bike shops

Yesterday Google added directions for cyclists, but only for U.S. cities. What about us folks in Toronto? Well, we've got Ride the City Toronto. RTC is a collaboration of two planners in New York, Vaidila Kungys and Jordan Anderson, who've been diligently adding over the last couple years city-specific cycling data to their mapping tool so cyclists can map the best route. The latest city to make the map is Toronto.

Google and RTC are going about it in similar ways; both need to get cycling-specific GIS information about bike lanes, trails and signed routes. They then combine that data into their database and create an algorithm that weights the different factors. When you media's interest in Google's launchmap a route you have the option of choosing a "safe", "safer" and "direct" route.

Because of the media's interest in Google's launch and finding out that it was coming to Toronto any time soon, it made sense to make public the previously beta version of RTC Toronto. You may find that there are still some tweaks to be made to the bike routes, so RTC encourages you to sign up as a user and rate the routes.

Some Canadian bike shops and distributors are angry, claiming Mountain Equipment Co-op is using its unfair competitive advantage to push its own bike line. Read on.

Its foray this month into bike selling has been criticized by rival specialty retailers for everything from unfair competition because of its tax-exempt status, to a Wal-Mart-style money grab, to unethical sourcing.

This meme about the co-operative being "tax-exempt" has been around for many years. Back in the day it was the outdoor stores that were complaining (oh wait, they still are) about it. The truth is that the co-op, like any business, is taxed on what it retains and since it returns much of the earnings back to the customer as a "patronage allocation" or refund, it has no earnings and only keeps 3% for capital improvements and 1% as an environment fund.

The group of competitors of MEC years ago demanded and got a meeting with "government tax policy officials in Ottawa where they were they were told the same thing that co-ops already knew: the Income Tax Act does not favour co-ops over other corporations." All co-ops pay income tax at the same rates and under the same rules as their competitors.

From blogTO's bike store survey of their readers we get the top 15 bike stores in Toronto:

1. Urbane Cyclist
2. Duke's Cycle
3. Bikes on Wheels
4. The Bike Joint
5. Curbside Cycle
6. Velotique
7. Cogs Cycle
8. Cyclemotive
9. Cycle Solutions
10. The Cyclepath Danforth
11. Set Me Free
12. Cyclemania
13. Wheels on Bloor
14. Sweet Pete's Bike Shop
15. West Side Cycle

What's your favourite bike shop?

Bicycle Mode Share and Bike Shops in Toronto

It may come as no surprise that bike shops are located where people bike.

I had previously posted the Census map of bicycle commuters in Toronto. I thought it would be interesting to overlay other information on top. So I created an old fashioned "mashup of the bike shop locations (source: Bike Union website) and the map of the Bicycle Modal Share in Toronto. Not having access to the original census data, I had to just take the image and rotate the bike shop map so it roughly fit the census map. You see the result above.

There seems to be a pretty high correlation between bike shops and commuter cyclists. In a previous post I had wondered why bike shops couldn't survive in the east end. The really low modal split for cyclists in Scarborough gives a pretty good indication, though it appears that there might not be such a big problem in East York and Leslieville.

If were going to open a bike shop I'd look at this map carefully. There are some darker blue spots with few to no bike shops, such as Etobicoke, Toronto Islands, the Portlands and Leaside (I think).

This last January Cycle Therapy finally closed its doors, after months of speculation. Cycle Therapy was just one more east Toronto bike shop that couldn't. And now Velotique is also up for sale, though it appears to be for personal reasons not a bad market.

Why does it seem that so few bike shops can survive in the wilds of East York, Leslieville or Scarborough? Well, it makes sense for Scarborough, few people bike there and if they do they are likely to just get a crappy Canadian Tire bike, but Leslieville? Lots of people bike around there. It's a relatively bike-friendly area, much like Toronto's west end.

Things might be looking up somewhat. The other day I happened upon the sign "Hello Velo" on Carlaw, south of Dundas. Turns out that Hello Velo is a spacious bike shop tucked away inside the courtyard of a converted factory. The location, as comfortable as it looks, isn't all that retail friendly. There isn't a lot of foot traffic. That may explain Hello Velo pushing their bike mechanic workshops. From their website they seem to be focused on road racing and triathalons, not so much the average commuter.

So it seems that East York, eastern Toronto and Scarborough will continue to be mostly served by only a handful of bike shops, department stores and boutique-type shops.