I was there recently too but the cost of e-bikes seemed excessive to me. (Membership plus 10 cents a minute). I too saw lots in racks! I suggest both cities need to look at the pricing and conditions to try to balance tyhings better.
I wonder how feasible it would be to upgrade all of the bikes to e-bikes.
I rode one for the first time last month, and was amazed at how physically effortless it made cycling. It certainly seems like a thing that would get a lot of people hooked on cycling.
I have no idea how much these things cost to build or maintain, so excuse me if this turns out to be a bit of a ridiculous suggestion.
10 cents a minute isn't too bad, a typical 15 minute ride would cost $1.50. People are just cheap.
Electric bike shares are much more expensive because you not only need to buy the bikes, which are generally ~3x as expensive as a regular bike, you need to set up the charging infrastructure.
Okay so this idea is a bit out of left field, but I believe that Metrolinx should look into investing heavily into e-bike shares to address the "last-mile" problem at GO stations. Such a program wouldn't be unique to Toronto - it's quite normal for commuters to cycle to rail stations in Europe and Asia - but this idea hasn't been given much consideration in the North American context.
A cyclist on an e-bike can, with next to no physical effort, travel about 4.5 kilometres within 15 minutes. If all GO rail stations in Peel Region participated in the bike share program, we can see that most of the Region would be within the 15-minute-or-less cycling catchment:
This would yield huge time savings when compared to the status quo where commuters either have to:
A) Wait 15 to 20 minutes to catch a bus that'll likely take another 15+ minutes to reach the GO station, or
B) Drive to GO stations, where they'll not only have to battle road congestion, but also spend a significant amount of time battling congestion
within these massive GO parking lots as well.
To further encourage adoption, Metrolinx should look at making these bike shares free for commuters transferring either to or from the GO network or other Rapid Transit lines. That could save bike share users potentially thousands of dollars a year in local transit fares.
Would this "solve" the last-mile problem? No, absolutely not. E-bikes would not be an option for persons with mobility issues, usage would likely plummet in the winter, and certain commuters just wouldn't be interested in this option at all (I'm probably not going to cycle in a suit). But what this would do is free up space on our roads, parking lots and on local transit for other commuters to use, while making commutes for e-bike users a lot faster than any of the current options.
Other impediments to implementation would be the lack of a cycling network or existing bike share systems in the outer suburbs. But both of those problems are fairly easy to solve, and I suspect from a benefit-cost perspective, investments in suburban bike share systems would prove to be a far more lucrative option to address the last-mile problem than any of Metrolinx's current initiatives (eg, more parking lots, BRT, microtransit, etc...).
The nice thing about this idea is that we could get the ball rolling with a very small initial investment. Perhaps start with a trial run with e-bike shares in the neighbourhood of a handful of GO stations, and expand to additional stations if the program proves successful. This program doesn't need to solve the "last-mile" problem for all commuters - it would be a great success if we can even get even a fraction of GO commuters out of their cars.