Bird electric scooter program expanding across a big swath of Hamilton Mountain

Saira Peesker · CBC News

· Posted: May 15, 2025 8:13 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

No longer is whipping on a metropolis pathway with the upwind successful your hairsbreadth conscionable for lower-city residents – Hamilton's electrical scooter program, tally by Bird Canada, has expanded to the Hamilton Mountain. 

Bird launched the enlargement May 9, according to a City of Hamilton study that said 300 scooters successful full volition beryllium added to stations crossed Wards 6, 7, 8 and 14, southbound of the Niagara Escarpment and northbound of the Lincoln Alexander Parkway. 

"After 2 years of the programme operations and information analysis, some the City and Bird Canada unit identified further work areas for expansion," says the report, submitted by Steve Molloy, the city's acting manager of proscription readying and parking. "City unit collaborated with councillors from the affected wards to make work country boundaries for the expansion."

Bird Canada wide manager Pat Graham says the institution heard important feedback from users who unrecorded connected the Mountain and privation to usage the scooter to commute to enactment downtown. 

"It was a earthy enlargement of our existent downtown operating zone," helium told CBC Hamilton connected Wednesday, adding that it volition instrumentality until sometime successful June to get the afloat complement of 300 caller scooters stationed. "It volition commencement tiny and gradually summation implicit time."

The caller scooters connected the Mountain are successful summation to the 600 scooters disposable successful the little city, from Ward 4 successful the eastbound to Dundas successful the west.

Bird scooters, which are reserved and paid for done an app, person been disposable successful parts of the little metropolis since 2023. The institution says riders indispensable beryllium implicit 16 years aged to usage the Hamilton system, and offers the pursuing "tips" for scooter safety:

• Watch for pedestrians.
• Use caution and travel section information and postulation laws.
• Travel successful motorcycle lanes oregon roads unless different directed.
• Ride 1 idiosyncratic per Bird astatine a time.

However, scooters with aggregate riders are a communal show successful Hamilton's downtown, and they tin occasionally beryllium seen connected sidewalks.

He besides said the devices person geo-fencing exertion that prevents them from going connected sidewalks, but this is based connected GPS and is "imperfect." The exertion is besides utilized to forestall them from utilizing definite roads, a diagnostic helium says volition beryllium enacted successful an enhanced mode connected the Hamilton Mountain.

"There volition beryllium no-ride zones connected definite streets arsenic good arsenic arterial roads," helium said, adding that each roads with a velocity bounds astir 50 kilometres per hour, specified arsenic the Sherman Access, volition beryllium disconnected limits. 

Graham estimated that a one-off travel from Mohawk College to downtown would outgo astir $12, but that outgo is chopped importantly if users acquisition a thrust pass, which covers question implicit a designated clip period. For instance, helium said a seven-day walk is $29.99, and allows 120 minutes of riding, a 43 per cent discount from the basal fare. "If you are taking 2 rides a time for a week, it's a overmuch friendlier option."