Missing tfi bikes stations

thomil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123351864#Comment_123351864

Love to hear it, but I haven't even seen a single e-bike in use or available in Cork yet. Not sure what's holding up the roll-out.

On a more positive note, the station at Marina Promenade is now showing up in the TFI Bikes App and on the website. It's not active yet, though…

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Hopefully more stations along Centre Park Rd / Blackrock.

Vinnyda

Ebikes are now available at the stations, I got one this morning but couldn't get the motor to assist, perhaps it was the one I used, will try again later

namloc1980

My experience to date is that the electric bikes are not being charged. Kind of pointless to be honest if they won't charge them.

thomil

TFI Bikes are jacking up the prices for e-Bikes from August 1st:

Whilst I'm generally not surprised, and this is their first real price hike since the system launched back in 2015, I'm somewhat bummed by the fact that the first 30 minutes are no longer going to be free when taking an e-Bike. I just hope they figure out a solution to the charging issue sooner rather than later!

opus

I've tried using an e-bike twice so far & each time the battery has been dead. Luckily it was free as I'd be mightily p*ssed off to be charged €1.50 for the pleasure of cycling a slightly heavier than normal bike.

Schorpio

Not given the eBikes a go, but most people I've seen at stations have been grabbing them when they are there. With the change in pricing, I predict that eBike usage is going to drop like a stone.

lostinsuperfunk

€1.50 for 30 minutes is not bad (if they are charged!). It would be nice if the system could track the usage or battery state and make them unavailable when the batteries are dead.

Has anyone had any success with the app unlock feature? I've tried twice and failed. It seems to be something to do with the location detection and proximity to the station. I have location services enabled and the app whitelisted on my phone but it still doesn't work.

the beer revolu

I still haven't seen these. Where are the stations? (the electric ones)

lostinsuperfunk

The South Main Street station is being reinstalled near the new entrance to the park.

opus

This is disappointing to read, I'm an occasional user so won't change my life but it's a very handy option to have available.

Say goodbye to Coke bikes in Cork City as we know them

thomil

I read that earlier today. Disgusting hit piece by that cycling "campaigner" tw@t Conn Donovan. One-sided drivel that completely glosses over so many of the positive developments on the ground and conveniently omits the fact that despite the drop in usage, TFI Bikes in Cork recovered faster from COVID than all other regional bike hire systems, is far more heavily used than TFI Bikes in Galway, Limerick and Waterford combined, by an order of magnitude, not to mention that his "Cork Cycling Campaign" never did a SINGLE THING to promote or push TFI Bikes or Coke Zero Bikes. They were too busy organising tours for themselves or "bike bops" that did nothing but antagonise motorists and serve as intellectual self gratification for him and his "cycling elite". His jubilant tone about the impending demise of TFI Bikes really says it all. Him and his lot care about their own intellectual purity and moral superiority rather than about actually making cycling more accessible and convenient!

polaris68

Minister Darragh O’Brien announced this summer that the TfI Regional Bike Share Scheme that operates in Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford will be wound up by the end of this year.

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-transport/press-releases/minister-obrien-launches-national-policy-and-new-pilot-project-for-shared-transport-mobility-hubs/

lostinsuperfunk

I wish I could overcome my pessimism but I see several red flags in this announcement.

"pilot" - we don't need a pilot, we've had an actual system that, despite a few issues, has worked quite well for almost a decade. A pilot suggests that there will be faffing around with different operators, bikes, schemes, apps, then months or years to make a decision. Or maybe no decision.

"Stakeholder consultation" is mentioned, but I don't recall any announcements about it. Why didn't they make an effort to consult with the actual users of the bikes? TFI could have popped up a notification on their app for example. This doesn't seem like a genuine consultation to me.

"publicly procured, but privately owned and operated … a variety of shared mobility providers" - this just sounds like a mess. Download multiple apps. Credit held in multiple accounts? (you don't even need an app to use TFIbikes)

And I wonder what will happen to the existing infrastructure. It would seem like a pointless waste to rip it all up , but it looks like that's what will happen: "the more flexible approach used by shared mobility companies has considerable merit."

The announcement claims "shared micromobility schemes … will be in place later this year" but this doesn't seem to be moving nearly fast enough to provide a service immediately after the existing contract ends in 2025. Which means we'll probably have nothing at all for a while.

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-transport/press-releases/minister-obrien-launches-national-policy-and-new-pilot-project-for-shared-transport-mobility-hubs/

https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/National_Policy_Statement_on_Shared_Mobility_and_the_Provision_of_Hubs_2025.pdf

No tender announcement yet that I can see, just a "market engagement exercise"

https://www.etenders.gov.ie/epps/pmc/viewPmc.do?resourceId=6320769

thomil

It's worth pointing out that the "shared micromobilty schemes" are independent from the pilot projects outlined in the press release, those pilots refer to these "shared transport mobility hubs" that are planned. With regard to the "shared mobility hubs", a mix of providers would actually make sense, given that those are aiming to combine car sharing, bike sharing, cargo bikes and scooters. Having separate operators for those would make the system as a whole more resilient.

I am however worried about whatever they're planning to replace TFI Bikes in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. We could simply be looking at NTA renewing the current TraceTel-based system, just with upgraded backend systems and hardware. That would explain why stations such as South Main Street are being reinstated with just months to go. Or we could see another maintenance and operations company taking over the existing hardware, with simply the TFI Bikes brand and backend being retired. Both could be done with relatively little effort.

A full rip & replace would be a different matter and would require quite a bit of effort and money. You can't just take, say Nextbike, who are one of the world leaders for bike sharing systems, and put their systems in, their stands are wholly incompatible with the current system, meaning you'd have to rip out all stations and put in new ones. Now, that might not be such a bad thing, Nextbike offers self-contained stations akin to the "Bike Station Lite" that was introduced at the Marina earlier this year, negating the need for mains power connections that makes installing the current stations such a pain. But it's a massive project, very expensive, and would take months. Moreover, as I mentioned, it couldn't be done while the current stations remain in place.

For what it's worth, I've decided to throw a Hail Mary and fired off an email to the minister directly, with the following questions:

• Will the new “shared micro mobility scheme” planned for Cork be a station-based system, or a station-less one, such as Bleeper Bikes in Dublin?
• If the new scheme is to be station-based, will the current station locations be retained?
• Will the new micro-mobility scheme continue to be based around bicycles?
• Will e-Bikes continue to be a part of the new scheme, will they be phased out, or will the new scheme be entirely electric?
• By what times the new scheme planned to be operational?
• Will existing TFI Bikes customers be migrated over to the new scheme, or will it require a completely new sign-up process?
• Is it planned to make the replacement scheme for TFI Bikes compatible/interoperable with the systems available at the planned “shared mobility hubs”, or will those systems require separate signups/registrations?

I don't really expect any reply beyond a boilerplate "thank you for your email", not least because some of that information might be sensitive/under NDA, but it's better than fishing in the dark as far as I'm concerned.

DylanQuestion

What is a micro mobility scheme?

opus

Thanks for the follow up information, it doesn't seem quite so bad as suggested in the article. Guess we'll just have to wait & see. I'll be making use of one this very lunchtime to meet someone in Fitzgerald park as it happens 🙂

PreCocious

Did Conn borrow your pump and forget to give it back or something? You're very personal with your attacks here and on Reddit .

From what I've seen the Cork Cycling Campaign have done a lot to try and make cycling something ordinary rather than just something done by lads who compare gear ratios and debate the merits of Presta v Schrader valves. It has done a lot to normalise cycling and also to help improve the overall infrastructure in the city which helps encourage newer cyclists.

The city bikes suffered from a bad period when stations were out of service for lengthy periods but it would be interesting to see how much WFH has affected them. You'd see plenty out and about on the Marina at weekends but is the commuter traffic still there during the week ?

Docked infrastructure is probably pricey to install and maintain with the requirement to re-balance stations also adding cost. Dockless seems much easier and agile but unless there were proper parking zones the whole thing becomes a mess and in a city where the dinosaurs are happy to point to the smallest problem with something new then ....

lostinsuperfunk

I might have been too critical about this. It's great to see something ambitious like that planned in Ireland and I do think we need some very radical changes to urban transport.

We aren't always good on implementation, but I hope this goes through, and that there's no break in bike coverage.

thomil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123759608#Comment_123759608

What have Cork Cycling Campaign actually achieved? Name one success that they've brought about. You'll be looking for quite some time. Not a single piece of cycle infrastructure was implemented because of them. The bike lane along South Mall? Brought about by the council. The cycle lanes along Camden Place and St. Patrick's Quay? The council! The cycling link between Kennedy Quay and the Marina? You guessed it. The council. They have produced no actual solutions, just some idealistic schemes. They did, in fairness, push the Lee 2 Sea greenway, a project I'd absolutely love to see come to life, but nearly a decade after they first floated the idea, it's still nothing more than a fancy website:

https://lee2sea.com

As for other activities, I tried checking the News section of their website. Surely, they'd promote the hell out of their activities, right? Right? Yeah, about that:

All they seem to be doing is reposting every single news story that is even tangentially related to cycling. They haven't put out any actual news releases of their own since 2018, and their social media accounts likewise are little more than glorified repost bots. The events section on their website leads to a bloody reading list! As for TFI Bikes, they've talked, or more precisely reposted, about that exactly twice from what I could find. Twice! Since 2018! Meanwhile, my own blog has seen At least five articles on that subject since 2018, and all of those have been original content based on my personal experiences as a user! I went out of my way to post about TFI Bikes on Instagram, Threads and X over the last two years. I've been doing the job that the Cork Cycling Campaign SHOULD be doing with regard to TFI Bikes, in addition to having a full-time, pretty strenuous, job.

For what it's worth, I actually tried getting involved with Cork Cycling Campaign a few years back. It quickly became clear that I was wasting my time because for all their talking, that's really all they cared about. There was never an answer to questions about what their actual goal was, and what the concrete steps were to get to that goal. They were, and still are, waffling. And that's why I'm so dismissive about Conn Donovan and his crowd. They're ineffective, have no real plan, and don't even have any real drive, again, they're mostly a repost machine these days! If you call yourselves Cork Cycling Campaign, then CAMPAIGN for god's sake! Be visible! Be out on Patrick Street or Grand Parade on the Weekends! And have both a goal and a plan!

Anyway, enough of that. I've already waster far too much energy on that topic.

The city bikes suffered from a bad period when stations were out of service for lengthy periods but it would be interesting to see how much WFH has affected them. You'd see plenty out and about on the Marina at weekends but is the commuter traffic still there during the week ?

I know about the bad periods. I've been a TFI Bikes user since December 2014, and I even wrote about the downward spiral on my blog more than once:

https://thomil-english.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-downward-cycle-on-declining-state-of.html

https://thomil-english.blogspot.com/2021/10/cork-bike-share-system-kicking-coke.html

However. I also used TFI Bikes as part of my regular commute from 2021 to 2024. I used to work in Penrose Dock and used TFI Bikes to bridge the gap between the closest bus stop on the 220 bus route, Grand Parade, and Kent Station, twice a day, sometimes more, for between three and four days a week. When I started in 2021, there weren't that many commuters using TFI Bikes, or Coke Zero Bikes as they still were then. However, over the following years, the number massively increased and it eventually got to a point where I'd be sharing a bike lane with up to ten other TFI Bikes at one point, and where I'd often have to queue for a bike. That was before app-based bike release was introduced. The numbers have definitely bounced back. They're not where they were before the lockdowns, and the usage patterns seem to have changed somewhat, but they're definitely back! Here's a blog post I wrote on that topic last year:

https://thomil-english.blogspot.com/2024/11/tfi-bikes-in-cork-success-story.html

And here's a link to the CSO, which has its own section on bike sharing systems:

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/hubs/p-transo/transporthub/publictransport/bikesharingscheme/

Docked infrastructure is probably pricey to install and maintain with the requirement to re-balance stations also adding cost. Dockless seems much easier and agile but unless there were proper parking zones the whole thing becomes a mess and in a city where the dinosaurs are happy to point to the smallest problem with something new then ....

Would you believe that I wrote a blog post about this very topic? 😉

https://thomil-english.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-bicycle-wars.html

To expand on that though, A lot of the cost and other issues that face TFI Bikes when it comes to expansion is that the stations it uses require a mains power connection. This puts any expansion at the mercy of ESB Networks, which in turn has had a noticeable effect on re-activating stations after they'd been removed, such as on Washington Street for example. This is a consequence of the NTA partnering with French company Tracetel and ordering such a "heavy" system back in the early 2010s, when not as many bike sharing systems were available.

However, that system is not the only one on the market. German bike sharing company Nextbike offers a self-contained system where the station still needs to be secured to the ground, but doesn't require any power connection. In that way, it's similar to the Bike Station Lite that TFI Bikes introduced earlier this year and that's been installed at the Marina.This approach allows for new stations to be set up with far less effort than having to wait for power connection. And it still retains the benefit of a station-based system, primarily a cleaner appearance, a higher resistance to vandalism, which is desperately needed here in Cork, and less clutter.

As for dockless systems, you're still going to have the redistribution issue there. The problem is that usage patterns are too asymmetrical to allow for a purely "organic" redistribution of bikes. So you're going to have to have repair crews and redistribution vehicles in either case. You'll also be relying on users to properly park their bikes once they're done, and that is NOT going to happen here in Cork. Those bikes will be all over the place, even if you define proper parking zones. Also, having a dockless system leaves the bikes wide open to vandalism, and you can bet that many of those bikes would end up either completely wrecked, or in the river!

DylanQuestion

Sorry to be picking up on just one point of your post, however I thought Cork Cycling Campaign was behind the UCC → CUH cycle lane? Which sadly only ended up just being a cycle lane on Donovan's Road (which replaced parking I guess, which was huge at the time) and painted bikes on College Road

lostinsuperfunk

I think Cork Cycling Campaign did promote that one — but a group called Irish Doctors for the Environment were more visibly campaigning for it.

Unfortunately, with the cycle lane Donovan's Road is now too narrow for two buses to pass each other. The buses have to drive over the bollards to make room to pass — and many of the bollards have been flattened.