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Toronto Bike Share

Admiral Beez said:
IMO, the Toronto docked bike model works perfectly. I walk 5 mins and grab a bike, ride to Union, grab my train. All’s good.
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It works great when you can actually get a bike in a five minute walk. The problem is that if you're in a mostly-residential area, all the bikes are taken away by commuters in the morning, and for the rest of the day more people are biking out than biking in, so every station will be empty or nearly-empty unless Bike Share refills it. They don't move bikes around enough, and this ends up turning into a big problem especially now that Bike Share is expanding into the lower-density neighbourhoods east and north of downtown.
 
amnesiajune said:
It works great when you can actually get a bike in a five minute walk. The problem is that if you're in a mostly-residential area, all the bikes are taken away by commuters in the morning, and for the rest of the day more people are biking out than biking in, so every station will be empty or nearly-empty unless Bike Share refills it. They don't move bikes around enough, and this ends up turning into a big problem especially now that Bike Share is expanding into the lower-density neighbourhoods east and north of downtown.
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I suppose, but I've rarely had a problem in my daily commute. Only once when arriving at Union Stn did I find all the docks full, so returned my bike across the street. I use the app, so I know where the available bikes are. From my house at Parliament and Carlton there are at least six stations.

Removing the docks doesn't help your issue. It's the manual rebalancing of the network that's needed, docks or no docks.
 
Admiral Beez said:
I suppose, but I've rarely had a problem in my daily commute. Only once when arriving at Union Stn did I find all the docks full, so returned my bike across the street. I use the app, so I know where the available bikes are. From my house at Parliament and Carlton there are at least six stations.

Removing the docks doesn't help your issue. It's the manual rebalancing of the network that's needed, docks or no docks.
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I rarely seem to have any problems with my daily commute as well. I come from Bloor/Yonge to College/Bay and have 2 options for docks near my home, and 3 options for docks near my work. I've never run into a situation where all my options were empty/full.
 
On the topic of rebalancing, it was impossible to find a bike around U of T yesterday, likely because of the free Wednesdays promotion (students love a bargain). It's good that people are taking advantage of the promo, but it's a little frustrating when I can't get a bike as a paying member.
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threnody said:
On the topic of rebalancing, it was impossible to find a bike around U of T yesterday, likely because of the free Wednesdays promotion (students love a bargain). It's good that people are taking advantage of the promo, but it's a little frustrating when I can't get a bike as a paying member.
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I’d like to see a journey map, where did all those bikes go?
 
threnody said:
On the topic of rebalancing, it was impossible to find a bike around U of T yesterday [...] it's a little frustrating when I can't get a bike as a paying member.
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Yup as someone pointed out, this sin't even due to the promo (it was only for June).

This is a chronic problem around U of T. I've pointed it out to Toronto Bike Share and emailed them. PLEASE do it to. With enough people complaining, maybe they'll start re-stocking around U of T at a second point in the day.
 
Amare said:
King and Spadina is going to need all the help they could get. After looking at this map, I would never move into that area:
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These maps can't possibly be very well-estimated. Just look at the entire U of T region, and Queen's park (park and legislature), and hospital district. These aren't exactly what you would call residential areas.
 
Ok this is getting preposterous.

For the second day in a row there are virtually no bikes available in the entire Danforth corridor.

There are 12 sets of docks from Woodbine to Broadview, including 2 north on Coxwell.

Of those 8 have ZERO bikes available, the others only a handful between them.

That's ridership and membership suppression. How do get someone to join when if they do they will find no bikes for 3km either way?

Edit to add: Studying the map, I note not a single bike in the six most northerly stations either (St. Clair/Moore Park/Rosedale).

Curiously, the west end perimeter appears much better stocked.
 
So... that's not accurate. There's no east end conspiracy. I'm in Little Italy and whenever I leave the house after 9 am I will also find no bikes because everyone else commuting to downtown to their work places has taken them already. Often times there are no bikes Dundas to Bloor, Grace to all the way east to the east of Spadina. They can't make the bikes wait for you in the stations, that's got nothing to do with 'rider suppression'.
 
Avenue said:
So... that's not accurate. There's no east end conspiracy. I'm in Little Italy and whenever I leave the house after 9 am I will also find no bikes because everyone else commuting to downtown to their work places has taken them already. Often times there are no bikes Dundas to Bloor, Grace to all the way east to the east of Spadina. They can't make the bikes wait for you in the stations, that's got nothing to do with 'rider suppression'.
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I didn't imply there was a conspiracy.

I suggested inaction on this problem has the effect of suppressing membership.

I see a vast abundance of bikes in certain areas like the western Beaches, parts of Queen East, etc. and clearly some redistribution is in order.

If the TTC runs 4 buses on a route in rush hour and they are all jam packed, then they are suppressing ridership growth. After all, it's self evident that the demand is there for a 5th bus, if not a 6th, and if people could reliably get on the bus, they'd be riding it.

Likewise if there are no bikes, before 9am, you need more bikes. Whether they address this issue by more stations, more docks/bikes, or by moving around the existing fleet is not my concern, my concern is that we hear ridership isn't as high as Montreal (bikeshare) and then we seem there would be more ridership if only there was bike available to ride.

I also noted it was a problem in the north end too.


The far west, near High Park/Western Beaches/Bloor West seems very well if not overstocked as well.
 
I'm sure this isn't a new idea but they could implement some sort of crowd-sourced redistribution. Eg. Stations go red when they have too few bikes, and green when they have too many. Get some sort of credit when you bring a bike from green to red.
 
Needed to stop at Sobeys on Broadview after work and was debating whether to go directly using Bike Share and then walking up from Danforth or go home first and grab my own bike. Bike Share just added a station in front of said Sobeys...it's like they're reading my mind!
 
Western East York picked up new outposts today.

Stations added:

Broadview/Westwood (just north of Moritimer)
Broadview/Gamble (just north of Cosburn)
Pape/Gamble (just north of Cosburn)

This will help grow membership and maybe take a tiny bit of pressure off the Danforth outposts noted above.
 
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