When Hintonburg resident Eric Warren needs to leave his bike downtown , he knows exactly where he wants to park it.
Instead of locking it to a bike rack on the street, Warren uses one of Ottawa’s secure public bike lockers . He considers himself one of the lucky ones who has been able to navigate the Vélo-Transit app, even if he says the technology behind it still needs to be improved.
“It just gives you the confidence to be able to leave your bike out,” he said. “It’s a lot more convenient and secure than parking it randomly on the road.”
The enclosed lockers are meant to do exactly that. A cyclist reserves a locker using the third-party Vélo-Transit app, unlocks it with their phone and leaves their bike inside until they are ready to return. The first two hours are free and every additional hour costs 50 cents.
The city currently has four locker sites with six individual lockers at each location, allowing up to 24 bicycles to be stored at one time.
Each locker is about the size of a small shed with narrow, enclosed compartments that cyclists access individually using the app.
For some cyclists , though, accessing Ottawa’s bike lockers has proven more difficult than it should be. The problem is the app.
Tag Hatle has wanted to use the city’s bike lockers for more than a year. She downloaded the Vélo-Transit app before planning a ride downtown, but never made it past the payment screen.
“I’m trying to give them my money,” she said. “I can’t actually get to that part.”
Hatle said creating an account was simple. The problem occurred when she tried entering her payment information. She said tapping the payment options did nothing.
She contacted customer support, recorded videos showing the issue and even tried again months later. The same problem remained.
Despite never getting the app to work, Hatle said she was impressed with how quickly staff responded to her concerns.
“The customer service is phenomenal,” she said. “They were calling me on a Saturday evening.”
Still, the technical issues were never resolved.
“The app itself is unusable for me,” she said.
Without confidence she could access a locker, Hatle usually leaves her bike at home, fearing it could be stolen, and takes transit downtown.
Ottawa Police Service data showed 1,674 bicycles were reported stolen in 2025, an average of more than four bikes every day. Fewer than 15 per cent of those stolen bicycles were recovered, underscoring why many cyclists are looking for more secure places to park.
Hatle says that is exactly why she wants to use the lockers, but she worries technical issues will discourage others from doing the same.
As of Aug. 5, the Vélo-Transit app had a 2.5-star rating in Apple’s App Store, with users frequently complaining about technical problems and difficulty navigating the software.
The City of Ottawa acknowledges the system has experienced problems, with lockers even being unavailable for extended periods.
“Earlier this year, the bike lockers were temporarily marked out of service while the city worked with the vendor to address technical issues identified during testing,” parking services manager Scott Caldwell said in a statement. “The necessary updates and repairs have since been completed, and all bike lockers returned to active service.”
Despite those issues, the city says the program is succeeding overall.
According to Caldwell, cyclists used the lockers 767 times across all locations in 2025. That amounted to just over two sessions a day across Ottawa’s entire network, a level of use the city describes as “strong uptake.”
He added that the city planned to expand the program beginning in 2027.
“Secure bike parking is an important part of the city’s efforts to support cycling and make it a more convenient and accessible transportation option,” Caldwell said.
Ottawa is not the only municipality using the Vélo-Transit app.
Across the river, Gatineau launched its own secure bike locker system in 2022 and now has four locations in operation. It’s cheaper in the short term in that municipality than in Ottawa, with cyclists there receiving the first 10 hours free before paying $1 an hour afterward.
Warren agrees the lockers are valuable, but he says improving the app should be part of any future expansion. He would also like to see more lockers installed around Ottawa.
“It would be good if they had them in more locations than just centralized downtown,” he said.
The advocacy group Bike Ottawa said secure bike parking was essential if the city wanted more people choosing bicycles over cars.
“There are two key ingredients that help people choose cycling,” Bike Ottawa board member Florence Lehmann said. “One of them is a safe cycling network and the other one is a safe place to park your bike.”
Lehmann said more enclosed lockers should be installed across Ottawa and placed closer to destinations where people actually wanted to stop, rather than being tucked inside parking garages.
“They have to be conveniently located close to where you want to go,” she said.
She also wants the city to consider long-term rental options for people who do not have secure bike storage at home and larger lockers that could accommodate cargo bikes, family bikes and trailers.
For Hatle, those changes cannot come soon enough.
She said the lockers had the potential to make cycling downtown much more attractive, but only if people could reliably access them.
“I would absolutely love to be able to use the lockers,” she said. “I just simply could not gain access to them.”
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