Dublin Bikes - no expansions recently?

Africa

A little over a year ago there was a thread about expanding the Dublin Bikes Scheme to a lot more places over Dublin. Surprise, nothing has been done thus far! Have I missed something?

JCD make a near criminal amount of money off the bike scheme. Think its about time they expanded it a bit...

markpb

The contract with JCD was x number of bikes, maps and signposts for y number of advertising panels. No more and no less. They won't be expending it unless DCC pay them to do so.

Africa

http://dublinobserver.com/2011/03/wheels-set-in-motion-for-dublin-bikes-expansion/

Thats the expansion I am referencing...

Cookie_Monster

I remember that, lots of talk of how amazing sucessful it was and how they couldn't expand it fast enough...

bk

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

I remember that, lots of talk of how amazing sucessful it was and how they couldn't expand it fast enough...

It was an amazing success, in fact the most successful such scheme in Europe, with the highest uptake.

Unfortunately the recession then struck and the bottom fell out of the advertising market.

So the model that paid for it, simply won't work anymore.

This leaves a problem with how to finance expanding the scheme. They could start charging for it's use (no free 30 minutes), but then that would take away one of the primary reasons for it's success.

Some cheaper to install systems are appearing around the world, but then they are incompatible with the existing, relatively expensive system.

Personally I'd like to see it and some other bike schemes (e.g. more bike parking in car parks) financed by a fee placed on all city car parking charges.

Barcelona paid for it's massive and impressive new bike road network and bike scheme with exactly this approach.

Gumbo

the 2A and 2B area of that map are the next areas to be extended into IIRC.

Run_to_da_hills

Dose anyone have any figures for missing / stolen / write off bikes since the scheme started?

I believe it has one of the highest recovery rates for missing bikes than any of the European projects.

Victor

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Dose anyone have any figures for missing / stolen

Very few - they all have a GPS-mobile phone locator to find them if reported missing.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

write off bikes

I don't know, but I imagine very few.

reprazant

All new expansion is being done by the DCC.

The last new couple of new new stands, such as the one in Lennox Place in Portobello, was put in 100% by the Corpo AFAIK.

I would imagine that they have a financing issue going on at the moment so I can't see any new ones being put in for a while.

pclive

The expansion is still going ahead with funding from the NTA
http://www.thejournal.ie/e500k-grant-will-help-expand-dublin-bikes-scheme-344756-Feb2012/

Run_to_da_hills

Surely any expansion would displace Dublin Bus customers.

eejoynt

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Surely any expansion would displace Dublin Bus customers.

Or conversely it could encourage bus travel by people using the bus for the long leg of a journey followed the bike for a shorter leg

Africa

Great, thanks for the links and info guys

I love the system but I must admit, pretty annoyed that we've seen nothing from it in the last year. The amount of money from subscriptions alone is huge, never mind the charges (I usually spend about 5er a month) should surely have had something there.

Great stuff about that grant from February, but I really wonder what 500k has been spent on :S

hardCopy

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Dose anyone have any figures for missing / stolen / write off bikes since the scheme started?

I believe it has one of the highest recovery rates for missing bikes than any of the European projects.

I think there were figures released after the first year, something like 2 stolen, one of them recovered

loyatemu

Africa wrote: »

Great, thanks for the links and info guys

I love the system but I must admit, pretty annoyed that we've seen nothing from it in the last year. The amount of money from subscriptions alone is huge, never mind the charges (I usually spend about 5er a month) should surely have had something there.

there are 44,000 long term subscribers according to their website, that equates to €444,000 p.a. The vast majority of journeys are less than 30 mins and therefore free, and I doubt they're making much money from the 3-day tourist subscriptions. I'm not sure who gets the money (does it do towards the running costs, or does the council get it?).

The bikes themselves are expensive as they're built like tanks, I don't know how much it costs to install a new station.

markpb

loyatemu wrote: »

I'm not sure who gets the money (does it do towards the running costs, or does the council get it?).

AFAIK the city gets the money from subscriptions and the odd payment for using more than 30 minutes. JCD pay all the installation costs (bikes, bike stands along with maps and sign posts) and operating costs but recoup it on the advertising panels they were allowed install.

The bikes themselves are expensive as they're built like tanks, I don't know how much it costs to install a new station.

I'd imagine it's very expensive. The bike counter on the N11 costs €20,000 to buy and fit and it's simple in comparison. The stands need power and network connections which, I'd imagine, means involving Eircom and ESB Networks.

Aard

Also, considering that the subscription is €10, and that the vast majority of trips have no surcharge, the cost to the user is minimal to almost being negligible. In other cities the annual cost is anywhere between €25 and €100.

What would be better investment from the city council, imo, would be improved northside-southside connections (e.g. contraflow Capel St, and non-cobblestone Eustace St). Some of the one-ways need sorting out too, like getting in/out of Exchequer St and Chatham St. Or my own pet peeve: Parnell St eastbound to OCS southbound.