Dublinbikes website is now live

tomc

Apologies if this has been said before but dublinbikes.ie site is now live.

TomC

Just a note for whoever is involved in the website - please put a redirect from http://dublinbikes.ie/ to http://www.dublinbikes.ie/!

blorg

Dónal wrote: »

Just a note for whoever is involved in the website - please put a redirect from http://dublinbikes.ie/ to http://www.dublinbikes.ie/!

Noticed that one myself.

DeepBlue

The website seems a bit clunky and less user-friendly that it could be.

Maps of stations would be useful in addition to simply lists of stations.
They could make the pricing structure more legible.

I can see people getting confused with that 3-day ticket option thinking they can hire the bike out for three days.

BattlingCheese

5 secs to remove a bike !!
Need to be a bit nippy to get to the ones at the end of the stand .

loyatemu

DeepBlue wrote: »

Maps of stations would be useful in addition to simply lists of stations.

eh? there is a map:
http://www.dublinbikes.ie/all_stations/station_map

it even tells you how many bikes and how many free slots are currently available...

-Chris-

Am I reading that right - I pay a tenner a year, and then as long as no journey takes longer than 30 mins (highly unlikely, based on the way I'd intend to use it), there are no further charges?

That's deadly!

Luas into town, jump on a bike, 5-10 min cycle to the station nearest to my mate's apartment - eliminate a 25 min walk!
Sounds good to me.

kenmc

http://www.dublinbikes.ie/how_does_it_work/bikes/bikes wrote:

Safety
* ...
* Anti Theft Lock

This bit intriques me. How does this help with safety unless it somehow prevents you from being bikejacked?

petethedrummer

Great we have a website. What about some bikes?

Caroline_ie

Having used the Paris scheme, I think it;s a great scheme, but there are w few downsides.

- Sometimes noone of the bikes are available to use, because the ones left at the station are flat, or broke.

- Returning the bikes within 30 minutes can a pain when there is no room at the station ! That happens around the shops for example. So you have to cycle around to find another staion that has free docks to return your bike... or wait for someone to pick one up.

- the computers seems to be rebooting at times when i want to remove a bike making none of the bikes at the station available for a few minutes.

- the bikes can 'look' ok to use, but as soon as you start cycling them, you notices the gears need tuning ... Grrrr

Other than that, it is very handy/cheap and overal quite reliable

blorg

petethedrummer wrote: »

Great we have a website. What about some bikes?

Station no. 503

JCDecaux Ireland Technical Centre, Unit 2, Naas Road Industrial Park, Old Naas Road, Bluebell, Dublin 12

Available bikes: 1
Free bases: 0

leftism

no bike station at Heuston... Bummer!

That woulda been a real help for commuters coming out from my direction.

Great idea though. It works really well in Seville, but they have slightly less rainfall per anum than Dublin has...

monument

petethedrummer wrote: »

Great we have a website. What about some bikes?

From September 13, 2009. From the Irish Times:

Most of problems surrounding the relocation of utilities have now been ironed out, but the council has decided to delay the introduction of the bicycles until a Sunday in mid-September, most likely September 13th, to allow it to have a launch event which would not clash with the GAA season in Croke Park.

“We plan to have staff from the council and JC Decaux all heading off together from the Civic Offices on the 450 bikes and dispersing to the designated locations. We’ll be closing some streets for it, so we’ve deliberately doing it early on a Sunday,” the spokesman said.


“The only thing on on the 13th is the camogie final, but that’s not until the afternoon and we’re planning our event for the morning,” he said.

blorg

The issue with Heuston is that it is too far away from any other station. This would cause a problem with bikes being depleted in the morning but the bigger problem would be people arriving at the station in the evening and finding all the rack spaces taken up- and with no alternative station within easy distance to drop the bike off at.

monument

leftism wrote: »

Great idea though. It works really well in Seville, but they have slightly less rainfall per anum than Dublin has...

Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where up to 50% of commuters cycle in central areas, have rainfall close to Dublin's.

petethedrummer

blorg wrote: »

Available bikes: 1

Please note I said Bikes.

fenris

monument wrote: »

Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where up to 50% of commuters cycle in central areas, have rainfall close to Dublin's.

So that's why it's so wet in Dublin, we are getting their rain!

kenmc

Caroline_ie wrote: »

- Returning the bikes within 30 minutes can a pain when there is no room at the station ! That happens around the shops for example. So you have to cycle around to find another staion that has free docks to return your bike... or wait for someone to pick one up.

The website says that the machine will tell you which stands nearby have free spaces, and you get 15 mins extra on your free half hour to get there.

answered my own question :]

Dónal

Dónal wrote: »

Just a note for whoever is involved in the website - please put a redirect from http://dublinbikes.ie/ to http://www.dublinbikes.ie/!

Dear Mr. X,

Thank you for your feedback regarding our website www.dublinbikes.ie . We have notified the technical office of this error and are having it fixed immediately.

Regards,

The dublinbikes team

Got a reply a second ago from their website.

Caroline_ie

so what dio we call them ... the DuB's ?



[Conversation using a culchie accent of your choice]
- 'How far is the custom house from here?'
- 'About 2 miles or so'
- 'Ah sure we'll take a Dubs there then'
[/Conversation using a culchie accent of your choice]

Jawgap

Looking forward to using this and I'll be signing up for my card tomorrow.

But full marks to the communications people for creativity :-

"Cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, Lyon, Vienna, and Montreal.........Dublin now joins this elite list"

Who'd have thought that the only difference between Dublin and those cities was the absence of a bike scheme!! I'm all for a bit of civic pride, but let's not lose the run of ourselves!

monument

Credit card are not accepted at most stations...

http://www.dublinbikes.ie/stations/view_stations/dublinbikes_station_list

Chips Lovell

Caroline_ie wrote: »

so what dio we call them ... the DuB's ?

"I'm going up to Dublin to ride a few Dubs".

Jawgap

el tonto wrote: »

"I'm going up to Dublin to ride a few Dubs".

Sounds like the election slogan for a country TD!!

davej

Jawgap wrote: »

Looking forward to using this and I'll be signing up for my card tomorrow.

I presume if you register now, your subscription won't expire until 13 months time (wouldn't want to lose a month by registering a month early).

davej

cheerspal

How long before the bikes are vandalized?

I would say 1 week before we hear of something in the paper.

Vélo

el tonto wrote: »

"I'm going up to Dublin to ride a few Dubs".

Ah the good auld days going down the country to ride a few muck savages:D

flickerx

Having seen the scheme work in Montreal, I am happy that Dublin has one too

BUT - looking at this, there arent enough stations, and not enough with credit card terminals (they should ALL have one).

monument

When trying to subscribe I'm getting a message of "Technical problem" at 'STEP 4: Payment by Credit Card'.

oflahero

monument wrote: »

When trying to subscribe I'm getting a message of "Technical problem" at 'STEP 4: Payment by Credit Card'.

I think I remember the placeholder on that page for the last couple of days saying 'available Wednesday from 6pm'...

monument

oflahero wrote: »

I think I remember the placeholder on that page for the last couple of days saying 'available Wednesday from 6pm'...

I only recall it saying in the afternoon or something generic like that.

oflahero

monument wrote: »

I only recall it saying in the afternoon or something generic like that.

any luck yet? Will deffo sign up if it all runs smooth and my credit card details are not actually being hijacked by Russian mafia.

oflahero

Sod it, went ahead anyway. All signed up!

Result: a somewhat anticlimactical PDF file ('You have signed up innit').

Hoping for a subscriber number in single digits, but I'd say they're all nobbled by now.

Yep, signed up there.

DualFrontDiscs

oflahero wrote: »

any luck yet? Will deffo sign up if it all runs smooth and my credit card details are not actually being hijacked by Russian mafia.

I registered, or tried to, but when it asked for the credit card, it went to validate and returned a 'Technical Error'. As Wiggle will confirm, there's nothing wrong with the card.

Rang them, number's on the home page, not the contact page. Ended up leaving a message, no option to wait.

DFD

TaxiManMartin

DualFrontDiscs wrote: »

I registered, or tried to, but when it asked for the credit card, it went to validate and returned a 'Technical Error'. As Wiggle will confirm, there's nothing wrong with the card.

Rang them, number's on the home page, not the contact page. Ended up leaving a message, no option to wait.

DFD

Same here.
says "technical problem" after entering card details.

monument

Short video of the bikes in Dublin today (vie a thread the green issues board)... http://www.likeplace.ie/blog/2009/08/scoop-video-of-new-free-bikes-for.html

Like the paint job, nearly makes them look nicer than the bikes in Paris.

monument

The replied to a question on my problem with the following, but it still won't work for me!...

Dear Cian,
Thank you for your query and please accept our apologies for the delay in getting back to you.

The technical problem you experienced is most likely caused by including a space or other non alpha numeric character in the postcode field in Step 1 of the subscription process.

As with most websites, the postcode is a required field as indicated by the asterisk and the form highlights that you should not include a space.

The following tips may be of assistance:

[*]As an example, for Dublin addresses we would suggest that for “Dublin 1” you enter “Dublin1”.
[*]Only enter alpha numeric characters in the postcode, letters and numbers only with no other characters or spaces.


If you still experience an issue please give us a call on the number below so that we can talk you through the process.





Regards

dublinbikes team
T. 1850 777 070
For more information visit www.dublinbikes.ie

-Chris-

That's f'ing stupid - Ireland doesn't have a post code system, yet a website that designed ONLY to serve Ireland requires a post code??

Mental...

TaxiManMartin

I got it to work at last. Put in 0 for your postcode. Enter your entire address on the single line they give you for this. For city just put Dublin.

paulgreene

I made a map of all the Stations here :cool:
you van leave a comment about each station (like always empty etc..) and a rating. I'll try to add some picture in the coming days.!

blorg

-Chris- wrote: »

That's f'ing stupid - Ireland doesn't have a post code system, yet a website that designed ONLY to serve Ireland requires a post code??

It's the same website they use in Paris, you can see it is even hosted on a French domain. That part hasn't been localised it would appear.

Diarmuid

So decided to hijack this thread to share some news on a similar scheme in Nice France.

The VeloBleu system has been runnning here for a few weeks. To describe it in a word, disaster. Having used the Ve'lib system, the VeloBleu system is terrible in comparison. Constant problems with the stations. They run a system that seems to be related to these guys. I have mailed them to confirm

Each station consists of up to 10 mini-stations. Each mini station can have 3 bikes locked to it. It seems to be a mobile phone internally, you switch it on, wait maybe 60sec for it to boot up. I could list the amount of problems I had had but it's a bit pointless here, roughly speaking on average I have to try two stations before I get a bike.

Needless to say I hope you guys don't have the same system there.

blorg

From the looks of it I am pretty sure the Dublin scheme will be using hardware similar to the Paris one. It looks the same anyway and they are both run by JC Decaux.

Another article here lamenting low take-up, why you would expect anyone to sign up before the bikes are there I don't know (does your annual sub run from when you register? If so, you just waste a month?) Who writes these things!

PCPhoto

which station will be first to loose all their bikes? (or have nothing but a wheel left)

..... pretty sure some scumbag will get the bight idea of taking everything except the wheel which is locked/secure and just put another wheel on it.....bring back the Raleigh Banana :P

Vélo

Yeah it does seem a bit ridiculous to write an article when the scheme's not even up and running. I registered the other day and never thought at the time when it starts from.

Ah well it's not the end of the world.

blorg

Vélo wrote: »

Yeah it does seem a bit ridiculous to write an article when the scheme's not even up and running. I registered the other day and never thought at the time when it starts from.

Well it hardly matters that much, a tenner divided by twelve months is under a euro... But to have that headline about take-up when the bikes aren't even there yet is nuts.

lukester

blorg wrote: »

Who writes these things!

Lazy-assed hacks.

MyDublin

blorg wrote: »

From the looks of it I am pretty sure the Dublin scheme will be using hardware similar to the Paris one. It looks the same anyway and they are both run by JC Decaux.

Another article here lamenting low take-up, why you would expect anyone to sign up before the bikes are there I don't know (does your annual sub run from when you register? If so, you just waste a month?) Who writes these things!

Miserable newspaper couldn't even give it a chance to get started - little bit more positivity please ....

I signed up already - couldn't wait until the bikes arrived but I did ring the call centre to see when my subscription would run from as I didn't want to loose a months value. Nice guy in the call centre explained that the first subscriptions would run from 13th September (launch day) so I won't loose anytime and I will be one of the first with my dublin bikes card! Yipee!

BeerNut

September 13th is the second day of the SeptemberFest drinks festival in Phoenix Park.

Anyone reckon Smithfield > Pint at Farmleigh > Smithfield can be done in half an hour?