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Toronto Bike Share

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https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2017/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-106760.pdf

Funding dockless rental bikes in Toronto

Sept. 21, 2017

By Laura Godfrey

The city’s Bike Share program grew again last month, adding 70 new docking stations to its existing 200 — a total of 2,750 Bike Share bikes in the city and 4,700 individual docks. While the transportation option is growing in availability, Councillor Mike Layton believes the city is running out of places to put those stations. This past week at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, he requested that city staff consider dockless bike sharing and report back on its feasibility in the fourth quarter of 2017.

But apparently staff are already on the case, with a plan to report at November’s Executive Committee meeting “to talk about bike share issues and a funding model, and this is part and parcel of that,” councillor and committee chair Jaye Robinson said. (Funding and the business of how the Toronto Parking Authority generates money was a hot issue at city hall in the spring, when city council was told of controversy arising from the value of the price of a parking lot.)

The committee moved to fold Layton’s request into the report.

The trend has already gained popularity in China, and this week, large-scale programs were launched in Washington, D.C., and Southampton, England. A small pilot project launched in Toronto this June from a Canadian company called Dropbike, with nearly 100 bikes in the downtown University of Toronto area, and it saw more than 5,000 rides during the first eight weeks. The technology allows users to unlock a bike using a smartphone app, ride for as little as $1 an hour, and then return it at any of the designated bike racks or parking spots, without the need for a large docking station.

In his letter to the committee, Layton, a longtime advocate for cycling infrastructure, praised the potential of Canadian company Dropbike — it’s the latest dockless bike-sharing company in Montreal, as reported by Kevin Mio in the Montreal Gazette. “According to Dropbike, the bike sharing industry is estimated to be worth $5.9 billion by 2020,” Layton wrote in his letter.

“Unfortunately, in a city as dense as Toronto, we are running out of sites big enough to accommodate the large docking systems currently required by Bike Share Toronto’s system,” Layton wrote. “The city will soon need to look for alternative methods if we want to continue to expand the system.”
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http://signaltoronto.com/funding-dockless-rental-bikes-toronto/
 

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I've schooled Layton on dockless bikes many times on twitter. He just won't listen. It's not an example of good design. I've already seen so many vandalized Dropbikes laying around. I've seen one simply thrown onto Dundas Street a month ago or so.

“According to Dropbike, the bike sharing industry is estimated to be worth $5.9 billion by 2020,” Layton wrote in his letter.
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Seriously? What a reliable source.
 
Avenue said:
I've schooled Layton on dockless bikes many times on twitter. He just won't listen. It's not an example of good design. I've already seen so many vandalized Dropbikes laying around. I've seen one simply thrown onto Dundas Street a month ago or so.
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There has been one with two locks on it, sitting on Church St in front of the MLG Loblaws for a few weeks now.
 
TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bikes, everywhere…except in the worst way possible. Being thrown behind fences, kicked in the middle of sidewalks, fished out of rivers. Bikes on top of buildings and on statues. Bikes, somehow, hung from trees. That’s the version of dockless bike sharing that you’ll see in the news — an image of something once shiny and beautiful, mangled and left to be thrown out. To most people, it’s just the harsh reality — but accepting it as such would be against Dropbike’s values. So over the past few months, we set out to answer a question: how do we solve the chaos of dockless bike sharing?

Many months ago, we started Dropbike to get more people to ride bikes more often. But our plan came with caveats, like a set of internal rules: we would only work with cities, municipalities and other stakeholders to achieve our goal, and we wouldn’t dump bikes on the ground without this partnership. Time and time again, we’ve heard from officials that this is truly the best (and only) path forward, and we’ve also seen those who aren’t as friendly…stumble. By now, most people have realized that bike sharing companies and cities have to work together for either to succeed.

It hasn’t always been easy to stick to our plan or remember our mandate. It’s tempting to want to just release bikes into a city and watch them ride away. It’s easy to note how many cities a company is in…and not how many city bylaws that company is ignoring. Right now, the bike sharing market is an exciting and volatile sphere with few answers — but we can’t ignore the future.

Early on in the life of our company, as we engaged in more and more conversations with cities, our goals started to look different from everyone else’s. Instead of seeing explosive growth in a fast-moving market — a launch every week, X number of cities launched by Y date — as the ultimate “We Made It” accomplishment, we became more critical of sustainability. Can companies who don’t do their homework on cities be the best solution for residents? Could goals that blindly prioritize shallow numbers over sustainable solutions backfire? And most importantly, what will bike sharing look like, and how will it contribute meaningfully to city infrastructure?

In spring of 2017, we bet on Havens—flexible parking spots that clarify drop-off for users and organize our system for cities. Everyone we talk to says it: Havens are the natural next step. It’s indefensible to shrug as bikes clutter up sidewalks and end up in weird places — companies must be involved in organizing shared bikes. Since spring, Havens have been Dropbike’s unique solution to the chaos of dockless bike sharing. We’ve seen their success in Toronto, Kingston and Westmount…instead of paying thousands of dollars for docks, which are no longer necessary with a fleet of self-locking and app-connecting bikes, the Havens system retains the organization of a docked model with the affordability of a dockless system. Havens are the best of both worlds.

In the past few months, we’ve tested our hypothesis: we’ve run dockless operations, launched Havens that are only marked in our app, and marked Havens both in our app and physically. We’ve read hundreds of articles about dockless bikes ending up in trees, in rivers, on top of buildings, or on statues. By listening to user feedback, discussing concerns with cities, monitoring data (user compliance, trip starts, trip ends) and remaining flexible, we became the first to realize that Havens are the natural solution.

In Chicago last week, surrounded by transportation officials, our conference-going, blazer-wearing Business Development and Government Relations team reported back: there’s a buzz building in the bike sharing community. Parking zones, or Havens, are coming.

“Well, duh!” was the response from Dropbike HQ. For the second time, our team had refused to copy-paste the Asian model of dockless bike sharing and stayed ahead of the curve. With the ultimate goal of creating a smart bike sharing platform that truly serves the cities we launch in, we designed Havens—and now, Havens are defining the way North American governments look at bike sharing.

The result? Wait and see.

For interview requests, please contact Farnia Fekri at farnia@dropbike.co.
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https://globenewswire.com/news-rele...ept-and-bike-sharing-s-obvious-next-step.html

Of course, being Toronto, the resistance to change is ingrained:
By: Matt Elliott Metro Published on Mon Oct 02 2017
When it comes to car sharing, Toronto is both a leader and a follower.

The city leads in usage. Since April of 2016, when car share agency Car2go began to allow users to drop off cars on most city streets, use of car sharing has exploded. For the last five months, Car2go says Toronto has been their most active city anywhere in the world — meaning the cars here are used more frequently than other cities they serve.

Not only does that mean Toronto is better at sharing than Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal, it also means we’re trouncing global urbanist champs like Madrid, Rome and Berlin.

But when it comes to policy, Toronto is trailing way behind.

The move that Car2go made to allow on-street parking of their vehicles? Technically, not, um, legal. As a result, as usage has increased so has the number of parking tickets issued to car share vehicles.

Toronto remains the only city with car2go service where this is the case. All 24 of their other global locations operate with some sort of permitted agreement to allow so-called “free-floating” service, where car share vehicles can be parked on street.

But there’s some good news. Car2go’s outlaw era might finally be coming to an end this week. At their meeting that kicks off Oct. 2, Toronto City Council will debate a proposed pilot project that would, if approved, allow car share vehicles to legally park on streets in permit parking areas. [...]
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http://www.metronews.ca/views/toron...up-on-car-sharing-even-as-usage-explodes.html
 
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steveintoronto said:
https://globenewswire.com/news-rele...ept-and-bike-sharing-s-obvious-next-step.html
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That's the company's own PR release. I have no clue why you're bothering to post it.

If the private sector wants to do dockless bike share, and they're willing to pay the city for the infrastructure (bike racks and bike rings) that it needs, I'm all for it. Publicly-owned infrastructure should be more accessible though. It shouldn't depend on the user having a cell phone, a data plan and an app for the bike system.
 
amnesiajune said:
I have no clue why you're bothering to post it.
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Obviously...as you just wrote "If the private sector wants to do dockless bike share, and they're willing to pay the city for the infrastructure (bike racks and bike rings) that it needs, I'm all for it.". That's what they explain.
Publicly-owned infrastructure should be more accessible though. It shouldn't depend on the user having a cell phone, a data plan and an app for the bike
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Dropbike is privately owned.

Toronto Bike-Share allows you to rent them or take out a membership with no identification, deposit or security?

https://bikesharetoronto.com/members/register
 
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steveintoronto said:
Obviously...
Toronto Bike-Share allows you to rent them or take out a membership with no identification, deposit or security?
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No, but it doesn't require a cell phone with a data plan, which can be a significant portion of a person's budget if they don't make much money.
 
Most of the time I don't have issues with finding open docks using my usual routine. But you can look at the map at the station, and then check the nearest docks manually if there isn't an open dock. Sometimes I'll also just wait at my usual dock if it's full since it's a very active dock and chances are that someone will come grab a bike within a few minutes. Point is, you can't use dropbike period if you don't have a data plan, but you can still use Bike Share Toronto.

Some months I get to my data limit before the end of my billing cycle, and Bike Share Toronto still works for me this way.
 
Bikeshare in Seoul today, outside main train station. A bit chilly on the walk, but nice to get out of the hotel.
 

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Dockless bikeshare works.

Come to Hamilton and see our 825-bike dockless bike share system in action!

-- You do automatically get chared a dollar for ending your rental offdock, but you can park anywhere you can legally publicly lock a bike. Including parking meter poles and such. Next user sees its location in an app. All bikes have trackers.
-- You get a 75 cent reward for returning offdock bikes to "official racks" (hubs wthat are just plain advertiser-wrapped ordinary bike racks).
-- Pay Per Use costs only 9 cents a minute. Good for last mile trips.
-- Free to sign up. No signup fees anymore!

No chaos in Hamilton!
For those unaware our system is dockless -- www.sobihamilton.ca

I commute with SoBi in the winter about half the time now, as my GO train connection on my Hamilton-side of my commute to Toronto.

In summer, sometimes I am SoBi-GO-BikeShareToronto -- using both city bikeshares for my first and last miles! From Hamilton Gage Paek area to Toronto Bloor Street. In winter, I am SoBi-GO-TTC now that they got $1.50 TTC integration and Bloor uphill is tough in winter without a Yonge St. protected cycle track (or similar alignment)
 
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