Toronto Blue Parking
The Problem: Personal Vehicles
Cars Ruin Cities
We're all familiar with city traffic: every inch of street packed with cars. As a product, personal vehicles take up valuable interactive and visual space in our urban landscape. Coupled with user habits, motor vehicles spout pollution, congest roads, and seriously to fatally injure millions of motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists every year as the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in North America.
Data also suggests that a growing portion of the population (particularly younger generations) prefer to live in denser, walkable neighbourhoods that discourage car usage.
The Environment: Toronto
COVID-19 Reshapes Municipal Infrastructure
The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink and adapt the urban space in many cities. In Toronto, many measures initially thought to be temporary—parking lane restaurant patios and a more comprehensive network of protected bike lanes—ended up sticking around once the population saw the benefits of dedicating less public urban space to cars.
Worldwide, the pandemic sparked a cycling revolution that has outlived the pandemic itself. While Toronto is moving towards urban cycling accommodation, its cycling infrastructure falls behind the initiatives other cities (such as Paris) have implemented since 2020.
What are the alternatives to the car?
Transit & Cycling Remains The Alternative
Although plagued by drops in revenue during the pandemic due to low ridership and understaffing, Toronto's transit system has the largest bus and streetcar network of North America. Considering the many light rail line proposals and launches, the system can be world-class under diligent management and funding.
Cycling ridership in Toronto, however, falls considerably behind other cities. Even Montréal, a city with harsher weather and terrain, has more bike commuters than Toronto.
Why Cycling?
Bikes Promote A Livable City
Besides the known positive health, environmental, and well-being outcomes, cycling has a net positive impact on communities and local businesses.
Multiple studies have found that municipal bike accommodations—installing bike lanes, and adding parking spots—contribute to increased overall business revenue in the surrounding areas. The most recent study, by Australian firm Urbis, shows that designating space for six bike parking spots generates 50% more revenue than the recorded increases of the same space designated to a single parked car, occupying roughly the same area.
Why aren't more people riding their bikes in Toronto?
Transportation Infrastructure Discourages Bike Usage
Globally, the top reason for low bike ridership for transportation is a lack of dedicated cycling infrastructure, largely perceived as a scarcity of protected bike lanes.
A lack of protected bike lanes, however, is not a design problem, but a political one.
An approachable cycling environment requires problem-solving at a political, rather than product level.
Theft Deters Bike Usage for Commuting
The secondary reported reason for low ridership in cities is attributed to anxiety around getting one’s bike stolen.
To successfully make biking a more viable transportation alternative in Toronto, we must adapt the conveniences of motorist infrastructure to cycling. Acknowledging the increasing popularity of expensive electric bikes, this includes the ability to park at your destination without the risk of theft.
System map around bike use. Green arrows and red arrows indicate positive and negative correlation, respectively. Green boxes and red boxes indicate desired and undesired outcomes, respectively.
Insights
- Cities benefit from less car trips.
- People won't use their bikes if they don't feel safe doing so.
- Bike theft is an overlooked reason why people don't cycle in the city.
- Local businesses generate more revenue from cyclists than from drivers.
Research
What Solutions Already Exist?
Locks
The standard form of bike theft prevention, locks face a systematic issue in which they have to constantly outweigh lock-breaking tools such as angle grinders. The issue becomes essentially an arms race, in which locks become heavier and more expensive as time goes.
Most locks also can't secure more than just the bike frame and a single wheel, leaving accessories such as lights and bags unprotected.
Lockers
Bike lockers are a much more secure alternative to standard locks with the added benefit that they also protect removable accessories such as lights and bags.
Their issue comes from the volume they occupy, which negates some of the benefits of urban cycling and limits their implementation at scale. In Toronto, there are only two locations with more than 12 lockers each, with most being in the single digits.
Registration
Bicycle registration is a scalable solution that is proven to reduce bike theft in large cities.
Vancouver is the best example of that, where the city partnered with 529 Garage (an online bike database where users can register their bikes and report them stolen), bike shops, and the local police department to return recovered bicycles to their owners, helping reduce the culture of bike theft in the city.
Concept Development
Figuring out a physical design that could accommodate all kinds of bikes was a challenge. Bicycles come in multiple shapes and sizes, with no standard point of contact for the proposed device to interact with mechanically. Every aspect of the geometry can vary: wheel size, height, tube thickness, wheelbase, and tire width.
I started looking at examples of other products that deal with the variability in bike geometry and how they work around them. I started noticing that most products have a degree of adjustability: automotive bike racks, for example, usually tackle the wheels with adjustable hooks and a platform. The challenge, then, was to design a mechanism that could do something similar while being strong enough to withstand outside weather and resist tampering.
Bike racks on buses
Final Design
Product Diagram
How It Works
To Use Blue Parking
The user’s bike will have to be registered on the Blue Parking App for the locks to be used. The bicycle’s serial number is linked to an identity using the a Presto card. The card is not used for payments, acting instead as a key to lock or unlock a bike.
Having bicycles be registered at scale can by itself drastically reduce bike theft.
Unlock With Presto
The Presto card is read and the user is recognized. This process unlocks the arm, providing feedback to the user employing the familiar Presto sound scheme.
Lock Your Accessories
With the device unlocked, the user also has access to a locker to store accessories such as lights and water bottles.
Grab Hook Arm
Once unlocked, the user grabs the arm and pulls it towards them. It will then first rotate 45° to leave its resting position and then be pushed downwards until it makes contact with the bike frame.
Lower Hook Arm
Once it reaches the bike’s top tube, the arm can no longer move down and the hook is fully locked, pressing with force against the bike frame. This “sandwiches” the bike between the deep wheel slot and the arm, keeping the bike secure and upright.
A protective foam on the hook protects the bike frame from scratches or denting while creating enough friction to prevent it from moving forwards or backwards.
Toronto Blue Parking App
Toronto Blue Parking also includes an app experience that helps users register their bikes and start using the system. To see the Toronto Blue Parking App, click here.
How It Comes Together
Visual Identity
Visual identity is a crucial aspect of this project. A standardized and familiar branding is essential for people to quickly identify parking stations and trust them to be secure enough to protect their bikes. This kind of visual identity already exists with Toronto’s “Green P” municipal (car) parking system. An user instantly recognizes the green logo and knows that it is a safe, city-operated parking garage. They also understand that all “Green P” parking garages have the same consistent payment procedure. The aspect of a uniform and familiar experience will also be present in Toronto Blue Parking, and the city can also incorporate the branding into the few municipal bike garages it operates.
Renders
Conclusion
ACIDO Rocket 2022 Onshape License Award Winner
This project was made as my thesis for my Industrial Design degree at OCAD University. With local government support, it could be further optimized via testing and work with existing infrastructures and urban landscapes.
Toronto Blue Parking is a system and it can be adapted to work in different environments such as suburban strip malls, sidewalks, and condominiums.