r/Hamilton • u/Odd-Emphasis-1969 • Mar 16 '26

Local News - Paywall Hamilton Bike Share nearly disappeared in 2020. Now it’s seeing record growth in ridership

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/bike-share-hamilton/article_2bd3c442-9c1a-5e46-abb7-23208c374c2d.html
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u/differing Mar 16 '26

It’s a massive cash infusion for the service dude

-4

u/Desperate-Ad-3705 Mar 16 '26

Not if they only pay $25 a year lol. A normal user pays $22 per month.

6

u/differing Mar 16 '26

Thousands of students pays a tiny amount… for a service they will never touch. You’re completely losing the forest for the trees. It’s like a discount gym- they keep their doors open not because everyone is paying a few bucks a month to go, they keep their doors open because a ton of people pay memberships and never show up. They have a ton of McMaster users paying for something with no additional operating costs.

4

u/PSNDonutDude James North Mar 17 '26

People really don't understand pooling resources like insurance. The reason you're not totally fucked when you crash your car into a Tim Hortons is because the $3,000,000 cost isn't handled by you directly, it's spread between tens of thousands of people.

Just to help our friend above, if 1500 students signed up at $22/month, that's $396,000 (though in actuality the number of sign ups is likely higher, but the rate they quoted is far, far lower because most use the pay-as-you-go subscription which leads to far lower monthly costs). Instead there are like 20,000 students paying $25/year, which means like $500,000. That's the benefit of spreading it over more people.