Air Free Tires, Inc., is proud to be an official partner of the Toronto Community Bicycle Network Bike Share Program. This unique program gives the citizens of Toronto the opportunity to reduce pollution, provide job skill training and to have hundreds of bicycles to rent at conveniently located hubs throughout the city. 

Manifested from several area groups and partially funded by the government, the Bike Share will provide valuable data to the viability of alternative transportation in major cities. Differentiating themselves from similar US based programs, the Toronto Bike Share will not rely on volunteers to maintain the fleet of bicycles, but instead have a cadre of deserving citizens who can benefit by learning valuable job skills. Landfills will be spared additional intrusions by scrap bikes as one of the main tenements of the program is to recycle old bikes, thus giving an ample supply of bikes for the trainees to work on.

As the program matures, hubs will be established throughout the city and the citizens of Toronto will be able to access the bikes when and wherever they choose. Each rider is given a helmet and a lock and has to return the bicycle at a predetermined time. The Government is interested in the program as it is estimated that several thousand tons of pollutants will not enter the air.

Air Free Tires role is to provide tires for the rapidly expanding fleet of bicycles and to assess and monitor the costs associated with bicycle maintenance. It has been said that tires make up the number one cost of bicycle maintenance so the introduction of urethane tires to the fleet should keep costs down. Other cities like Austin Texas have similar programs and have met with ambiguous results. It turns out that often times bikes would turn up missing and when the bike is found later the only thing that be determined to wrong with it is that the bike had a flat tire. Now it becomes apparent that for a Bike Share program to succeed, costs must be lowered but more importantly the citizens will need to know that when they rent a bike, the bike should have the ability to bring that citizen back.

We are proud of our association with the good folk at the Toronto Bike Share Program and will assist them in any way we can. Once enough data is collected over a period of time, we at Air Free will share this information to interested parties here and abroad. When you think about airless tires on fleets of bikes just makes sense.