For a committed cyclist in one of Toronto’s suburbs, the road is lonely and dangerous.

People who believe in its value for transportation say cycling is social: You start riding with friends, run errands close to home.

Then you take on the traffic.

In the core, it’s easier. There are other cyclists, bike lanes, and often bike shops nearby.

In the larger suburbs — Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke — little of that exists, and traffic moves faster.

Suburban cycling “is often seen as a child’s activity” because it doesn’t seem normal, said a new report, Building Bike Culture Beyond Downtown: A Guide to Suburban Community Bike Hubs, released by The Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT) last week.

“The fewer people who cycle, the more unsafe it feels,” the group’s director Nancy Smith Lea told cycling advocates from across the city in North York.

But the report argues “community bike hubs” can kick-start cycling in the suburbs, and the work of Scarborough Cycles proves it.

TCAT and local agency partners opened two community bike hubs in southwestern Scarborough in 2015 — a third opened recently in the Kingston-Galloway area — offering access to bicycles, repairs, tools and more to promote a culture of cycling “in an area with only one bike shop, next to no bike lanes and very few cyclists.”

Scarborough Cycles, the report states, repaired more than 2,000 bicycles, led more than 1,000 people on rides and provided training in cycling skills and bike maintenance at 13 workshops.

Smith Lea now sees vast potential for suburban cycling, and she said TCAT’s community bike hub model can be effective for community agencies and municipalities that are interested in increasing cycling in the suburbs.

An example of an agency is one that offers health services, Smith Lea said. In its Scarborough Cycles project, TCAT partnered with Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services and it “was important in achieving the goals we had,” Smith Lea said.

“With some of these agencies, we found there was a real overlap in terms of mission and goals, but they hadn’t considered cycling as part of the programing they offered to their clients,” she said.

“That’s one of the things we’re hoping these agencies will consider cycling as a viable option for programming because we found there’s a significant interest among suburban residents.”

While cycling infrastructure like bike lanes is scarce in the suburbs but important for making biking safe and attractive, there’s other elements that make cycling a “viable possibility,” Smith Lea added.

To encourage more suburban cycling, TCAT has created a “four-step model” to guide potential agencies and municipalities.

First, a bike hub must be located in the right neighbourhood, one with a high density of short trips, the report states, adding building and maintaining a sense of community through cycling programs is needed for them to work.

Furthermore, identifying barriers such as access to bicycles and repair services and then removing them are important.

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In Scarborough, D’Ornellas on Lawrence Avenue is the only bike shop.

However a year ago, Guildwood resident Franc Lockyer started a mobile Velofix repair franchise for East Toronto, which includes Scarborough.

After riding and racing bikes his whole life, he said, he wanted to open a bike store, but calculated the rent and taxes would make that a million-dollar venture.

Now, Lockyer repairs bikes in driveways with what he has in his van, and says most just need a tune-up. “I do see a lot of bikes that have neglect,” he said.

Ron Hart, chair of Bike North York, describes North York’s cycling culture as “growing” and thinks the bike hub model is a “great idea.”

“Particularly in the burbs, you need to start local and people need to feel comfortable on their local streets before they venture out onto larger arterials and on longer rides,” he said.

“The sense of community that you get meeting other people, there is definitely safety in numbers when you’re on a bicycle.”

Chris Kirkpatrick, president of the Etobicoke Cycling Club, said he’s seen “a dramatic growth” of cyclists in Etobicoke over the past couple of years despite it being “not an ideal mecca for cycling.”

“We do have a couple of nice roads that have bike paths that are reasonably safe for riding, but it is a challenge,” he said, adding South Etobicoke is a prime location for cycling into downtown.

While Kirkpatrick believes the community bike hub model can work, he said infrastructure like bike lanes and bicycle parking stations are needed to make cycling more attractive.

“I love the idea of getting more people on bikes ... but it is a ... multi-stage problem and solution,” he said.

“I think we all need to get on board with it and realize the vehicle of the future is the bicycle and it’s here now — we just need to start taking advantage of it.”