Now that Vancouver has settled on a next generation new-tech bike-share supplier, Toronto has made big changes to theirs. Plus a new transit-station orientation.
With a significant installed base of bikes and docks to consider, they have signed a 5-year deal with PBSC Urban Solutions to supply 1000 more bikes, 120 docking stations and replacement electronics at the existing 81 stations and 1500 individual bike docks. This doubles Toronto’s system size.
The Ontario Provincial Gov’t provided $ 4.9 M to this expansion, through MetroLinx, the Transportation Authority. TD Bank has signed on for two years as a sponsor, kicking in ~ $ 1.3 M towards operating costs. Hello BC Gov’t?? Can you stop looking at that $ 4B bridge for a minute? Hello Lululemon, Telus, HY Louie? Is anyone out there?
Station Locations
Toronto’s bike-share people have learned a lot. The new station plan revolves around transit stations and commuters. The old plan and its station locations were apparently more about tourists.
According to interviews by John Saunders in Torontoist.com:
“This is all new,” says Marie Casista, vice president of real estate, marketing, and development for the Toronto Parking Authority, which manages the bicycle sharing system. . . . . Final locations for the bike stations have yet to be determined, but they will likely closely follow other infrastructure development. “There is a lot of demand for stations at or near transit hubs.” . . . .
. . . Gian-Carlo Crivello, PBSC’s client relationship officer . . . . agrees with the need to follow the tracks (or the tires). “Five or six years ago, bike-sharing was seen as a stand-alone product. Now, cities and users start to understand that it has to be part of the whole transit system of a city,” he says.
PBSC Trivia
PBSC is supplier to several small and insignificant customers (<snort>): London, Chicago, New York City, Montreal among others. The company has continued to improve and change their bike offerings, with a lighter-weight “Fit” model and an electrically-powered pedal assist “Boost” now available.
Bikeshare sounds like a good way to address the inefficiency/aggravation of having to take a bus to the Skytrain station. Skytrain is about the only efficient public transit system we have in the LM (well, in Vancouver and neighboring cities anyway). To take a bus to the Skytrain station is aggravating. When they run 4 buses per hour at 5:30 pm, they’re crowded. At 11:30 pm when you get off the Skytrain, you have to wait 50 minutes for the next bus that runs once per hour, and by then your Compass card time window has expired so you have to pay an additional fare. People drive to the Skytrain station because they don’t want to wait for the damned bus. But then the car just sits there for the next three or four hours. Very inefficient. What if they placed bikeshare docks in residential areas with poor bus service? With docks at the Skytrain stations? Those Translink execs are making huge 6-figure incomes. Why haven’t they figured this out? (And hey, what if my Compass card worked for bikeshare as well as for the secure bike parking facilities at some of the Skytrain stations? I bet you they don’t!)