The City of Vancouver and its private sector contractor are calling Mobi, the city’s bike share system, a success after one year of operations.

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Over 400,000 rides have been recorded on the bike share system, which first launched on July 20, 2016. On average, between 2,500 and 3,000 trips are made each day.

The scheme’s busiest day yet was on Canada Day 2017 when 3,915 trips were made while the busiest month was June 2017 when 72,602 trips were clocked.

The system currently has 6,400 people members and they have travelled a collective total of 1.14 million kms on the bikes, that’s roughly equivalent to more than 28 trips around the globe.

The average trip on Mobi is 19 mins long, and the average trip distance is approximately 3 kms.

“Mobi is a tremendous success and has quickly become a valuable part of Vancouver’s active transportation network,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson in a statement.

“Over half of trips in Vancouver are made by walking, cycling and transit – Mobi has helped fill gaps by making it even easier to navigate the city with short trips or between transit stops.”

A map of Mobi bike share stations in downtown Vancouver and the Central Broadway corridor, with the number of parked bikes listed. (Mobi by Shaw GO)

The financial performance of Mobi has not been made public, but the ridership figures indicate it could be bucking the trend of failing bike share systems in Canada and the United States.

This could be partially attributed to Vancouver’s density and its growing network of bike lanes, which supports bike share and makes cycling a more attractive alternative mode of transportation.

Neighbouring Seattle, for instance, was forced to shut down its Pronto Cycle Share at the end of March due to financial issues from low ridership. The non-profit company that owned and operated the system became insolvent in 2015, forcing the City of Seattle to acquire Pronto.

The Mobi service area spans all of the downtown Vancouver peninsula and the Central Broadway corridor, framed by Arbutus Street to the west, Main Street to the east, and West 16th Avenue to the south. When fully grown, the system will have 1,500 bikes across 150 bike share stations.