Early signs of success for BIXI?
A recently launched open data map paints a pretty encouraging picture of BIXI bike usage in Toronto. Although I wasn't around to check the stats on the weekend â when usage is typically at its peak â throughout the afternoon today, the number of bikes not located in stands has hovered around 65 per cent. Put differently, at 2:36 p.m. there were 689 empty spaces at BIXI stands, while 356 were docked awaiting use.
For a little context, a look at some of O'Brien's other bike share maps reveals that Toronto's BIXI usage already rivals cities where the program has been in place for far longer. The London Barclays Cycle Hire Map, which admittedly tracks a far higher number of bikes/stands (at over 9000 total) has come in at around 60 per cent for the last couple of hours. And Montreal's BIXI fleet is currently at about 50 per cent of spaces available (tracking around 7700 bikes/stands).
Needless to say, it's probably not a good idea to put too much stock into unscientific comparisons of bike-sharing systems of very different sizes (and at very different points in their existence), but roughly 65 per cent weekday afternoon stand space strikes me as a pretty good start.
Notes and corrections:
After a few comments pointed out flaws in the metrics of this post, I've given it a few updates, so it's probably a good idea to clarify some of the changes and what the usage of the program really is.
- First things first, there appear to be around 375-400 bikes currently in the BIXI Toronto fleet, while there are already over 1000 stand spaces
- Working only with the former number (and assuming it doesn't change via more car accidents or the addition of more bikes), the simplest way to gauge usage right now is to subtract the number of bikes in stands from 380 (or whatever you think the total number of bikes revealed by the overnight graph is)
- London and Montreal's stats above are quotes of bikes and stand space, not just bikes.
- It's tough to use these maps to compare system to system unless you know how many stand spaces there are over and above bikes in each city
