January 31, 2020 - Despite all the talk about encouraging bike use in Toronto — and some recent investment in new bike lanes — they’re still a pretty minor mode of transportation for workers in the city. In fact, according to StatCan, fewer than one in 70 commuters in the GTA used a bike as their primary option for getting to work in 2016.

But thanks to new technology, especially lithium ion battery powered e-bikes, that number is poised to double by 2022, according to a just-released Deloitte report I co-authored. We go on to predict that 130 million e-bikes — I’m talking about actual bikes with batteries here, not the larger e-scooters — will sell between 2020 and 2023.

Right now, the Metro Toronto area bike commuting rate is just 1.4%, which rises to 2.7% for the City of Toronto proper. Compare that to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, which have bike commuting rates of 41% and 32% respectively. Read the full article here.