Communities, Bicycles and Collaboration

We reported in our last Innovators Update (sign up on our homepage!) that CSI and Urbanspace have recently received an award from the City of Toronto for "Best Large Business" at the 2007 Bicycle Friendly Business Awards. This was great recognition of Urbanspace's amazing bike-friendly building (outdoor and indoor parking, shower facilities) and the recent launch of CSI's Community BikeShare Program.

But more important than the award, it's worth sharing a few words about the backstory and what it tells us about our community. The idea to provide free bikes to CSI tenants originally came from Saul Ettlin of Sustainability Network. Saul is a cycling enthusiast but due to capacity constraints at the time, we were unable to purchase anything. Six months later, Matt Blackett of Spacing Media suggested the very same thing - that we purchase a few old bikes and share them among the tenants. Admittedly, Saul's suggestion had slipped my mind.

By the time Matt made his suggestion we had resources to purchase the bikes. But it was around that time that we also received notice that Toronto's amazing BikeShare Program would be folding shop due to a lack of resources. We started wondering how we could use CSI to ressucitate BikeShare and provide a great service to our members.

And so, after a few months of back and forth with the Community Bicycle Network, we decided to grab a few bikes and get the program started. We now have three bikes on-site for free use by tenants and guests.

This is a long way of highlighting how ideas are sparked and pursued. We owe a great debt to Saul and Matt for making a great suggestion and for pursuing it despite my busyness! I think the story also shows how community groups can work together to reinforce each other's mission. BikeShare is a great idea but lacked a solid business model. CSI has a solid base of revenues but seeks to leverage community resources instead of duplicating them. By working together, we have kept BikeShare alive and supported our own community of cyclists and bike lovers.

I hope that other organizations will consider working a similar arrangement with Bike Share. I suspect that this decentralized approach is key to keeping the initiative alive and making free bicycles available to all Torontonians and their guests...