The principle of this spoke is “Bike-and-ride expands the choices for non-auto trips”. The majority of the major transit systems in North America have buses with bike racks allowing cyclists to “Bike-and-Ride” and extend their cycling range. The TTC is a notable exception. The Toronto Bike Plan recommends a pilot project to have bike racks on buses. Another recommendation that would increase the combination of cycling and transit would be the installation of secure bike parking facilities, such as bike lockers, at TTC stations. These issues are covered in question 6 of the survey. You can see all of the recommendations in this section at the Cycling and Transit web page.

The Toronto Cycling Committee has proposed these two initiatives to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) over the past year. They did not get a very friendly response. Granted the TTC has been underfunded for the past six years and its struggles to keep the system running have overshadowed any requests for service improvements. However even requests to make changes that were not expensive were turned down.

This sign means you can bring your bike on the subway 70% of the time Monday to Friday, and all day on Sunday and Saturday.

Having a Bike-and-Ride strategy can increase ridership for the TTC and increase the number of people using bikes for transportation. Now that there are opportunities to get funds from the provincial and federal government the new Mayor and Council should ask that some of those funds should be earmarked for a Bike-and-Ride strategy that will implement the recommendations of the Cycling and Transit portion of the Toronto Bike Plan.