This kind of public transportation is growing fast

Fewer Canadians have been using public buses and trains since the pandemic. But one new type of public transportation is seeing huge growth in cities across Canada — bike sharing.

Riders say it’s a convenient way to take one-way trips during busy days around Canada’s cities without the hassle of maintaining, storing and securing your own bike.

Cities say it’s part of an effort to provide an affordable transportation option that can help fill gaps in the public transportation system.

Montreal’s Bixi, the first public bike sharing system in North America, said 576,000 users or roughly 1 in 4 Montrealers took 11.7 million trips in 2023 – up 31 per cent since 2022 and 55 per cent since 2021. 

Justin Hanna, director of Bike Share Toronto, said Canada’s biggest city has also been seeing double-digit growth in usage, and expects 6.2 million rides in 2024 on its fleet of 9,000 bikes, up from 5.7 million the year before and just 665,000 in 2015.

In contrast, transit ridership in Canada hasn’t fully recovered from the huge drop during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was still below 2020 levels in January 2024 (new window).

The downside of bike sharing’s growth? The demand for our program far exceeds the supply of bikes that we currently have, Hanna said. In response to the popularity, Bike Share Toronto will add 200 stations with additional bikes in the next two years.

Similarly, in Montreal, one Bixi user told CBC’s Brittany Henriques (new window) that she sometimes had trouble finding bikes or places to “dock” and return them (new window). 

Still, riders say that for those who are able, there are many reasons to use bike sharing.

I like going for a bike ride better than sitting in a crowded streetcar, said Jake Roslyn, who said he is a huge fan of Bike Share Toronto and used it regularly when he lived downtown.

Hanna said it’s the most affordable way to travel the city (besides walking), and often faster than driving, especially now that e-bikes have been added to the fleet. Annual memberships start at $105, and there are also day pass, pay-as-you-go options, and discounts for low-income users (new window).

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Allison Boulton of Vancouver didn’t think she’d use her city’s Mobi bike sharing service, since she owned her own bike. Oh my – was I wrong! she wrote to CBC’s What on Earth? newsletter.

A shared bike is perfect for a journey when you’ll have multiple stops and don’t want to keep locking and unlocking your bike.

She also uses it for one-way trips where she might walk or taxi home, or riding with visiting friends. Since joining in 2017, she says she’s logged 1,665 kilometres on Mobi. 

Bike sharing has now spread to many smaller cities such as Calgary, which offers e-bikes and e-scooters through two private companies, Bird Canada and Neuron. It saw a 25 per cent increase in ridership of those options between 2021 to 2023.

Andrew Sedor, the city’s Mobility Initiatives lead, said bikes and scooters provide more transportation options and can help people get from a transit station to their final destination.

Last summer, the city piloted a free transfer between transit and e-bikes or e-scooters at one transit station (new window). Even though it wasn’t advertised, it generated 1,100 trips on the bikes and scooters in August alone, and 75 per cent of users surveyed said it made transit more attractive. Now Calgary is trying to figure out how to integrate a similar free transfer into its entire transit system.

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Being able to connect to transit is something bike share users like Jake Roslyn see as a key benefit.

He has moved to Scarborough, on the outskirts of Toronto, and would like to bike to the local Scarborough GO station to get to work. But it doesn’t yet have a Bike Share station, and he can’t easily get bike parking at his condo building.

I miss Bike Share dearly, but it needs more transit connectivity, he wrote. Once it has that, I believe that Bike Share and transit will be the best way to get around.

Some good news: Hanna says a new station, including both conventional and e-bikes, will be added at the Scarborough GO station later this year.

– Emily Chung