As part of Vélo Québec’s conference in fall 2024, Vincent Boisvert, Senior Advisor in Sustainable Development at CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’île-de-Montréal, together with Mobeo and mobilidée Canada, presented their secure bike shelter initiative.
It is the kind of innovation story we love: the meeting of a motivated early adopter and two ambitious start-ups. Together, they turned an idea into reality through a meaningful project and a lasting collaboration.
The MOBIS accelerator program provides tailored support to help make experimentation projects a reality. In this case, MOBIS supported the funding search and identified the right financing opportunity, enabling the collaboration to get off to a strong start.
The first eight secure, connected and compact bike shelters in Canada were installed at the sites of the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux (CIUSSS) du Nord-de-l’île-de-Montréal (NIM) in fall 2024. As a result of this initiative, CIUSSS received the 2024 Sustainable Mobility Leader Award in the Public Institution category, as part of the competition organized by Mobilité alternative (MOBA). Mobeo, meanwhile, received the Public Choice Award at the Pitch4Good event.
This first collaboration with the two companies was a success for Vincent Boisvert at Mobeo: “I really enjoy trying to invent new things.”
As part of his day-to-day responsibilities, his mission is to upgrade his organization’s facilities to facilitate sustainable and active mobility for healthcare network employees who commute to work every day. “This represents 14,000 employees who do not work remotely, as well as the need to adapt spaces across about thirty facilities, including three hospitals,” he explains.
The CIUSSS initiative is also part of its goal to reduce GHG emissions and achieve carbon neutrality in its operations by 2040. “We had purchased bike shelters that operated with keys and magnetic cards. But I wanted to go further,” says Mr. Boisvert. He also decided to take the leap and offer bike parking with dynamic reservations to encourage active transportation.
His meeting with Vincent Béliveau-Larose, co-founder of Mobeo, in 2023 through mobilidée Canada was instrumental in achieving his objective: providing a secure solution across all of CIUSSS’s major sites. “I was also looking for technology that could centralize different needs: managing access to the shelters, reserving bike parking spaces, and connecting to the fairmove mobility management platform, which employees were already using for carpooling,” explains Mr. Boisvert.
At Mobeo, “we had been thinking about this project for a long time. We wanted to create a more compact, less expensive shelter that would take up less space,” says Mr. Béliveau-Larose. Together with his partner, Antoine Gauthier, they had observed that managing shelters with keys was very complex and of little interest to anyone. “We clearly saw the need for a simple access system. Also, by developing our own shelter unlocking system, we can integrate with any technology platform and adapt it as needs evolve,” he adds.
With mobilidée Canada, the idea is to create a bridge with its fairmove platform. This eliminates the need to pick up a key: through a mobile phone app, users can reserve a space, cycle to the site and unlock the shelter.
The long-term goal is to connect and centralize information from all bike shelters operated by CIUSSS NIM. This will also provide valuable data on shelter usage, supporting future development and helping the organization adapt its infrastructure.
At the same time, Mobeo was supported by Coop Carbone’s MOBIS accelerator program. “With Mobeo, we conducted funding research, identified the appropriate targets and worked through the project. We also provided marketing coaching so that the Mobeo team could adapt and present its project,” explains the MOBIS accelerator program manager.
Among the project’s funding opportunities, the team identified a grant supporting open innovation in Montreal. It enabled the start-up to develop and produce its solution in collaboration with its first client.
More specifically, the City of Montreal funded part of the project, while CIUSSS contributed an equivalent amount. The start-up also invested in research and development and human resources.
With the grant, “we took the risk that the solution might not fully meet our expectations at first, but in return, it allowed us to obtain the shelters at a lower cost and participate in developing an innovation that did not yet exist. So we took the time to develop, discuss, test and adjust. It was in everyone’s interest to make this project work,” explains Mr. Boisvert.
And they moved quickly: the application was submitted in December 2023, and funding was received in January 2024 to launch the innovation project.
After that, things moved quickly: it took nearly six months to bring the innovative solution to market. The result: eight new Mobeo shelters were delivered in September 2024. “We’re really happy; everything went as we had hoped.”
The first statistics were encouraging as well. “Despite the fall season, 18 people are already using the shelters regularly, with 106 total uses. And yet, this is the off-season. Next summer, we expect the shelters to be full. That’s a good sign,” notes Mr. Boisvert.
All project partners agree that it is now easier to present the project and engage with various stakeholders—including the organization’s senior management, real estate asset management, users and potential buyers—because the product is now on the market and working.
However, “we haven’t found product-market fit yet. We had our first early-adopter client, and they turned out to be passionate people who really like the product. But is there a market of bold organizations willing to try it on a larger scale? That’s where we are now,” says Mr. Larose of Mobeo.
The partners are therefore already looking ahead to 2025, with the goal of increasing the use of these new secure and connected shelters:
In terms of impact, time, usage and data collection will make it possible to measure the initiative’s concrete impact in the field and understand how these solutions can help encourage active mobility among CIUSSS NIM employees.
https://www.ciusssnordmtl.ca/a-propos/qui-sommes-nous/mission
This project was funded by the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable through the MobilisActions financial program.