Hamilton Bike Share Everyone Rides Pilot Initiative

Through the Everyone Rides Initiative (ERI), the City of Hamilton and Hamilton Bike Share will remove barriers to accessing transportation by providing public bike share infrastructure and programming in Neighbourhood Action Strategy priority areas which are generally more car dependent, lack adequate transit coverage and have under-performing business districts. The pilot will run for a duration of three years, with the first year mainly dedicated to member recruitment and the instillation of the ten new bike share stations and 75 new bikes, and the following two years focused on operations and maintenance and data collection. The Everyone Rides Initiative will provide fully subsidized memberships to individuals who are identified as in need by community partners in social service; provide additional bike share bikes within the identified areas in order to ensure that these residents have access to a bike at all times of day; install additional hubs within the identified areas in order to reduce the distance that residents must walk from their houses to an available bike; and provide training and guidance to riders to build confidence and encourage regular and safe bike usage. The expected environmental benefits of the pilot project include a 78 tonne reduction in CO2e emissions due to fewer vehicle kilometers traveled in single occupancy vehicles, local air quality improvements, and reduced need for road building and maintenance due to improved cycling modal split. The cycling mode share in Hamilton is currently less than 1% city-wide and 6% in the urban area. Based on results from a recent survey of current bike share members, bike share trips replaced car trips at a rate of 25-30 percent. If the pilot is successful in terms of increasing modal share in the city by a projected 0.6%, the first priority will be to ensure that ERI stations in the pilot are permanently installed. The City would also look to expand the program to areas along the LRT route with similar characteristics, as well as using their research on lower density neighborhoods to expand to the Hamilton Mountain neighborhoods. Consultation tools and market research will be used to understand ride behaviour including surveys, focus groups and analysis of GPS path data and station level usage data, which will be consolidated and analyzed in a final report. The report will also evaluate the effectiveness of membership subsidies and training programs in relation to mainstreaming the pilot project. The Everyone Rides Initiative is supported by the Hamilton Community Climate Change Action Plan, which identifies sustainable transportation as a key theme. In addition, a key objective in the Transportation Master Plan is to increase the share of daily trips made by walking or cycling from 6% to 15% in 2031. The City of Hamilton Equity and Inclusion Policy also supports the pilot through its commitment to continuously engage under-served communities in order to remove barriers in accessing programs, services, and opportunities. (Project description from original funding application)