Bike Scheme like Dublin, Waterford misses out.

When you see some of the locations in Dublin where these bike stations are located it is obvious that they are in some of the toughest parts of the inner city and not exactly tourist hot spots. These three particularly stand out.

Upper Sherrard Street
Hardwicke Street
Mountjoy Square

Other locations in Dublin where the bike stations are would be similarly associated with negative social issues but would have some tourist location in their vicinity. Examples:

Custom House Quay
Georges Quay
James St.

So the location of the stations and the bike scheme is not directed at any particular demograph but a varied one.So for 100 Bikes in Waterford you would need 10 stations. Where could they potentially be?

Plunkett Station
Bustation on Quay
Clock Tower
Bishops Palace/House of Waterford Crystal
Reginalds Tower
John Roberts Square
Mayors Walk near cop shop
Ballybricken opposite Carrolls
Ardkeen near the Library/Stores
John Roberts Square
Main Gates of Peoples Park

If 150 bikes is some sort of magic number to make it viable then include

WIT Main Campus
College St
WRH
RSC/Kingfisher
The Glen
Ferrybank

So if the 150 bike figure is to cover availability as well as usage then it is not unreasonablr to expect that the number expected to be used would be approx 70 or 80 at any given time. So ask yourself this! Given that there is 10000 people studying at WIT is it unreasobble to expect that a mere 8-10 of them per day could use the bikes on a regular basis?
Of the 12000 people working in the business parks of the city do you actually believe not even 10 of them could be found to use the bikes on a given day?150000 people visited Waterford Crystal on the mall in 2011 in economic harsh times. On average almost 500 a day every day of the year.
50000 live in the city. Is it unreasonable to expect that 10 of them per day could not take a whim and decide to rent a bike?WRH has ALMOST 25000 admissions per year. Is it over reaching to think 10 people visiting the hospital would not rent a bike that would be free for the first half hour and then use it to get home or to cycle into town for their bus/ train?
WRH has 120000 outpatients per year.thats 300 per day. 10 people per day would not use a bike to get to the hospital or back?

Does anyone honestly think that not even 10 people who pass through Plunkett Station could be found to use these bikes.

Ditto Bus Station
Ditto Rapid Express near Bishops place.
Ditto Ferrybank with a leisurly roll down a hill that would cost nothing.
Ditto Dunmore Road.

In order to use the system, users need to take out a subscription, which allows the subscriber an unlimited number of rentals. Subscriptions can get a Long Term Hire Card costing €10, or a 3 Day Ticket costing €2. Users also authorize Dublin Bikes to charge €150 from their credit card if the bike is not returned.[2] The first half-hour of every journey is free, after that a service charge applies. See below for pricing structure:

Time Rate

30 min Free
1 hr €1.50
2 hrs €3.50
4 hrs €6.50

After 4 hours, every extra 30 minutes costs €2. In practice, the system is virtually free to users as over 95% of journeys last less than 30 minutes.

　
This could easily be accomodated in Waterford. It would be the perfect method of connecting all the transport modes of the city as well the tourist locations that are not exactly in the city centre such as Mount Sion visitors centre,. Not to mention Mount Congreve, Tramore, Dunmore East,Passage East Car Ferry and Dunbrody Abbey and Duncannon,

　

This isn't the Western Rail Corridor. It would cost a few hundred grand and unlike the WRC it would be used.

It doesn't make any money in Dublin. The idea that it would be a waste of money here is a nonsense. It does not add up what is being said in the report. It s another case of the line being drawn at Galway and F^ck the rest of ye!

It's apparently cost prohibitive in Waterford but yet will be considered for smaller towns in the future.

Let's wake up here for God's sake...

Max Powers wrote: »

yeah, doesn t look great alright. Makes you wonder how it would have fared here, I certainly think the city centre to WIT route would be busy, Hospital to City Centre would possibly be busy too as it would have a bike lane (of sorts) but the short distances it mentions seem a bit silly. Afterall, in our city, you can walk a lot of places handily too.

The problem in galway is as you describe. No route to the hospital or gmit. All collection points are within about a 10 minute walk.

wellboytoo wrote: »

It must be terrible living in your half empty glass,negative world, really awfull ,but probably worse to go for a pint with you.

stating what's likely to be true is living in a negative world nowadays?

anyway its never going to work in Waterford, facts and figures show that this kind of stuff only works in big cities or cities with large urban area's with a lot of different things to do, Waterford is spread out and sadly doesn't fit in to the categories these people are looking for.

JourneyMan8 wrote: »

stating what's likely to be true is living in a negative world nowadays?

Is it true? I have seen these schemes in many places and provision of helmets was never part of them. As for whether it would work in Waterford or not we don't know because it wasn't tried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bicycle-sharing_systems

Your point of it needing to be part of large urban center does is also not necessarily true. The list of systems in Wikipedia have towns as small as 5000 people with them in Hungary. Towns as small as 25000 in Denmark.Many towns in Netherlands up to around 150000 have them. Incidentally the Netherlands system was the way to go with a National system in place and not specific to cities. If they had done it this way and allowed carriage on trains and in holds of buses you could have an effective national system or regional system.

TheQuietFella wrote: »

We're too small a city, sorry, town!

Where isn't in Ireland outside of say Dublin? But insincerity aside if it was seen as feasible for Galway and Limerick how did it suddenly become unfeasible for Waterford considering there is other places in Europe where villages have such schemes? There maybe be valid reasons but as usual in the Ireland of transparency we don't live in nobody has the answer other than some declaration that it would n costs are "too high". I would hazard if it was implemented the worst case scenario is that it would be somewhere between Galway and Limerick for user numbers.

Cabaal wrote: »

Wasn't this one of the critical things said about Dublin bikes.

- Who's going to use them?
- Sure they all be stolen or end up in the liffey
- Its dangerous cycling them in the city
- It rains too much in Dublin

The reality is it actually rains less in Dublin then Amsterdam, plenty of people used them for getting to work to just nipping out to the shop for lunch. They are students and also solicitors using them.

Sure students drive to WIT but lots of students also walk or get the bus, students in some parts of the city have crap options when its comes to bus use so giving them cycle options would encourage alternative use other then cars which cost alot more to use, maintain etc

Certainly you've a very different type of urban population in Dublin which isn't present in most if not all the other Irish cities. A significant number of the population wouldn't own a car. A significant proportion of those that do own cars wouldn't or couldn't bring it anywhere near the city.

Waterford city centre is pretty dead at the best of times. Maybe you'd get some benefit from people driving as far as the park and cycling a bit further into town. Maybe students moving between the Cork Road and the Manor Street Campus and the city centre might generate some demand.

A pilot involving WIT could actually be a worthwhile exercise.

There is a lack of joined up thinking here regards this. The dutch system was the way to go. Or one system for Dublin and another for the rest of the country. 1500 bikes operating in Dublin and another 1500 across the country in say the 10 largest urban centers for arguments sake and a facility to use trains and luggage compartments in buses. One company to manage collect and redistribute the bikes where needed. It would have made public transport a lot more flexible as I suspect given the chance a lot of people who could use public transport but dislike waiting for the second bus etc would avail of the bike instead.

There is also a narrow idea that the bikes would be just used in the city center or in Waterford. This not necessarily the case. A tourist with the right knowledge might venture out to passage and across the ferry to say Duncannon. Or on the train up to Kilkenny or vice versa. Or simply out to Tramore. A taxi out to the hospital from town is 10 Euro.Anyone visiting a relative out there knows what a clusterf*ck the parking is out there. Given the chance I suspect there is no shortage of people who would cycle the 15 mins back into town if the alternative was there.

hardybuck wrote: »

In reference to your second paragraph, I think yes we are specifically talking about use in or around the city. The City Bikes would not be suitable for going to somewhere like Passage.

You're right about people bringing their own bikes on public transport. Irish Rail to have facilities, but nothing on the buses, unless you have a folding bike.

Not at all. I have seen people cycle these frequently to places like Lucan in Dublin or along the coast to Bray and Killiney which is more demanding than a leisurely jaunt to Passage. Cycling to Passage East for the majority of people would be undemanding bar the very young,very old and the sick. About 7 miles.In the Netherlands I see tourists doing similar trips on a massive scale. As for the public transport. You could reserve space for eight bikes in the luggage compartment of an expressway bus and 80% of the space is would still be available. Restricting it to outside of peak times or to these types of bike would probably mean no modifications would be required at all.We are talking minor logistical issues here that can be solved without any great thought.

hardybuck wrote: »

I'll be honest with you, I've lived in Dublin for a number of years now and I've never seen them outside of the city centre. I must ask a few people about that to see if anyone else has seen them in the surrounding towns.

I'll second that. Outside of the city centre I've never seen anyone on one of these bikes and I'm regularly all over the city. Has Fuzzy ever ridden one of the bikes? They're ideal for short trips but I wouldn't be venturing on a trip to Bray, Lucan etc.

CatFromHue wrote: »

I saw a couple on the cycle path from Clontarf out to Sutton once but that route is perfectly flat.

I don't know how these bikes would operate on a hilly surface which is what there is in a few spots in Waterford, the bikes themselves only have 3 gears so I don't think they'd be in any way nice to cycle on around Waterford (ie out to Passage, Dunmore, Tramore, or Kilmeaden). Even in the city itself there are some big enough hills like going up to Ballybricken or out to Ardkeen.

As for students using them I don't know how much of a runner that is as then you might find that all the bikes go out from the city centre in the morning and end up parked up in WIT so no one in the city would get to use them. In Dublin there's no stations in DCU or UCD which are only a few kms away from the city centre.

Yeah they're not suitable for cycling long distances. The station up in North Wall wouldn't be a massive jaunt, but I'd say the people on them were happy enough to give them back when they were finished!

I've rented mountain bikes in places like San Francisco and that was a brilliant way of seeing the city. That would be a far more practical way of promoting tourism.