Toronto Bike Share

[unforgettableid]

You made a lot of good points. But let me quibble with one.

A 20-30% increase for a $100CAD annual pass is very low when the current monthly cost of the annual membership is equal to roughly 2-3 30 minute single rides a month. Compare that to the cost of a TTC metropass and the number of single trips it takes to get to an equivalent monthly amount. So I'm not sure the data or comparable examples from other cities indicate that a significantly large increase in annual membership prices would be justified.

I'm not sure I want to pay an annual membership fee which is 20–30% higher.

Bike Share is competing with personal bike ownership. If membership costs go up enough, some members will stop renewing their memberships. They'll buy their own bike, and will pay for the bike-maintenance costs themselves.

I think it's an excellent idea for Bike Share to offer premium memberships with 45-minute trips.

But, if it does offer premium memberships with 45-minute trips, I insist that it should continue to also offer traditional memberships as a lower-cost option. At least for the first year or two.

If the traditional memberships turn out to remain reasonably popular, the city could continue to offer them indefinitely. If not, the city could abolish the traditional memberships, and could force all annual members onto the premium plan.

 

[unforgettableid]

TBH increasing to 45 minutes for annual members would be a great incentive to purchase the annual pass for those who are on the fence.

Back when Alta Bicycle Share ran Bike Share Toronto, the city offered monthly memberships.

Nowadays, Alta Bicycle Share is named Motivate, a subsidiary of Lyft. Also nowadays, Bike Share Toronto is run by PBSC.

If I remember correctly, Motivate still offers monthly memberships in all its cities. But I don't think PBSC has ever offered monthly memberships, in any city.

Monthly memberships cost significantly more per month than yearly memberships. Some people probably buy them in the spring, and then cancel them when the weather gets colder.

I think monthly memberships would be a good idea in Toronto. People could get them, and could receive a member key card in the mail, and could then also experience the convenience of unlocking bikes quickly using the card.

 

[unforgettableid]

I'd love to see the data for how many times a rider docks and then immediately undocks another bike. In other words, how many riders are doing >30 minute rides now.

In transportation research, "trip chaining" is combining multiple errands into one longer journey, whether by car, public transit, or any other mode of transportation.

But, in bike-sharing research, "trip chaining" often means docking and then immediately undocking the same bike, to avoid paying overage fees.

There's lots of research on this phenomenon, though I dunno if there's any from Toronto.

• Bikeshare users on a budget? Trip chaining analysis of bikeshare user groups in Chicago. Scholarly paper. Free full text.
• Bike-sharing usage: mining on the trip data of bike-sharing users. PhD thesis. Free full text.
• More hits from Google Scholar.
• More hits from Google Web Search.

Bike Share Toronto collects lots of data. Some of it is available on the city's Open Data portal; some is not. If some is missing, and you want it, you could request it.

 

[JamesKoole]

Bike Share Toronto collects lots of data. Some of it is available on the city's Open Data portal; some is not. If some is missing, and you want it, you could request it.

I'll go check out the Open Data and see if that can be gleaned.

 

[unforgettableid]

I'll go check out the Open Data and see if that can be gleaned.

There are multiple datasets. You'd need the ridership data set. You can get it from CKAN or from the Open Data Portal.

Lots of people have written already written code which can parse the dataset, and can clean the data up somewhat, and can analyze it in certain ways. You can find some of this code available to download for free; you can start with this Google search if you wish.

Trip chaining analysis has already been done in Chicago, in the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Maybe it's even already been done in Toronto; I'm not sure. I'm not sure why you'd want to bother redoing it in Toronto. I'm not sure that your results would be significantly different than in any other similar city with a 30-minute trip limit.

Everyone already knows that trip chaining is common in Toronto. There are even (imperfect) instructions on how to do trip chaining directly on the homepage of the Bike Share Toronto website. You don't need to do any data analysis to prove to us that it's common; everyone already knows that.

Time is money.

 

[DSC]

Today Bike Share also launched the pedal assist electric-bike (e-bike) pilot program, announced earlier this summer as a new feature of Bike Share Toronto’s 2020 expansion. The e-bikes will be available in the system starting today, and the 10 e-bike charging stations for the pilot will be installed over the next several weeks. E-bike charging stations will be able to charge 20-25 bikes at each station.

The e-bikes will allow users to travel a maximum of 25 kilometers and can travel up to 70 kilometers without requiring a charge. E-bike charging stations are fully compatible with the rest of the bike share system, allowing both manual bikes and e-bikes to be docked in any station. E-bikes will be picked up by operators throughout the date to ensure that they are being charged for the next day. Once the e-bikes are charged, operators will leave them at one of the 10 e-bike charging stations across the city.

From City Press Release.. More details at https://bikesharetoronto.com/e-bikes/

 

[Jeff Morgan]

With the recent announcement about e-bikes I think this article might spark some interesting conversations.

The post-pandemic future: E-cycles will become the new public transit

Darnel Harris is executive director of Our Greenway Conservancy and Sam Starr is a consultant for Sustainable Urban Freight and Cycle Logistics Ever since

torontolife.com

 

[Northern Light]

Notes on new Stations:

Danforth/Langford Stn mentioned a few days back is now online
Danforth/East Lynn (just west of Woodbine) is also new
University/Gerrard also has a new station.

 

[LNahid2000]

Notes on new Stations:

Danforth/Langford Stn mentioned a few days back is now online
Danforth/East Lynn (just west of Woodbine) is also new
University/Gerrard also has a new station.

I'm confused about the University/Gerrard mention. A station has been in that location for over 5 years:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

goo.gl

 

[Northern Light]

I'm confused about the University/Gerrard mention. A station has been in that location for over 5 years:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

goo.gl

New station:

 

[LNahid2000]

New station:

View attachment 264833

Ah, I'm confused because the station isn't active yet and doesn't show on the app. Seems like they announced it too early.

 

[marcus_a_j]

Is it common for the new stations to not have a kiosk? The Danforth/Langford station does not have one, which I thought was odd. Not an issue for me as I use the Transit App to get codes.

 

[LNahid2000]

Is it common for the new stations to not have a kiosk? The Danforth/Langford station does not have one, which I thought was odd. Not an issue for me as I use the Transit App to get codes.

Some stations have kiosks and others don't. It has always been this way. The system map indicates which stations don't have kiosks by labelling them as " SMART", which is odd since they're actually less smart.

 

[Allandale25]

Today Bike Share also launched the pedal assist electric-bike (e-bike) pilot program, announced earlier this summer as a new feature of Bike Share Toronto’s 2020 expansion. The e-bikes will be available in the system starting today, and the 10 e-bike charging stations for the pilot will be installed over the next several weeks. E-bike charging stations will be able to charge 20-25 bikes at each station.

The e-bikes will allow users to travel a maximum of 25 kilometers and can travel up to 70 kilometers without requiring a charge. E-bike charging stations are fully compatible with the rest of the bike share system, allowing both manual bikes and e-bikes to be docked in any station. E-bikes will be picked up by operators throughout the date to ensure that they are being charged for the next day. Once the e-bikes are charged, operators will leave them at one of the 10 e-bike charging stations across the city.

From City Press Release.. More details at https://bikesharetoronto.com/e-bikes/

Anyone tried them yet? I assume the docking station for the e-bikes looks different? Haven't seen any pics of it yet.

 

[LNahid2000]

Anyone tried them yet? I assume the docking station for the e-bikes looks different? Haven't seen any pics of it yet.

I've been using them everyday and they're a gamechanger for hills. Got up to Yonge/Eglinton from Yonge/Gerrard in 16 minutes yesterday and I didn't even feel the hills. I may bike to Guildwood GO on Monday to run an errand...I should easily be able to get from Danforth/Victoria Park to Guildwood in under 30 minutes on one of these.

You can dock them in any station and Bike Share staff will charge them when they run low. There will also be 10 stations that charge the bikes, with one of them currently deployed at 20 Charles St E. I wonder if they'll do anything to encourage people to dock at charging stations.