Dublin bike drought

LionelNashe

None at Sherrard street, mountjoy square, or the two o'connell street stations at 8.20am
Bit of a pain in the hole

foggy_lad

LionelNashe wrote: »

None at Sherrard street, mountjoy square, or the two o'connell street stations at 8.20am
Bit of a pain in the hole

Recently afaik the scheme in London was fined £5,000,000 for leaving stands empty of bikes for too long and for poor maintenance and poor charging practices.

Cookie_Monster

well it is massively oversubscribed and successful beyond any projection so problems like this are bound to arise cos

1) there aren't enough bikes
2) they can't move them about fast enough.

It'd be good to see the current stations expanded as well as adding more as per plan. All the sooner the better too.

That said there should by this stage be good enough data on bike movements that the above is dealt with quickly by the lads in the truck moving bikes down before station empty completely (unless the bikes are all still in use)

BrianD

It was about to pen a complaint to the operator as I really don't feel that they are managing the bike fleet well.

There is adequate data available for the usage of each station yet some are continuously empty and at other stations there are often a few people waiting to dock and a couple of bikes attached to the nearest lamp posts and railings. There has to be some way of managing demand by removing bikes from low demand locations and having them on a mobile unit that can resupply high demand locations.

The recent closures due to the State visits and the WOmens Mini-Marathon were unacceptably long. Personally, I don't believe the number of stations that needed to be closed for the State visits (they'll state Garda instructions). There was absolutely no need to close stations for the Mini-Marathon that lasts a few hours (apart from those actually on the course route).

In any case, it's taking far too long to reopen these stations. For example, the Mini Marathon was done and dusted by 6pm on the Monday but bike stations weren't reopened until 11am the following day. What happened there? Even is there was a difficulty resupplying the closed stations at least those red locking panels could have been removed to allow people dock a bike and thus 'organically' repopulate the station. There were a lot of ticked off people that morning. After the Obama visit the stations weren't due to reopen till 11am on the Wednesday - not sure if this was brought forward because he departed earlier. These are unacceptably long delays.

I don't believe that these problems are due to over subscription - it's down to managing the fleet. Adding more stations or stands won't make this problem either - just increases it. I would be interested to know if there were any service level terms included in the contract with DCC.

Dublin Bike users - I have noticed at full stations where people are queuing to dock that nobody 'tags on' to the station to get their extra 15 min. I would think that this is important to do as it should signal to the DB operator that the full station is a high demand station. If they are getting alot of people waiting to dock in the evenings then the obvious thing is to remove some bikes earlier in the day.

patrickmooney

Yes I too have been left waiting for a bike most evenings after work. The service used to be dependable, not any more.

schemingbohemia

I was going to do a multi-quote but can't be bothered.

I think the scheme is a victim of it's own success, and in relation to the OP the outlying stations are always going to be the most used, you may just have to get up a bit earlier.

I'm constantly seeing the bike moving trucks around but the logisitics of their job is really difficult it's like playing jenga on a bouncy ball!

References to London are not any use at all and complaining about the security requirements of the two biggest security events in the history of the State are fatuous.

I'll try and dig out a survey that was mentioned here ages ago, which lists the least used sites - Georges Quay being one which might help people target the lesser used stations.

markpb

schemingbohemia wrote: »

References to London are not any use at all

Why are they bull? In Londons case, Serco are paid to operate the scheme. In Dublin, JCD are paid (in kind) to operate it. If Serco have to meet some kind of targets, why shouldn't JCD?

complaining about the security requirements of the two biggest security events in the history of the State are fatuous.

Why? Why were the stations scheduled to remain closed for half a day after Obama was scheduled to leave? Why did stations have to close on roads that weren't closed? You could still cycle on those roads but for some reason, DB were different - why?

ArmaniJeanss

It'd be good if the software changed such that you don't have to log on to get information when you come to an empty or full station.

I cycle to my destination, there are no empty stands, I have to go to my wallet, flash my card at the machine, enter my code, then system gives me list of available local stations.

Ideally the system should automatically display the information from the final step once it realises it is full. (If I want to avail of 15 minutes then I can choose to log-on).

Trampas

All stations should be appropriately stocked for the morning run.

They should know roughly which way the bikes are moving in the morning and have the numbers ready in all stations. Sometimes it is impossible to get a bike around the green at 7.30am

Seaswimmer

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

It'd be good if the software changed such that you don't have to log on to get information when you come to an empty or full station.

I cycle to my destination, there are no empty stands, I have to go to my wallet, flash my card at the machine, enter my code, then system gives me list of available local stations.

Ideally the system should automatically display the information from the final step once it realises it is full. (If I want to avail of 15 minutes then I can choose to log-on).

i dont think this is the case. if you go to the menu (i think option 4 for information and then option 5 possibly for nearby stations and avaialbility) the info is there. i have never had to use my card to find nearby station availability..

what would be useful would be an availability list for ALL stations as you would then have a better idea of where to drop your bike if your chosen destination station is full.

schemingbohemia

markpb wrote: »

Why are they bull? In Londons case, Serco are paid to operate the scheme. In Dublin, JCD are paid (in kind) to operate it. If Serco have to meet some kind of targets, why shouldn't JCD?



Why? Why were the stations scheduled to remain closed for half a day after Obama was scheduled to leave? Why did stations have to close on roads that weren't closed? You could still cycle on those roads but for some reason, DB were different - why?

I never said bull, I said London wasn't useful, different company and way more problems encountered, not least the price.

None of us know the targets JCD have been set because the council won't publish the contract, that being said, I think extrapolating from a couple of people having problems getting a bike at a very busy time at the outer fringe of the service to pointing out that a different service model has been fined a huge amount for a plethora of problems is somehow equal or relevant is pointless.

I don't think JCD or DCC decided for a laugh to close the stations during the 2 visits, I don't know why they were delayed opening but I'd be fairly sure it was due to Security advice rather than them specifically trying to annoy a few punters.

Every little problem with any transport providers ends up turning into the end of the world for some people on this board, it gets really dull really quickly.

BrianD

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I was going to do a multi-quote but can't be bothered.

I think the scheme is a victim of it's own success, and in relation to the OP the outlying stations are always going to be the most used, you may just have to get up a bit earlier.

I'm constantly seeing the bike moving trucks around but the logisitics of their job is really difficult it's like playing jenga on a bouncy ball!

References to London are not any use at all and complaining about the security requirements of the two biggest security events in the history of the State are fatuous.

I'll try and dig out a survey that was mentioned here ages ago, which lists the least used sites - Georges Quay being one which might help people target the lesser used stations.

Believe that the scheme is successful but not a victim of it's own success. The nature of the service and because Dublin is very much a "city centre" means that there is an obvious need for the bikes to be moved around by the operator. They just aren't doing enough of this.

I don't think JCD or DCC decided for a laugh to close the stations during the 2 visits, I don't know why they were delayed opening but I'd be fairly sure it was due to Security advice rather than them specifically trying to annoy a few punters.

The complaints about the bike availability after the state visits and the mini-marathon are valid. I can fully understand the closure of some stations but not the entire list - Also I'd like to see in writing the number of stations that had to be closed. Furthermore the communication of teh closure of 17 stations was poorly communicated. Afterwards, we had no service available for an unacceptably long period of time. As I said, womens mini-marathon over at 6pm on monday no bikes 'till 11am the following day. Unacceptable - the bikes should have been back in play by 8pm that evening. In London at least we know that there must be an agreed level of service.

I think extrapolating from a couple of people having problems getting a bike at a very busy time at the outer fringe of the service to pointing out that a different service model has been fined a huge amount for a plethora of problems is somehow equal or relevant is pointless.

Why so? The demand can be managed. And there's more than a few people having problems. In Ranelagh, you can hardly get a bike any time of the day while 2 stops further down the canal you could be in a line of 5 people waiting to dock. This is not unusual in recent times.

Carawaystick

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I don't think JCD or DCC decided for a laugh to close the stations during the 2 visits, I don't know why they were delayed opening but I'd be fairly sure it was due to Security advice rather than them specifically trying to annoy a few punters.

Why did the db website show all the stands free under the loop line bridge the first day of closure when they were locked out?
Why did the display at Townsend street show availability at locked out docking stations the same day?
Why did the db website say the stands were still closed even though they were open when they belatedly re-opened?

I'd put my money on incompetence on the corpo's part, or incompetence on the cops rather than any planned ``security''.