Bike share becomes the anchor of Toronto’s mobility hub strategy

Toronto is integrating bike share more closely with public transport, parking and other shared mobility services as it develops a network of mobility hubs designed to make switching between transport modes more seamless.

The strategy was outlined by Matthew Barsab, Director of Bike Share at the Toronto Parking Authority, during a Micromobility Industries webinar preview of Lyft Urban Solutions‘ forthcoming Multimodal Report, where officials from Toronto and Chicago discussed how cities are adapting bike share systems to changing travel patterns.

Rather than encouraging residents to choose between driving, cycling or public transport, Toronto is aiming to make those modes work together through a connected customer journey.

“We’re moving towards, with our transit partners, building mobility hubs, where bike share becomes integrated in the customer journey with rental cars, with higher orders of transit, with parking, with public spaces,” said Barsab. “When we do that, it helps shift the narrative away from one versus the other to focus on what’s the easiest and most seamless way for somebody to get across the city.”

That thinking is shaping the city’s long-term expansion plans. By 2030, Toronto expects to have more than 24,000 docking points, including more than 3,000 charging docks supporting a fleet of around 15,000 pedal and electric bikes. Many of the new stations are being located alongside new subway and light rail infrastructure to strengthen first and last-mile connections.

The expansion also reflects continued growth in e-bike demand, with electrified docks reducing the need for manual battery swapping while improving operational efficiency. But Barsab said conventional bicycles will remain a core part of the network.

“It really is about providing choice for people, and there’s also the reality of winter,” he said. “We end up sheltering most of our e-bike fleet during the winter… but we keep the iconic fleet out, and we’re lucky that over 100,000 rides get chose to be taken by people even during the winter months. So it shows there is a market for having just pedal bikes.”

Chicago adapts to hybrid working

Rather than expanding around new mobility hubs, the city has been adapting its operations to increasingly unpredictable commuting patterns as employers continue to adjust hybrid working policies.

“Anytime a major company in downtown Chicago would change their work from home policy… we could see a huge spike in ridership,” said David Poe, Assistant Commissioner at the Chicago Department of Transportation. “We were having a really hard time as a company and as a city working together to figure out how we adapt to that new normal.”

The city has responded by expanding docking stations in the central business district, revising its service level agreement with Lyft to provide greater operational flexibility and installing stations in locations that were previously considered unsuitable as available kerb space becomes harder to find.

The findings form part of Lyft Urban Solutions’ sixth annual Multimodal Report, due to be published in August.

Other notable findings

• Citi Bike accounted for 44 percent of commute-hour trips on Lyft’s platform in New York, putting ridership on a par with the PATH rail system.
• Bay Wheels would rank as the San Francisco Bay Area’s seventh-largest transit operator by ridership.
• Reduced-fare members made nearly 7.5 million trips in 2025; 69 percent use public transport weekly and 80 percent do not own or lease a car.
• Lyft’s e-bike fleet recorded more than 44 million trips in 2025, with ridership increasing by almost 40 percent year on year.

Image: Chandra Ramsurrun | Dreamstime.com