What they build
Open roles via the TechTO Job Board
Working at BikeSpace
Browse open roles across the community on the TechTO Job Board — Canada’s most connected tech network. BikeSpace’s roles show up here whenever they post.
Open roles on the TechTO Job Board ↗Or their own careers page: bikespace.ca/careers ↗Jobs live on jobs.techto.org — the only structured source. We link to it rather than scraping career sites, so the board is always the source of truth.
On the TechTO stage
Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about BikeSpace ↗
About
BikeSpace came out of Civic Tech Toronto. The concept was pitched at a Civic Tech Toronto hack night in July 2017 and picked up by the community, and the project has been built by volunteers ever since. Its own framing of the problem is the last fifty metres of a ride: there is not enough bike parking, the racks that exist are full, and abandoned bikes take up the rest.
The app is a short mobile-first questionnaire — what the problem was, where, when, and how long you needed to park — and it asks for no personal information. Reports are moderated and then surfaced on a public dashboard that can be filtered by date range and parking duration. The code and the data are both open.
On the TechTO stage in March 2019, two of the volunteers described a build process unusual for a civic project: over a hundred volunteers, more than 75 Civic Tech Toronto meetups and more than 70 further work sessions at Toronto City Hall, funded by the City of Toronto for about a year and a half and supported by Code for Canada. At one point five designers worked on the same screen. They also announced, the week before, that the City of Edmonton had forked the project.
BikeSpace says it was "originally started with support from the City of Toronto and Cycle Toronto", and still runs out of weekly Civic Tech Toronto hack nights. Its stated aim is to remove a barrier to cycling — a lack of secure, easy-to-access parking and the fear of theft — that research says falls hardest on women.
Backers
Not a venture-backed company. BikeSpace is a volunteer project of Civic Tech Toronto; it says it was started with support from the City of Toronto and Cycle Toronto, and the team described City of Toronto funding for about eighteen months plus support from Code for Canada.
Quick answers
What is BikeSpace?
A free web app for reporting bike parking problems in Toronto — no rack, a full rack, an abandoned bike — and a public dashboard of those reports. It is built and run by volunteers at Civic Tech Toronto.
Who runs BikeSpace?
Volunteers. It came out of a Civic Tech Toronto hack night in July 2017 and is still worked on at weekly Civic Tech Toronto hack nights. Its about page says it was started with support from the City of Toronto and Cycle Toronto.
Is the data public?
Yes. Reports are moderated and published on an open dashboard available to the City of Toronto and to public landowners, and the source code is open on GitHub.