Shift Transit’s Female Leaders Continue to Excel in the Mobility Industry

At Shift Transit, diversity is crucial to our success. We believe that inclusion creates a stronger workforce and promotes innovative thinking. And in an industry where only 15% of the overall workforce is female, we are proud that 50% of our management team is composed of female leaders. At Shift, we mentor, grow and empower the women on our team to become tomorrow’s leaders of successful, sustainable mobility programs.

On International Women’s Day, we want to take this opportunity to highlight a few of our female team members and their invaluable contributions to our company’s success as we celebrate and elevate women’s voices today, this month, and all year round.

Maintaining Operational Excellence for Bike Share Toronto

Betul Canbolat joined our Bike Share Toronto team in April 2020 and has held various roles and responsibilities over the course of the last year. Betul started off by supporting the 2020 Bike Share Toronto expansion and was quickly recognized for her hard work and can-do attitude. A few months later, Betul was asked to join our dedicated team of field mechanics who conduct in-field safety checks on the entire bicycle fleet each and every month. Their main responsibility is to ensure that every single bike in our system – 6,850 to be exact – are safe, reliable, and available to use. Betul has continued to flourish in this position, performing as many as 300 individual bike safety checks on a daily basis. She has proven to be a valued, passionate member of the team and played a critical role in Bike Share Toronto’s 2020 record-breaking success.

According to Betul, “Shift Transit and Bike Share Toronto are near and dear to my heart. As a newcomer to Canada, it has afforded me the opportunity to improve my skills in a multitude of ways and more importantly allows me to interact with various communities around the city on a daily basis. This is something that has truly allowed me to enjoy the multicultural diversity of this beautiful city, which is priceless in its own right. Most importantly, as a former Forest conservation officer in my native Turkey, the entire premise of Bike Share Toronto, which is to give people an alternative emission-free mode of transportation, is something that is intrinsically rewarding to me. I feel fortunate to be part of such a positive program and look forward to continuing to do my part in creating a better environment for future generations.”

Betul Canbolat, Field Mechanic, Bike Share Toronto

Leading Bike Chattanooga to New Heights

Joannah Burkhardt has been involved with the Bike Chattanooga program since it launched in 2012. She started as the program’s Marketing Manager and was then quickly promoted to the role of General Manager, spending nearly 10 years of her career dedicated to educating Chattanoogans about the benefits of bikeshare. One of Joannah’s favorite parts of the job is the ability to lead, motivate, and inspire her team to achieve different goals every single day. Joannah leads by example and is always willing to provide an assist to our employees with anything they need – from repairing a bike, to planning a marketing campaign, to meeting with city leaders to review the system’s performance.

She leans on other female leaders at Shift Transit for support and inspiration, stating, “It is so encouraging to see the number of strong women that work for Shift Transit and the impact we continue to make on a daily basis. The support and encouragement we get from each other and from our company are what makes Shift Transit a great place to work.”

Joannah’s work in Chattanooga continues to pay dividends almost a decade after she began working in bikeshare, leading Bike Chattanooga to record-breaking usage and membership gains in 2020.

Joannah Burkhardt, GM, Bike Chattanooga

Passion for Mobility Drives Shift Transit’s Overall Success

From front-line operations, to customer care, to marketing and beyond, our female team members play a critical role in ensuring our company’s day-to-day success. And for many of our female employees, the passion they share for mobility extends beyond their work at Shift Transit, as they spend their personal time working to grow the presence and influence of women in the industry at-large. For example, our VP of Marketing, Heili Toome, serves as a member of Women in Cycling, a new organization that aims to help enhance the visibility and impact of women in the cycling industry. And our Marketing Manager, Janine Ward, serves as a member of Women in Mobility, an organization created to accelerate personal and professional growth for women across the mobility industry.

Thank you to all of our terrific female team members who contribute so much to make our company the leading mobility operator in North America!!

Record-Breaking Growth Amidst Significant Change and Challenges in Mobility

2020 was completely unprecedented and ever-changing, especially for those of us in the mobility industry. At Shift Transit, we had to make significant changes to our operational approach in each of our business units overnight, ensuring that all of our team members were outfitted with personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, and cleaning supplies to do their jobs safely. For our customers, we dramatically increased the cadence of cleanings for every bike, station, scooter, and van that we oversee, thoroughly cleaning every nook and cranny of each piece of equipment we care for to prevent customers from contracting or spreading COVID-19. Along with our clients, we held our breath as we worried and wondered about the impact the coronavirus would have on shared mobility, and our communities, as a whole.

But in the face of a global pandemic, Shift Transit’s business units flourished. In our bikesharing markets, our clients and the cities they serve deemed bikesharing an essential service, continuing to provide residents of Toronto, Detroit, Chattanooga, and Tucson with a safe, reliable transportation option. We adjusted and refined our marketing strategies and tactics to meet our users where they were – in parks and safe streets rather than previously bustling commercial corridors or downtown epicenters. Overall, total usage in all of our bikesharing markets was up a combined 17%, led by a 62% increase in weekend trips and 33% increase in casual user (non-annual member) trips. Most significantly, both our Toronto and Chattanooga markets shattered previous annual trip records, achievements we look forward to accelerating in 2021.

We were also fortunate enough to partner with Spin in Chicago, overseeing half of their 3,333-scooter units during the 2^nd iteration of the city’s pilot program. And we launched a completely new business line in Green Bay, Wisconsin, partnering with Via, one of the largest microtransit/paratransit companies in North America.

As we look towards the future, it’s clear how essential and impactful our work is to the clients and customers we serve. Safe and reliable bikes, scooters, and vans were a lifeline to city residents across the country. Many of the lessons and best practices we’ve learned and adopted will continue beyond the pandemic. Like all of you, we look forward to getting back to some semblance of normal in 2021 and building on the momentum we’ve created this past year.

For a deeper-dive into some of our 2020 highlights, see below:

Bike Share Toronto

The Bike Share Toronto (BST) system broke a number of usage records in 2020, including eclipsing 2.9 million trips for the first time in the service’s 10-year history. This increase was driven by a 35% Y-o-Y increase in casual users (single-trip, 24-hour, and 72-hour users), with more than 180k first-time casual users leading the way to our record-setting achievements. Another significant catalyst for these usage increases was the launch of our partnership with Qucit, an AI rebalancing software tool that further guided our decision-making in where and how we placed bikes in real-time. Rounding things out was the latest expansion of the system, with an additional 1,850 bikes, 160 stations, and 3,600+ docking points for users to choose from. This latest expansion, which brings the total system footprint to 6,850 bikes and 625 stations, also makes BST the 3^rd largest bikesharing program in North America.

Additionally, with most of us now working from home, we also saw a significant shift in how and when our users traversed the city on BST bikes. While we experienced a slight increase in the number of weekday trips, a significant driver of our system’s growth came on the weekend – a 65% Y-o-Y increase, specifically. Cooped up at home, many Toronto residents sought a safe, reliable way to get some exercise or run errands that they normally would have done by other transportation means.

Finally, after an extensive RFP process, Toronto Parking Authority (TPA) awarded Shift a 5-year contract extension in early 2020. We are thrilled to be able to continue our partnership with TPA and look forward to continuing to build on the success we’ve created with them for years to come.

Bike Chattanooga

Shift Transit has overseen the day-to-day operations of the Bike Chattanooga program since 2017. Since transitioning operations of the program from the previous vendor, we have introduced e-bikes into the fleet, forged partnerships with companies like REI to increase the service’s reach and exposure, and expanded the program to its current footprint of 42 stations and 400 bikes. And in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we oversaw the most successful year in the program’s history. Usage grew 20% Y-o-Y, with weekend usage up exponentially – 97% growth Y-o-Y, accounting for almost 50% of total system riders, as Chattanoogans took advantage of all the terrific trails and outdoor spaces the city has to offer. Like BST, we saw an influx of new users, with 80% of all ride passes purchased by new customers.

After almost ten years of existence, we are extremely excited about the program’s newfound momentum and look forward to bringing even more new bikeshare users into the fold this year.

MoGo Detroit

In June 2020, the MoGo bikeshare program expanded for the first time since it launched in 2017, increasing its footprint by 70% and into 5 neighboring jurisdictions, including Ferndale, Royal Oak, Oak Park, Berkley, and Huntington Woods. The expansion added 31 stations and 140 bikes to the fleet and also included a new pay-as-you-go pass ($1 to start your trip and 25 cents per minute thereafter), which proved to be extremely popular, accounting for more than 50% of all trip purchases in 2020.

Like bikeshare users in Toronto and Chattanooga, MoGo members rode farther and longer than in any previous year of operation, with average trip distance and duration up 70% Y-o-Y.

To cap things off, Shift Transit was awarded a 3-year contract to continue overseeing the day-to-day operations of the MoGo program. We are grateful for the trust and support of our terrific partners and look forward to continuing to scale new heights with them in the years to come.

Spin (Chicago)

Due to our previous experience working with Spin and our familiarity working in the City of Chicago – our HQ is based in Chicago and we formerly managed car2go’s 400 vehicle carsharing fleet there – we were asked to oversee half of Spin’s 3,333 scooter unit fleet as part of the 2^nd round of the City’s of Chicago’s scooter pilot that kicked off in August. Spin tasked us with managing the Equity Priority Area of the Service Zone, a 90 sq. mile territory covering the South and West sides of the city. The City created this Priority Area to ensure residents on the South and West sides had fair and equal access to using scooters deployed throughout the City. Shift was responsible for ensuring we had an adequate number of scooters in each of these 20 distinct zones on a 24/7 basis and that each scooter was sufficiently charged and safe to use. Our team of 20+ employees did an outstanding job hitting Spin’s and the City of Chicago’s equity goals, as well as consistently ensuring a 95% availability rate.

When the program ended in December, Spin was the only company that participated in the pilot that had not been cited for failing to hit the Equity Priority Area fleet availability requirements. We greatly enjoyed working with their entire team and forward to being able to continue to work with them if the City decides to resume its scooter program in 2021.

Via (Green Bay)

In the throes of the beginning of the pandemic, Shift Transit launched a completely new business line in Green Bay, Wisconsin, partnering with Via, one of the largest microtransit/paratransit companies in North America. The paratransit service in Green Bay, featuring three different types of vans, provides disabled, infirm, and elderly members of the community with a public transportation option for essential trips, including medical appointments and procedures, and trips to the grocery store.

Shift Transit oversaw a full-scale operational transition from the previous vendor and have overseen Via’s paratransit fleet since March 2020, including vehicle inspections, preventative maintenance, repair work, inventory purchasing, and vehicle cleanings. With a mechanic on-site, we are responsible for ensuring all vehicles are road ready for use and maximizing vehicle availability. To date, we have ensured a 99% vehicle availability rating and averaged a 24-hour return rate to service for those vehicles needing repair work.

In late 2020, Via expanded its service offering to include microtransit trips, increasing its overall fleet size and its coverage area.

How Shift Transit Changed Its Marketing Strategy To Adapt To The Times & Encourage A Record-Breaking Number of Torontonians To Discover Bike Share Toronto

If there is a bright side to 2020 (and let’s take what we can get!), it is how businesses, like Shift Transit, have pivoted to meet the times. It hasn’t been easy. But it’s been necessary. And for our Bike Share Toronto program, these necessary changes have resulted in a 76% increase in membership rolls and 27% increase in usage.

When COVID become our ongoing reality, Shift Transit knew that its marketing strategy needed to shift (no pun intended 😊) to meet the times. Sure, marketing is fluid. It’s always changing. But how do you make people feel safe using shared assets in the middle of a global pandemic? This was our new reality. Certainly, Bike Share Toronto has always been a reliable and safe way to move millions of Torontonians. But we needed to show that it continued to be reliable and SAFE during COVID. Here’s how we did it:

We Placed Bikes Where Torontonians Needed Them

We paired Bike Share Toronto with the city’s “quiet streets” program. In May, Toronto launched the ActiveTO program, which granted 57km of designated streets to cyclists and pedestrians to get outside and move. Quickly, Lake Shore Blvd West became the most utilized cycling route, with a reported average of 18,000 cyclists on weekends in June, July, and August. Given this, we introduced pop-up valet locations at key stations along Lake Shore Blvd West to ensure that riders had an available bike station and docking point. These pop-up valet stations helped riders by:

• Ensuring predictable and reliable drop-off and pick-up locations in heavily trafficked areas
• Giving Torontonians assistance (from a safe distance, of course!) as they adjusted to their new reality with education, purchasing assistance, and usage help
• Providing peace-of-mind for our users that bikes were clean and safe for usage. As it turns out, sharing is still OK during a pandemic. It just always needs to be safe and reliable

With these changes and peace-of-mind, Bike Share Toronto experienced its highest number of rides in a single weekend with 42,500 trips (during the weekend of August 8, 2020) and a 15% increase in “very satisfied” customer satisfaction.

We Launched An Awareness Campaign

We wanted to show Torontonians that Bike Share Toronto is a safe, reliable alternative during a pandemic. This was not easy, especially when, as of June 1, subway ridership in Toronto was only at 17 percent of pre-COVID levels.

But, as residents of the city, we knew that Torontonians were looking for alternative transportation—even if this need was belied by the subway and other public transit numbers. So, from June to October we ran a ridership campaign with the goal of generating awareness, accelerating trial and new user engagement, and driving system use. The campaign exceeded our expectations and generated over 85 million impressions (interests), driving awareness, and harnessing a call to action through all pockets of the city.

Our efforts resulted in:

• 274% increase in views and 69% increase in engagement on social media
• 19% growth in email subscribers
• 18% increase in social media followers

We Leaned In On Our Strategic Partnerships

We never underestimate our friends. So we reached out to our partners (notably, blogTO and Streets Of Toronto) to vouch for bikeshare and extol its tried-and-true benefits. This enabled us to reach Torontonians who would otherwise be outside of our scope, get them to try bikeshare, and get them hooked 😊. Our partnerships attracted 17,500 new-to-bike-share Torontonians to directly engage with Bike Share Toronto.

2020 has certainly thrown a few curveballs our way. However, in the face of the pandemic, we have been quick to pivot, and agile enough to recognize what we quickly needed to change, including our operational approach to meet our users where they now are.

Keep riding friends!

Rebalancing Changes Lead to Record-Setting Usage and Membership Growth in Toronto

If you talk with any bikeshare operator, rebalancing is typically the number one operational challenge they face on a day-to-day basis. For dock-based bikesharing systems, “rebalancing” refers to the dynamic distribution of bikes from stations full (or close to capacity) of bikes to those that are empty (or close to empty). The goal of active rebalancing is to achieve a state of supply/demand equilibrium, where all stations have an equal number of docks and bikes. With the right rebalancing strategy and resources in place, a mobility operator can help drive significant increases in system usage, revenue, and customer satisfaction by coming as close as possible to ensuring a customer is within a five-minute walk of a bike or left an open dock at a station closest to their destination.

In Toronto, Shift Transit manages the day-to-day operations of the Bike Share Toronto program, featuring 6,850 bikes and 625 stations. Bike Share Toronto is the 3rd largest bikesharing service in North America and exceeded 2.4M trips in 2019, making it one of the most heavily utilized systems on the continent. 

As part of our duties, Shift Transit is responsible for the rebalancing of the system. At the beginning of the year, we anticipated 2020 would be our busiest year yet (spurred on by a system expansion of 160 stations and 1,850 new bikes) and made a number of changes to further enhance and optimize our rebalancing efforts to ensure we were going to meet increased customer demand head-on, including:

Vehicle + Staffing Optimization

Our rebalancing vans are the backbone of our rebalancing efforts. Shift Transit field agents transport bikes from full stations to empty stations on a 24/7/365 schedule, preemptively and dynamically responding to bike/station imbalances. In early 2020, Shift Transit increased the carrying capacity of our rebalancing vehicles to be able to multiply the efficiency of each pick-up/drop-off stop, leading us to acquire 12 vehicles that were specifically outfitted for transporting bikeshare bikes. The upgraded vehicles were specifically designed to maximize space so the team could move more bikes. And to further support our rebalancing efforts, we built out a robust 24/7 staffing plan to ensure we capitalized on maximizing productivity and efficiency during the overnight shifts while the city of Toronto (sort of) sleeps.

Implementing New AI Rebalancing Software

Earlier this year, we began to use a new rebalancing software tool to help us further analyze bike and station supply and demand scenarios based on the time of day and day of week. This AI solution leans significantly on historical usage patterns (Bike Share Toronto is almost ten years old), while monitoring the daily changes in ridership patterns. With the new software, we programmed top performing stations as priority for rebalancing actions to ensure that hotspots within our Toronto system footprint always have available bikes and docking points. The result was that these priority stations saw a 68% improvement in bike and dock availability Y-o-Y, along with a 23% increase in usage (August-October ‘19 vs ‘20).

Quickly pivoting our strategy during COVID-19

COVID-19 drastically changed how people use the Bike Share Toronto system. With social distancing measures in place, our ridership began (and continues to) lean heavily towards recreational trips, rather than commuter trips. We also saw a significant increase in the number of casual users, as Toronto residents who rarely or never used the Bike Share Toronto system sought out bikes for a safe, healthy way to get around town. Through weekly analysis of casual usage trends, we operationalized these new insights by deploying pop-up valet stations in residential neighborhoods, staffed by our community ambassador teams. These stations allowed members to end their trip without having to worry about finding a docking point, thereby enhancing their experience.

As a result of all of these changes, we have seen significant Y-o-Y gains in our most important rebalancing KPIs, including:

• 68% improvement in # of empty stations
• 66% improvement in bike availability
• 46% improvement in # of full stations

*Data collected between May 1 – October 31 2019  vs May 1 – October 31 2020

Best of all, these increases in our rebalancing performance have directly led to sizeable usage and customer gains for the system, including a 27% Y-o-Y increase in trips and a 76% growth in membership (casual and annual members). 

In sum, even after 3+ years at the helm of Bike Share Toronto, rebalancing remains one of the most challenging – and rewarding – operational puzzles that we encounter on a daily basis. However, armed with new and improved vehicles, an AI software tool specifically built for bikeshare operations, and a decisive pivot to meeting our new customers where they now are, we have markedly improved our rebalancing activities, which have directly contributed to record-breaking usage gains for the Bike Share Toronto system.

Bravo to our entire Shift Transit Toronto team for these accomplishments!!!!

For more information on Bike Share Toronto, please visit: https://shifttransit.net/case_studies/bike-share-toronto/

Bike Chattanooga Bikeshare Program Thrives Amidst COVID-19

Announces New Member Referral Program for Month of October

Chicago, IL, October 13, 2020 — Today, Shift Transit, a leading mobility operations company and day-to-day operator of the Bike Chattanooga bikeshare program, announced it was spearheading a new member referral program for the Bike Chattanooga bikeshare program. The launch of this campaign coincides with record-breaking ridership and membership gains for the 8-year-old bikesharing service.

For the month of October, for each newly purchased Bike Chattanooga pass or membership on the PBSC/CycleFinder app, the pass holder will receive a unique code to refer a friend to try bikeshare with a free daily pass. A daily pass, valued at $8, gives riders unlimited 60-minute, station-to-station trips for a 24-hour period. The referral program is being launched at a time when bikesharing has become recognized as a great way to remain active and commute on one’s own terms in the midst of COVID-19, while also being able to maintain social distancing.

Since March, the Bike Chattanooga program has remained open, accessible, and safe for all to use. The service has distributed more than 200 free annual memberships to frontline workers, while seeing a 62% usage increase in stations adjacent to medial facilities between April – September. In addition, between January – September, the service has broken a number of system records including:

• 62% Y-o-Y increase in the number of subscriptions sold
• 27% Y-o-Y increase in ridership
• 27% Y-o-Y increase in miles travelled

“We are thrilled to see the record-breaking success of the Bike Chattanooga program in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Ben Taylor, Director of Transportation Operations for the City of Chattanooga. “It’s clear that Chattanooga residents and visitors have come to rely on the program as a vital transportation lifeline and we are grateful to be able to partner with Shift Transit to safely provide this service.”

A significant source of these gains has been the service’s 55 electric bikes. With e-bike sales surging across the country, Bike Chattanooga has also benefitted from the growing interest in electric transport. To date, the Bike Chattanooga e-bike fleet has seen a 97% increase in usage Y-o-Y, representing 36% of all system trips.

For more information, visit www.BikeChattanooga.com

Read Official News Release Here

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