The pandemic may have ground much of Toronto to a halt, but it hasn’t stopped the growth of the city’s bike share system.
Bike Share Toronto posted record trip numbers in 2020 and 2021, even as car use dropped and public transit ridership collapsed. And as the city emerges from COVID-19, the program’s leaders say it has a bright future. Not only are more people riding, but Bike Share is poised to build on that success by expanding to all corners of Toronto, and introducing steep discounts to make the program accessible to residents of all incomes.
“This is really a transformational point for Bike Share. It’s exciting for the program and for the city,” said Bike Share director Justin Hanna. He said his goal is to make bike sharing “an integral part of the city’s transportation network.”
“We are taking the program to the next level,” he said.
Bike Share arrived in Toronto in 2011 under the “Bixi” brand, but struggled financially and was taken over by the Toronto Parking Authority in 2014. Casual users pay $3.25 for a ride of 30 minutes or less between the system’s docking stations, or can buy an annual membership that offers unlimited rides for as little as $99.
According to to report going to the parking authority on Friday, Bike Share logged an all-time high of 3.57 million trips in 2021. That was up 23 per cent from the year before, which was also a record. The number of annual members grew by 34 per cent last year, and revenue for the publicly subsidized system grew more than one-third to $7.6 million, against operating costs of about $9.9 million.
Hanna attributes the system’s pandemic success in large part to a major expansion completed in 2020 that took it from an original deployment of just 80 stations and 1,000 bikes to 625 stations and 6,850 bikes.
Bike Share also benefited from Torontonians’ reluctance to get on crowded transit vehicles during COVID-19, and the ActiveTO program that closed major streets to car traffic and encouraged people to ride.
New cycling infrastructure also helped. According to the report, Bike Share trips on Bloor Street tripled once the program integrated its docking stations with new bike lanes there.
The positive numbers don’t mean COVID-19 has had no effect on the system. The parking authority had predicted the recent expansion would lead to 4 million rides a year, but it has yet to reach that target.
Diana Petramala, a senior economist at Ryerson University’s Center for Urban Research and Land Development, released a study last August that found the pandemic dramatically changed how people used Bike Share.
Before COVID-19, the system was largely used by commuters. Work-from-home trends that emerged during the crisis reduced that kind of ridership, but those losses were offset by an increase in recreational trips, with more people riding on weekends and on trails.
More than 530,000 Bike Share trips were taken along Toronto’s waterfront trail in 2020, while usage at the commuter hub at Union Station dropped by almost half, according to the study.
Petramala said a key question for Bike Share’s future is whether people who took up riding for recreation during the pandemic will become dedicated users once they start going back to the office a few times a week.
“Maybe it was something that was fun to do when things were closed” but that people will abandon in the long term, she said. If so, Bike Share could see “lower uptake than we otherwise might have expected” after COVID-19.
The parking authority is predicting a more modest ridership increase of just six per cent this year, but Hanna believes the system still has plenty of room to grow. The report going to the parking authority Friday outlines a four-year expansion program that would add 380 stations by 2025, for a total of about 1,000. It would cost $3 million in its first year.
Many of the new stations would go outside Bike Share’s traditional catchment area in the center of the city. Riders took nearly 25,300 trips last year in two test areas in North York and Scarborough, which the parking authority says is indicating “there is a strong demand for bike share beyond the central system.”
The growth plan would link the North York and Scarborough zones with the central system, and extend Bike Share into all 25 Toronto wards by 2025.
Erhard Kraus, a member of the cycling advocacy group Toronto East Cyclists, said Bike Share would offer a low-cost transportation option to families in densely populated apartment communities Scarborough.
He called the planned expansion “wonderful news,” but said many major streets in the area are dangerous to ride on, so any expansion must be accompanied by the construction of new bike lanes in the suburb.“It’s got to go hand in hand, ” he said.
Distances between destinations outside downtown also tend to be longer, which is one reason why Bike Share intends to add at least 225 electric bikes to its fleet this year. The system already has 300 of the vehicles, which can go up to 25 km/h and enable users to cover longer trips.
The program also hopes to become more accessible by introducing a discounted $5 annual membership for low-income residents. Eligibility would be the same as for the city’s Fair Pass program for the TTC, and Hanna said Bike Share hopes to launch the discount by early 2023.
“We want to make sure that every Torontonian has access to Bike Share, regardless of income,” he said.
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