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.

Yes, they have milder winters, but Helsinki doesn’t: like Toronto, it averages about -4C in January, and yet a full 8% of their commuters use bikes. Even Montreal, which is colder than Toronto, has higher bike commuting rates: 2% of their Metro population and 3.6% of those in the City of Montreal bike to work, both higher than the respective GTA and Toronto rates.

So what can be done to encourage more bike commuters here in the GTA?

One thing that will help is more separated bike lanes, also known as cycle tracks. As of this year, Toronto has only 39 km of cycle tracks, while Montreal has 90 km. In a paper to be published in the February 2020 edition of “Accident Analysis & Prevention,” the authors studied the effects of separated bike lanes in Toronto from 2000 to 2016. They found that cycle tracks increased the number of bike riders by more than 2.5 times, decreased the collision rate by almost 40%, and even created a “safety halo” with streets up to half a kilometre away having a 35% lower collision rate as well.

Another tailwind will be e-bikes. Although the first patent was registered way back in 1895, electric bikes did not catch on in North America for well over a century: from 2006 to 2012 e-bikes made up less than 1% of total bike sales in the U.S., for instance.

But as the price of batteries has fallen and the electrical motors have improved, lithium ion bike sales are growing fast. Sales are up by 36% in Germany, 55% in Spain, 73% in the US — and at Sweet Pete’s bike shop on Bloor (where I bought my old fashioned mechanical bike) “sales have increased tenfold over the last year.”

How high can sales go? In the Netherlands, more than half of all adult bike sales are now electric!

Thanks to falling battery prices, e-bikes are much more affordable than they used to be. Toronto stores do have high end models with all the bells and whistles that sell for as much as $10,000 — but you can also spend as little as $1,250 and still get something electric, with a 30- to 50-kilometre range and a 32 km/h assisted top speed.

Why do I think this new generation of e-bikes will boost their use by commuters? The single biggest factor is that e-bikes reduce effort. You still need to pedal, but the battery helps a lot. They “flatten” hills: Toronto is no San Francisco, but York University is 130 meters (more than 400 feet) higher than Harbourfront, and our ravines can be steep.

They also go faster than you might think, reducing commute times: e-bikes go up to 32 km/h, while the average speed on a regular bike in Copenhagen is half of that, at about 15.5 km/h.

We think about our icy winters as a factor in commuting by bike, but our summers are a problem too: unlike Copenhagen, it can be brutally hot and humid here in July. But studies show that e-bike riders sweat 2/3 less than mechanical bike riders.

Finally, I think that although at one time e-bikes were seen as “cheating,” going forward, there will be fewer Spandex snobs sneering. Battery bikes will be seen as greener and there’s even a study showing that e-bike riders still get a decent workout.

One thing that I think will help get more commuters onto e-bikes could be city assistance. Both the city of Paris and the surrounding metro region offer subsidies amounting to about 400 to 500 Euros (about $600 to $750) per e-bike, with a commitment that could allow up to 24,000 e-bikes to be purchased.

Toronto should copy Paris: a program that adds 24,000 new bike commuters would reduce traffic (so car drivers shouldn’t object to the subsidy) and would mean that our two wheeled commute rate could rise to 4.7%.

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That would mean passing Montreal … but who’s counting?

Duncan Stewart is the director of research for tech, media and telecom for Deloitte Canada.

Clarification — Jan. 2, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to clarify that the author was referring to pedal-assist e-bikes with batteries, rather than the larger e-scooters.