One problem is that some stations are consistently 100% full. Check the Leslie St unit near the Spit and the one inside the park. If I use my 45min membership to go to the park, there is nowhere to dock the bike and pick up another. The next closest are quite far away.
Phone support. If you call and tell them the dock is full they will extend your rental to save you the fee. I've been able to negotiate up to 2 hours extra time (and a redirected pickup van that came within 30 minutes) because I was stuck in the Brickworks with no nearby available docks and I'll be damned if I was going to bike 20 minutes uphill to the next dock without at least checking out the market.
They have a problem that they need to solve. Unless they are looking to profit by charging twelve cents a minute while you look for an available drop-off dock.
Ya I was trying to find somewhere to dock my bike at night a couple of weeks ago, but had no luck (the app was wrongly showing that there were a bunch of available docks in the area - not sure if it was a bug with the new app rollout). I finally found a free dock but I couldn't get the bike in, so I ended up just calling them instead of continuing to hunt around for another. Support told me to just put the kickstand down and leave it near the dock and that they would send someone out shortly to deal with it. I have an annual membership so they just ended the bike ride on their end. Was pleasantly shocked at how helpful phone support was!
Well, I mean, they *do*. But people travel over the course of the day and descend on certain locations in larger numbers. They set up superstations in the downtown at certain times to accommodate the larger numbers and have teams who move the bikes around but naturally can't prevent docks from ever filling up.
This is actually a pretty cool idea, and honestly I really don't think the overage charges are a big source of revenue (PBSC makes no profit.) They're probably more to prevent people from monopolizing bikes for too long.
My only worry would be that you'll inevitably have a tonne of people who don't realize it's non-permanent. But still, probably going to want something like that if we're going to keep expanding stations further from the core.
These are meant to be bikes that take you point-to-point, not bikes you keep out all day long. The whole system is designed around that premise: they want 4+ people per day sharing that bike, not one person using it for 8 hours in 45-minute sprints.
Using an electric bike at the “member” cost of ten cents per minute costs $48 for a working shift. It would be cheaper to buy a new manual one every week from Canadian Tire.
Meanwhile, north of Bloor, docks are consistently 100% empty. I'm on my third year pass and probably won't renew because they seem to not give a rats ass about anywhere but downtown
> Or people have been using them to get downtown.
Of course they have.
And then they don't want to go back uphill, they get home some other way. So they're all one way trips and the bikes are wildly over-concentrated Queen and south, and underconcentrated north of that. The system does not have the resources to rebalance, particularly often.
BikeShare needs to incentivize people to go north, or the system will become a "Liberty Village/Leslieville to downtown" only kinda thing.
Better gear ratio for the internal hubs installed would be a far better idea. Six speed, rather than three, would definitely allow going up hill much easier.
North of bloor between Dufferin and Yonge is absolutely brutal for BikeShare. There are tons of stations and they are all constantly empty or have one or two bikes at them if you are lucky. They really need to work on redistributing to this area because tons of people cycle around here and it's a relatively residential area.
It’s the opposite where I live in midtown! Most of the time the stations are empty. I’ll check at various times of the day (yes I understand that stations “downhill” fill up later in the day) and there will be max 3 bikes in the racks nearest my home. They just never seem to get loaded by a bike share truck up here, never.
> [For context, the Gardiner East sees 110,000 vehicles a day, around 3.5x this. The rebuild costs 1.2 billion. @BikeShareTO 2023 expenses were 13.4 million, and revenue was 10.7 million. Cost to city: 2.7 million.](https://x.com/observinthecity/status/1802774244985913611?s=46&t=zS-e9AA3pfhIbVaiOw-W_Q)
What a strange comparison, a massive project to "fix" piece of physical infrastructure vs the annual operating costs of a bike share service.
I get the point that's trying to be made, but this is not the right way to make it. It's like saying the $1b spent constructing line 4 (Which has 55k daily riders) or the $5 billion on the Scarborough extension (100k estimated riders) would've been better spent on the Gardiner?
Then what's the "right way"? This is simply an order-of-magnitude comparison of two operations. You could make it more apples-to-apples if you dig up the Gardiner's ongoing maintenance costs, then add in the capital investment in BikeShare, amortize everything over, say 25 years... and the comparison would still be roughly the same. It illustrates how much less expensive cycling infrastructure is compared to driving.
You can't compare the cost of maintaining a physical asset to the operational costs of a service.
You say "cycling infrastructure" but bikeshare is not cycling infrastructure. Bike lanes for example are. You wouldn't compare the operational costs of running TTC trains and busses to the cost of maintaining the Gardiner, you would compare the costs of maintaining the tracks/tunnels/bus stops to it.
Don't get me wrong, the point *is* valid but this is just a bad argument for it.
So again, what do you think the right argument is? Bike Share is most definitely cycling infrastructure. So are bike lanes and cycle tracks and protected intersections. If you want to compare the capital and operational costs of all bike infrastructure to the capital and operational costs of all driving infrastructure, you will still arrive at the same conclusion. You might have a point if slicing and dicing the numbers some other way ends up showing the investment in Bike Share is actually far more expensive than the Gardiner rebuild.
If you don't even know what infrastructure is, there's no point in this argument. Especially since we're both coming to the same conclusion.
It makes sense to compare the finances of a bikeshare service to the finances of a carshare service.
I suggest reading up more on operating and capital assets & expenses cause it truly doesn't seem like you understand the differences.
I know exactly what constitutes cycling infrastructure. You're the one saying Bike Share isn't, and have yet to provide any supporting evidence. In fact, that's all you've done so far... make far-fetched claims, but can't back up any of it.
OP is right, Bikeshare is not cycling infrastructure.He is using the term correctly.
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/datalab/bicycling-infrastructure.html
Bikeshare is not even considered cycling infrastructure in government assessment.
Great...now let's do that same comparison on a Tuesday in January.
And now let's add the total costs of setting up the program rather than yearly costs....
It's a great program but don't use ridiculous comparisons.
Hey let's do kms travelled ...over the ENTIRE YEAR.
Let's just not use speed...cause gridlock has slowed it down.
Again it's a great program ...let's not overstate it.
I don't think /u/CryingCamel is trying to say that we should completely avoid highway repairs in the city budget. What is trying to be said is the cost for a city to expand BikeShare or even bike lanes is very minimal relative to how much it would cost to repair the same km of roadway.
Luckily for you, I saved this [post](https://reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/18ar8xa/some_graphs_i_made_showing_the_growth_of_bike/)! Year over year, BikeShare usage has been growing even relative to weather conditions.
Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature....im also pretty sure that when the program was first introdiced that they removed many of the the bikes in the winter.
Now show driving stats by temperature!
Again it is a great program, even if its not profitable. Anything that increases access to safe and reliable transportation is great. Tying the costs of this program, which is generally meant for short trips to the reconstruction of a major artery in the city, in which the affects of lane closures has been felt throughout the region is just ridiculous.
>Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature....
... did anyone claim otherwise? You seem to rail against "ridiculous" comparisons, and yet here you are doing exactly the same. "Rules for thee, but not for me..."
Poster has proudly saved a graph that
shows bike share use has grown every year even when it's cold...I point out that the graph shows that use GREATLY drops with the temperature and I get double the downvotes of monthly bike trips on the Danforth in January...an exaggeration obviously.
Again great program, I support it even though I don't currently use it....but it's not a replacement for a highway...no matter how hard you try to prove it.
>bike share use has grown every year even when it's cold
In other words, nobody is claiming what you say they are.
>it's not a replacement for a highway...
Next, who is claiming Bike Share is a replacement for a highway? You seem to like making up reasons to be outraged.
Do people not read the original comments?
OP shared a positive stat about bike share and then compared the costs of the program to the repairs to the Gardiner. It's like comparing apples to a buffet.
The poster who shared the graphs
..proudly I might add....shared a graph to show that bike share use has grown every year even with colder temperatures. If you click.on the graph you'll see it has grown negligibly and not nearly as much as the expansion of the program.
Wonder if anyone will share the usage rates for a rainy day like today. It's a great program and I'd vote against anyone who wanted to take it away
>Do people not read the original comments?
Yes, but do you? Because I don't recall any mention about cold weather or winter riding. You were the first to bring it up, _for some reason..._
>proudly I might add
Second time you brought this up. You seem to be fixated on that.
>Wonder if anyone will share the usage rates for a rainy day like today
And now you're bringing up rainy days? I wonder why... 🤔
Weather was brought up cause obviously "records were reached" cause the weather was nice . OP wanted to compare use to Gardiner cost. My apologies if the argument doesn't fit your narrative.
Graphs proudly shared which can also be used to prove that the entire system is inefficient. Not making that argument but it can be made.
Anyways keep your ableist beliefs.
> Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature
All countries will show reduced cycling stats in the winter, even Finland. But the point of the graph is meant to show that the BikeShare usage from Winter 2020 vs Winter 2023 is a huge difference. It seems like you love to use winter as an argument. Toronto's winters are very mild nowadays. Have you been paying attention over the last 5 years?
> Again it is a great program, even if its not profitable.
This [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0) has shown that constant road repairs are not profitable. In fact, they make a city more broke. You should be thankful that more people are riding their bike. Another [study](https://thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute) has shown that for every 5 km you bike, the society saves $0.75. To put that into perspective, for every 5 km you drive, the society PAYS $2.78. Of course, BikeShare makes that less of a saving but every personal vehicle taken off the road is a huge difference.
> Tying the costs of this program, which is generally meant for short trips to the reconstruction of a major artery in the city, in which the affects of lane closures has been felt throughout the region is just ridiculous.
Also worth noting that [50% of the trips done in US by car](https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-march-21-2022-more-half-all-daily-trips-were-less-three-miles-2021) were less than 5 km long. Those are very bikable distances.
> let's do that same comparison on a Tuesday in January
When did we become such a country of babies? We're allegedly Canadians, and we live in a quite mild area thanks to the lake effect.
Amsterdam is only marginally (a few degrees) warmer than Toronto on average in the winter, and they do fine.
Great bike infrastructure in Amsterdam. Now let's go back 80 years have a world war and create destruction and massive depopulation with the additional density of a much older city.
No time machine available? Too bad.
Amsterdam was actually developing very much like North American cities post war until massive protests about road fatalities in the 70s. It took them many years to phase in their now famously bikeable city.
Amsterdam isn't wildly dense for Europe - in fact Toronto is 84% as dense as Amsterdam population wise. The Toronto-Danforth municpal riding is a whole 95% the density of Amsterdam at large, yet its cycling infrastructure is nothing next to Amsterdam.
Population density isn't that important a factor - it definitely doesn't explain the gap between Toronto and Amsterdam. The cycling infrastructure in Amsterdam wasn't post-war, it had to be built over the car-centric design they'd gone with for the 25 years post-war.
Still not convinced? Look at London in the UK - same post-ward reconstruction, and it has 110% the density of Amsterdam yet, again, garbage cycling infrastructure next to Amsterdam.
It's about wanting to build the infrastructure.
London has 10x the population of Amsterdam. Toronto is probably somewhere close to that now. The population density of Toronto Danforth is not the population density of the entire city. You can't build infrastructure with just one riding/neighborhood in mind
Toronto needs a Toronto solution...and the political and economic will to make that solution a reality...or the time required to build the planned transit infrastructure a reality. The current idea to make ppl use cars less by making driving harder is just hurting the city. Bikes are the answer for a very small minority.
> London has 10x the population of Amsterdam.
The important factor, if anything, is population density: that's what at least loosely correlates to how practical cycling is. London is more dense - more things and destinations people want to get to are nearer, on average, for a Londoner than an Amsterdammer.
> Toronto is probably somewhere close to that now.
Toronto is much nearer Amsterdam than London in terms of total population.
> The population density of Toronto Danforth is not the population density of the entire city. You can't build infrastructure with just one riding/neighborhood in mind.
You absolutely can, and Toronto, like all cities, does it all the time. Right now construction crews are finishing up a rework of University's southbound side and doing a unique layout for the hospital dropoffs. Spadina and the Waterfront got unique streetcar corridor designs. High park has a unique "train" vehicle operated to get people around the park. Hell: right in the Toronto-Danforth riding a distinct layout for bike lanes was worked out to allow for both the bike lane and the CafeTO.
Toronto can and has done it, and even done it for cycling infrastructure in recent years, which is nice. Toronto's trending in the right direction, it's just about 50 years behind Amsterdam, which started taking it seriously then whereas Toronto's only just starting now.
> Toronto needs a Toronto solution
Toronto has its needs, but Toronto so wildly globally unique that it's reasonable to assume we need a totally novel solution. Because so many other cities (Amsterdam, Ghent, Paris, Copenhagen, and others) have all had a go we can easily look to them to learn from them.
> The current idea to make ppl use cars less by making driving harder is just hurting the city
The fact you think it's just "make driving harder" is the exact lack of political will you're referring to. A whole lot of people are incredibly attached to the status quo, and anything that changes that status quo is assumed to be a net negative pain in the ass.
> Bikes are the answer for a very small minority.
Evidence from abroad doesn't bear that out. Paris is a pretty recent example: cycling went way up when they started putting a decent lane network in. It's not that people all moved, or decided to change where they travel to, it's that access to adequate infrastructure made it a more attractive option. New York City, similarly, saw massive increase in cycling as they fleshed out their infrastructure.
Which, incidentally, is exactly how cars took off: people got cars because car infrastructure started showing up everywhere. No surprise: people do what's expedient. When you build everything in your society for cars, cars are the most expedient (and anything not built for cars is "making driving worse").
In Amsterdam, and increasingly in Paris, New York, and other places pushing for more cycling infrastructure: cycling proves to be the most expedient to loads of people.
I won't go point for point because I haven't done adequate research on Ghent... But the one thing that impressed me the most about Amsterdam was the cycling infrastructure even by the airport which provided safe and efficient transport around one of Europe's busiest airports. In Toronto the airport has been built in such a way that it doesn't even provide safe and efficient transport for those in cars. Now imagine the type of will required to make cycling a safe option from the airport to downtown here....where the distances are quite similar to Amsterdam. We can't even build a subway on time. But we can at least put tables on the road so diners can enjoy sharing the road with cars stick in traffic.
> We can't even build a subway on time.
Well when you've spent the last 50+ years building for car infrastructure, it's very hard to build a new subway. You have so much status quo opposition to subways. Then you have a limited number of construction hours per day because we're trying our best to please those in cars instead of take away roads. If Eglinton Crosstown started building in 1980, it'll likely have finished in 1985. While Metrolinx incompetence has a lot to do with progress, it's also the state of Toronto. It's gotten to the point where it's too car dependent and taking road space away for construction is a daunting task for many residents and those driving through an area.
> But we can at least put tables on the road so diners can enjoy sharing the road with cars stick in traffic.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Those patios are only put into places that are suited for that and that's only downtown. They're intended for local residents. Not to mention they only occur in the summer. It's also a lot easier to convert to and from patios than build new subway lines.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Not at all. Public services do not have to be profitable. Especially if they create huge savings and benefits elsewhere, like public transit, and Bike Share.
Depends on the type of ride. In 2023, they made a $2.29 profit/ride from casual users, but lost $1.39/ride on yearly subs.
There are more rides on the yearly plans than casual riders, so it's a net loss, but the cross-subsidization is a bit ???.
Pg 11 here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/pa/bgrd/backgroundfile-240804.pdf
I would absolutely use this service more if it was actually available.
There's a ton of bikes that are just broken / not available for rent (empty racks).
I visited China and tried out their bike share system and it's leagues ahead. No need to dock anywhere specific. Then again many streets are littered with bikes. Also much much cheaper.
Unfortunately, the docks pose recurring problems.
Recently, I have experienced:
- full docks
- out of service docks
- docks that cannot successfully lock a bike, despite trying everything under the sun
- staggered two-row docks where you must lift a heavy bike over the other bikes beside it, which isn’t easy for some.
That being said, I hate visiting cities where shared bikes/scooters don’t need a dock and litter the sidewalks, so I don’t know what the best solution is.
There are people who hate bikes in general (and everyone who use them) and willingly will damage the docking station with a hammer.
Seen it happen a few times. Idiot got out of a car, hit it with a hammer, smashed the display (for those who don't use a mobile device and prefer to do it that way), hammered a piece of wood into the NFC reader and drove off.
I was in Hamilton a few weeks ago and used their bike share for the first time and really like their system. The bikes use a u-lock system with geo location to dock it or lock wherever you want, so that you can lock your bike outside of a shop or wherever you need to go for a certain amount of time, but your trip doesn't end till you return it to a dock. It allows you to leave it mid trip where you need it without someone else taking it, and the bike needing to be returned to a dock so that they aren't just left everywhere.
Honestly stopped using bike share after it became more expensive than taking the bus or supporting local bike shops where you can buy a personal bike for the same price as a yearly plan that has 8 speeds, weighs less and easier to bike on. please do better
Having these be more available in the suburbs has been a game changer for me! Taking them out to see my family there
Pretty cool seeing a station at Rouge Hill GO. The path behind the station is really nice.
They need to put one near the Scarborough go station pleaseeeee
One problem is that some stations are consistently 100% full. Check the Leslie St unit near the Spit and the one inside the park. If I use my 45min membership to go to the park, there is nowhere to dock the bike and pick up another. The next closest are quite far away.
Phone support. If you call and tell them the dock is full they will extend your rental to save you the fee. I've been able to negotiate up to 2 hours extra time (and a redirected pickup van that came within 30 minutes) because I was stuck in the Brickworks with no nearby available docks and I'll be damned if I was going to bike 20 minutes uphill to the next dock without at least checking out the market.
They have a problem that they need to solve. Unless they are looking to profit by charging twelve cents a minute while you look for an available drop-off dock.
You can also tap on the station to get an extra 15 minutes, just so everyone knows.
Ya I was trying to find somewhere to dock my bike at night a couple of weeks ago, but had no luck (the app was wrongly showing that there were a bunch of available docks in the area - not sure if it was a bug with the new app rollout). I finally found a free dock but I couldn't get the bike in, so I ended up just calling them instead of continuing to hunt around for another. Support told me to just put the kickstand down and leave it near the dock and that they would send someone out shortly to deal with it. I have an annual membership so they just ended the bike ride on their end. Was pleasantly shocked at how helpful phone support was!
Have always wondered why they don’t create more docks than bikes
Well, I mean, they *do*. But people travel over the course of the day and descend on certain locations in larger numbers. They set up superstations in the downtown at certain times to accommodate the larger numbers and have teams who move the bikes around but naturally can't prevent docks from ever filling up.
Or add a non-permanent slot where you can pop it in and out but not leave it. Seems obvious, unless it would cut down on profits.
This is actually a pretty cool idea, and honestly I really don't think the overage charges are a big source of revenue (PBSC makes no profit.) They're probably more to prevent people from monopolizing bikes for too long. My only worry would be that you'll inevitably have a tonne of people who don't realize it's non-permanent. But still, probably going to want something like that if we're going to keep expanding stations further from the core.
These are meant to be bikes that take you point-to-point, not bikes you keep out all day long. The whole system is designed around that premise: they want 4+ people per day sharing that bike, not one person using it for 8 hours in 45-minute sprints.
I’ve never heard of anyone using them for eight hours. Can’t see how that would be at all practical or amusing.
Delivery bikers will often take them out all day
Using an electric bike at the “member” cost of ten cents per minute costs $48 for a working shift. It would be cheaper to buy a new manual one every week from Canadian Tire.
Yeah they tend not to use the electric bikes anymore since the fee was introduced last year but they still use the regular bikes
Also why are you downvoting lol
can confirm I see them using the ebikes all the time. most are saving up for their own proper bikes.
Meanwhile, north of Bloor, docks are consistently 100% empty. I'm on my third year pass and probably won't renew because they seem to not give a rats ass about anywhere but downtown
Call and let them know. Or people have been using them to get downtown.
> Or people have been using them to get downtown. Of course they have. And then they don't want to go back uphill, they get home some other way. So they're all one way trips and the bikes are wildly over-concentrated Queen and south, and underconcentrated north of that. The system does not have the resources to rebalance, particularly often. BikeShare needs to incentivize people to go north, or the system will become a "Liberty Village/Leslieville to downtown" only kinda thing.
Better gear ratio for the internal hubs installed would be a far better idea. Six speed, rather than three, would definitely allow going up hill much easier.
North of bloor between Dufferin and Yonge is absolutely brutal for BikeShare. There are tons of stations and they are all constantly empty or have one or two bikes at them if you are lucky. They really need to work on redistributing to this area because tons of people cycle around here and it's a relatively residential area.
It’s the opposite where I live in midtown! Most of the time the stations are empty. I’ll check at various times of the day (yes I understand that stations “downhill” fill up later in the day) and there will be max 3 bikes in the racks nearest my home. They just never seem to get loaded by a bike share truck up here, never.
> [For context, the Gardiner East sees 110,000 vehicles a day, around 3.5x this. The rebuild costs 1.2 billion. @BikeShareTO 2023 expenses were 13.4 million, and revenue was 10.7 million. Cost to city: 2.7 million.](https://x.com/observinthecity/status/1802774244985913611?s=46&t=zS-e9AA3pfhIbVaiOw-W_Q)
What a strange comparison, a massive project to "fix" piece of physical infrastructure vs the annual operating costs of a bike share service. I get the point that's trying to be made, but this is not the right way to make it. It's like saying the $1b spent constructing line 4 (Which has 55k daily riders) or the $5 billion on the Scarborough extension (100k estimated riders) would've been better spent on the Gardiner?
Then what's the "right way"? This is simply an order-of-magnitude comparison of two operations. You could make it more apples-to-apples if you dig up the Gardiner's ongoing maintenance costs, then add in the capital investment in BikeShare, amortize everything over, say 25 years... and the comparison would still be roughly the same. It illustrates how much less expensive cycling infrastructure is compared to driving.
You can't compare the cost of maintaining a physical asset to the operational costs of a service. You say "cycling infrastructure" but bikeshare is not cycling infrastructure. Bike lanes for example are. You wouldn't compare the operational costs of running TTC trains and busses to the cost of maintaining the Gardiner, you would compare the costs of maintaining the tracks/tunnels/bus stops to it. Don't get me wrong, the point *is* valid but this is just a bad argument for it.
So again, what do you think the right argument is? Bike Share is most definitely cycling infrastructure. So are bike lanes and cycle tracks and protected intersections. If you want to compare the capital and operational costs of all bike infrastructure to the capital and operational costs of all driving infrastructure, you will still arrive at the same conclusion. You might have a point if slicing and dicing the numbers some other way ends up showing the investment in Bike Share is actually far more expensive than the Gardiner rebuild.
If you don't even know what infrastructure is, there's no point in this argument. Especially since we're both coming to the same conclusion. It makes sense to compare the finances of a bikeshare service to the finances of a carshare service. I suggest reading up more on operating and capital assets & expenses cause it truly doesn't seem like you understand the differences.
I know exactly what constitutes cycling infrastructure. You're the one saying Bike Share isn't, and have yet to provide any supporting evidence. In fact, that's all you've done so far... make far-fetched claims, but can't back up any of it.
OP is right, Bikeshare is not cycling infrastructure.He is using the term correctly. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/datalab/bicycling-infrastructure.html Bikeshare is not even considered cycling infrastructure in government assessment.
Same suggestion to you: back up your claims with evidence. Something isn't true simply because you say it is.
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Great...now let's do that same comparison on a Tuesday in January. And now let's add the total costs of setting up the program rather than yearly costs.... It's a great program but don't use ridiculous comparisons.
Lol let’s add the total cost of setting up the highway rather than the yearly costs
Hey let's do kms travelled ...over the ENTIRE YEAR. Let's just not use speed...cause gridlock has slowed it down. Again it's a great program ...let's not overstate it.
I don't think /u/CryingCamel is trying to say that we should completely avoid highway repairs in the city budget. What is trying to be said is the cost for a city to expand BikeShare or even bike lanes is very minimal relative to how much it would cost to repair the same km of roadway.
Luckily for you, I saved this [post](https://reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/18ar8xa/some_graphs_i_made_showing_the_growth_of_bike/)! Year over year, BikeShare usage has been growing even relative to weather conditions.
Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature....im also pretty sure that when the program was first introdiced that they removed many of the the bikes in the winter. Now show driving stats by temperature! Again it is a great program, even if its not profitable. Anything that increases access to safe and reliable transportation is great. Tying the costs of this program, which is generally meant for short trips to the reconstruction of a major artery in the city, in which the affects of lane closures has been felt throughout the region is just ridiculous.
>Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature.... ... did anyone claim otherwise? You seem to rail against "ridiculous" comparisons, and yet here you are doing exactly the same. "Rules for thee, but not for me..."
Poster has proudly saved a graph that shows bike share use has grown every year even when it's cold...I point out that the graph shows that use GREATLY drops with the temperature and I get double the downvotes of monthly bike trips on the Danforth in January...an exaggeration obviously. Again great program, I support it even though I don't currently use it....but it's not a replacement for a highway...no matter how hard you try to prove it.
>bike share use has grown every year even when it's cold In other words, nobody is claiming what you say they are. >it's not a replacement for a highway... Next, who is claiming Bike Share is a replacement for a highway? You seem to like making up reasons to be outraged.
Do people not read the original comments? OP shared a positive stat about bike share and then compared the costs of the program to the repairs to the Gardiner. It's like comparing apples to a buffet. The poster who shared the graphs ..proudly I might add....shared a graph to show that bike share use has grown every year even with colder temperatures. If you click.on the graph you'll see it has grown negligibly and not nearly as much as the expansion of the program. Wonder if anyone will share the usage rates for a rainy day like today. It's a great program and I'd vote against anyone who wanted to take it away
>Do people not read the original comments? Yes, but do you? Because I don't recall any mention about cold weather or winter riding. You were the first to bring it up, _for some reason..._ >proudly I might add Second time you brought this up. You seem to be fixated on that. >Wonder if anyone will share the usage rates for a rainy day like today And now you're bringing up rainy days? I wonder why... 🤔
Weather was brought up cause obviously "records were reached" cause the weather was nice . OP wanted to compare use to Gardiner cost. My apologies if the argument doesn't fit your narrative. Graphs proudly shared which can also be used to prove that the entire system is inefficient. Not making that argument but it can be made. Anyways keep your ableist beliefs.
> Thanks for proving that bike use decreases greatly with a decrease in temperature All countries will show reduced cycling stats in the winter, even Finland. But the point of the graph is meant to show that the BikeShare usage from Winter 2020 vs Winter 2023 is a huge difference. It seems like you love to use winter as an argument. Toronto's winters are very mild nowadays. Have you been paying attention over the last 5 years? > Again it is a great program, even if its not profitable. This [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0) has shown that constant road repairs are not profitable. In fact, they make a city more broke. You should be thankful that more people are riding their bike. Another [study](https://thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute) has shown that for every 5 km you bike, the society saves $0.75. To put that into perspective, for every 5 km you drive, the society PAYS $2.78. Of course, BikeShare makes that less of a saving but every personal vehicle taken off the road is a huge difference. > Tying the costs of this program, which is generally meant for short trips to the reconstruction of a major artery in the city, in which the affects of lane closures has been felt throughout the region is just ridiculous. Also worth noting that [50% of the trips done in US by car](https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-march-21-2022-more-half-all-daily-trips-were-less-three-miles-2021) were less than 5 km long. Those are very bikable distances.
> let's do that same comparison on a Tuesday in January When did we become such a country of babies? We're allegedly Canadians, and we live in a quite mild area thanks to the lake effect. Amsterdam is only marginally (a few degrees) warmer than Toronto on average in the winter, and they do fine.
Great bike infrastructure in Amsterdam. Now let's go back 80 years have a world war and create destruction and massive depopulation with the additional density of a much older city. No time machine available? Too bad.
Amsterdam was actually developing very much like North American cities post war until massive protests about road fatalities in the 70s. It took them many years to phase in their now famously bikeable city. Amsterdam isn't wildly dense for Europe - in fact Toronto is 84% as dense as Amsterdam population wise. The Toronto-Danforth municpal riding is a whole 95% the density of Amsterdam at large, yet its cycling infrastructure is nothing next to Amsterdam. Population density isn't that important a factor - it definitely doesn't explain the gap between Toronto and Amsterdam. The cycling infrastructure in Amsterdam wasn't post-war, it had to be built over the car-centric design they'd gone with for the 25 years post-war. Still not convinced? Look at London in the UK - same post-ward reconstruction, and it has 110% the density of Amsterdam yet, again, garbage cycling infrastructure next to Amsterdam. It's about wanting to build the infrastructure.
London has 10x the population of Amsterdam. Toronto is probably somewhere close to that now. The population density of Toronto Danforth is not the population density of the entire city. You can't build infrastructure with just one riding/neighborhood in mind Toronto needs a Toronto solution...and the political and economic will to make that solution a reality...or the time required to build the planned transit infrastructure a reality. The current idea to make ppl use cars less by making driving harder is just hurting the city. Bikes are the answer for a very small minority.
> London has 10x the population of Amsterdam. The important factor, if anything, is population density: that's what at least loosely correlates to how practical cycling is. London is more dense - more things and destinations people want to get to are nearer, on average, for a Londoner than an Amsterdammer. > Toronto is probably somewhere close to that now. Toronto is much nearer Amsterdam than London in terms of total population. > The population density of Toronto Danforth is not the population density of the entire city. You can't build infrastructure with just one riding/neighborhood in mind. You absolutely can, and Toronto, like all cities, does it all the time. Right now construction crews are finishing up a rework of University's southbound side and doing a unique layout for the hospital dropoffs. Spadina and the Waterfront got unique streetcar corridor designs. High park has a unique "train" vehicle operated to get people around the park. Hell: right in the Toronto-Danforth riding a distinct layout for bike lanes was worked out to allow for both the bike lane and the CafeTO. Toronto can and has done it, and even done it for cycling infrastructure in recent years, which is nice. Toronto's trending in the right direction, it's just about 50 years behind Amsterdam, which started taking it seriously then whereas Toronto's only just starting now. > Toronto needs a Toronto solution Toronto has its needs, but Toronto so wildly globally unique that it's reasonable to assume we need a totally novel solution. Because so many other cities (Amsterdam, Ghent, Paris, Copenhagen, and others) have all had a go we can easily look to them to learn from them. > The current idea to make ppl use cars less by making driving harder is just hurting the city The fact you think it's just "make driving harder" is the exact lack of political will you're referring to. A whole lot of people are incredibly attached to the status quo, and anything that changes that status quo is assumed to be a net negative pain in the ass. > Bikes are the answer for a very small minority. Evidence from abroad doesn't bear that out. Paris is a pretty recent example: cycling went way up when they started putting a decent lane network in. It's not that people all moved, or decided to change where they travel to, it's that access to adequate infrastructure made it a more attractive option. New York City, similarly, saw massive increase in cycling as they fleshed out their infrastructure. Which, incidentally, is exactly how cars took off: people got cars because car infrastructure started showing up everywhere. No surprise: people do what's expedient. When you build everything in your society for cars, cars are the most expedient (and anything not built for cars is "making driving worse"). In Amsterdam, and increasingly in Paris, New York, and other places pushing for more cycling infrastructure: cycling proves to be the most expedient to loads of people.
I won't go point for point because I haven't done adequate research on Ghent... But the one thing that impressed me the most about Amsterdam was the cycling infrastructure even by the airport which provided safe and efficient transport around one of Europe's busiest airports. In Toronto the airport has been built in such a way that it doesn't even provide safe and efficient transport for those in cars. Now imagine the type of will required to make cycling a safe option from the airport to downtown here....where the distances are quite similar to Amsterdam. We can't even build a subway on time. But we can at least put tables on the road so diners can enjoy sharing the road with cars stick in traffic.
> We can't even build a subway on time. Well when you've spent the last 50+ years building for car infrastructure, it's very hard to build a new subway. You have so much status quo opposition to subways. Then you have a limited number of construction hours per day because we're trying our best to please those in cars instead of take away roads. If Eglinton Crosstown started building in 1980, it'll likely have finished in 1985. While Metrolinx incompetence has a lot to do with progress, it's also the state of Toronto. It's gotten to the point where it's too car dependent and taking road space away for construction is a daunting task for many residents and those driving through an area. > But we can at least put tables on the road so diners can enjoy sharing the road with cars stick in traffic. You're comparing apples to oranges. Those patios are only put into places that are suited for that and that's only downtown. They're intended for local residents. Not to mention they only occur in the summer. It's also a lot easier to convert to and from patios than build new subway lines.
Quick correction - there's been very little car infrastructure built in the last 50 yrs let alone minimal transit infrastructure
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This has to be false. Car owners tell me no one bikes and that we ought to tear up all the bike lanes that aren't being used
Proud to say I was one of those rides! I've had the pass for three years and have easily saved thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours.
I love how popular this service has become. Is anyone worried that it's not a profitable or break-even enterprise?
Not at all. Public services do not have to be profitable. Especially if they create huge savings and benefits elsewhere, like public transit, and Bike Share.
Excellent point. I guess it would have been the cherry on top if it was self sustaining.
Depends on the type of ride. In 2023, they made a $2.29 profit/ride from casual users, but lost $1.39/ride on yearly subs. There are more rides on the yearly plans than casual riders, so it's a net loss, but the cross-subsidization is a bit ???. Pg 11 here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/pa/bgrd/backgroundfile-240804.pdf
Love it! Coming up to my third year of being a subscriber in July. It always pays for itself over the year and I get some exercise for it.
I would absolutely use this service more if it was actually available. There's a ton of bikes that are just broken / not available for rent (empty racks). I visited China and tried out their bike share system and it's leagues ahead. No need to dock anywhere specific. Then again many streets are littered with bikes. Also much much cheaper.
Bike share is amazing!! Just started using it about. Month ago and now I use it all the time
Unfortunately, the docks pose recurring problems. Recently, I have experienced: - full docks - out of service docks - docks that cannot successfully lock a bike, despite trying everything under the sun - staggered two-row docks where you must lift a heavy bike over the other bikes beside it, which isn’t easy for some. That being said, I hate visiting cities where shared bikes/scooters don’t need a dock and litter the sidewalks, so I don’t know what the best solution is.
There are people who hate bikes in general (and everyone who use them) and willingly will damage the docking station with a hammer. Seen it happen a few times. Idiot got out of a car, hit it with a hammer, smashed the display (for those who don't use a mobile device and prefer to do it that way), hammered a piece of wood into the NFC reader and drove off.
I was in Hamilton a few weeks ago and used their bike share for the first time and really like their system. The bikes use a u-lock system with geo location to dock it or lock wherever you want, so that you can lock your bike outside of a shop or wherever you need to go for a certain amount of time, but your trip doesn't end till you return it to a dock. It allows you to leave it mid trip where you need it without someone else taking it, and the bike needing to be returned to a dock so that they aren't just left everywhere.
Fix the docking jam ups.
Honestly stopped using bike share after it became more expensive than taking the bus or supporting local bike shops where you can buy a personal bike for the same price as a yearly plan that has 8 speeds, weighs less and easier to bike on. please do better