Missing tfi bikes stations

There was one on Washington St that was removed due to the student flats being builts at the old Square Deal place. That's long finished but no sign of the bike stands coming back. That was the one I used the most so miss it.

Quite amazing they are actually removing stations when we should be working to add to the network. Disappointing. If you're going to permanently remove one, at least add one somewhere nearby. The network is tiny as it is.

The maintenance of the system is a disgrace.

You can't rely on the bikes working or stations to be open.

I contacted the Sustainable Transport officer in Council (yes, we have one) and was essentially told that he uses the scheme regularly and rarely has issues.

Apologies for resurrecting this zombie thread, but there have been some interesting changes to TFI Bikes recently.

For starters, it looks as if the old style locks are being removed from the bikes. A lot of the bikes I’m using these days don’t have any, whilst others have a new permanently installed lock, such as the one below:

Meanwhile, Cork County Hall station has come online and seems to be getting a fair bit of use, at least from what I can see on the 220X bus. The station on Washington Street, outside the new student accommodation block, looks to be physically complete but hasn’t come online yet.

Finally, the biggest change to the system, and the one I’m most excited about, has happened on the app front. A new version of the TFI Bikes app that was released on July 12th introduced “App Release”, a feature that allows users to check out a bike without having to go through the kiosk/terminal at a station. You simply select your station on the app and then tap on the bike you want to rent. As someone who has summoned quite the collection of elder gods and eldritch entities cursing unresponsive touch screens, this is a godsend!

After what seems to be an eternity, the TFI Bikes station on Washington Street/ St. Finn Barre’s Bridge is finally operational. Didn’t get a picture, but it was operational as of Thursday and is also showing up on the TFI Bikes website and in the app.

The presentation has just finished, it was pretty interesting to see the "guts" of the system.

Some interesting takeaways for me:

• Mobile maintenance teams are being moved over to cargo eBikes
• The same goes for bike redistribution & repositioning, at least on the small scale. They're moving to bikes with cargo trailers
• Operators are planning to replace diesel trucks for bike redistribution with EVs, currently on trial in Limerick
• App release, the ability to check out bikes using the TFI Bikes App, is now used by 34% of customers, so more than a third, there's been a steady increase since this was introduced in July '24

Two very interesting items were announced as "Coming Soon…"

• Bike Station Lite - This is a self-contained, mobile & modular TFI Bikes station. The aim of these is to be able to provide a station for large events without having to actually dig up the ground and wait for ESB to do their thing. They also aim to use these as "trial stations" to see if there's actually enough demand at a certain location (like Marina Market) to warrant installing a permanent station. Three of these modular stations are available, they'll start to be used this spring. Note: These are "headless" stations without a display, so you'll need the smartphone app to use it.
• eBikes are coming! - This is not an official announcement, that will come from TFI via press release in the coming weeks, but they'll be available in Cork from March onward. A blurred picture of one of these eBikes was shown during the presentation, and those attending the in-Person event at the Rochestown Park hotel also got to see them, and try them out in person.

The presentation was recorded, and I really hope that the recording is made available somewhere, because it really was interesting!

They've had that for a while now, I remember seeing it whilst still in my old job, when TFI Bikes was part of my daily commute. I think it was brought in with the same update that added App Release, the ability to check out bikes with your phone.

By the way, here's the recording of last week's presentation, for those of you who are interested:

Not really, they only mentioned that they can be deployed quickly and scaled from the available modular components. The name Marina Market was dropped in the presentation, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a station there, or towards the stadium, but I don’t think they’ll be deployed immediately, or that they’ll be deployed constantly.

TfI told me 100 bikes were going to just Cork which would be great for our hills!