartdock systems (e.g. BIXI type). About 25% of my bike use is actually spontaneous, e.g. unexpectedly hopping on an available bike rather than walking to catching public transit.
