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Levels of membership in the DublinBikes public program "are no longer growing and could decline over time," says a report from the Dublin City Council.
It gives two reasons: the opening of Luas Cross City and the deployment of new private bike rental systems without a station in the last year. "This is a worrying trend as employment levels rise in the city center as the economy continues to improve," the report says.
Several municipal councilors do not agree, however. DublinBikes is not growing because the council has stopped adding stations, they say.
"If someone lives in Santry, he will not join the DublinBikes program because he can not take advantage of it. The only way to increase the number of participants in this program is to increase the number of people who can access it, "said Fianna Fáil's advisor, Paul McAuliffe.
"The number of members increases when we increase the service," said Labor Councilor Andrew Montague.
"[W]When they expand into new areas, they will see subscription rates increase dramatically, "said People Before Profit advisor Tina MacVeigh.
If the DublinBikes subscriptions are blocked and the extension of its network also, will private non-mobile bike rental systems be established to serve areas that do not yet have a bike sharing service? Or are the two just going to fight for runners in the same popular areas?
What parts of the city?
There are currently 102 docking stations on the DublinBikes map indicating where to pick up the wheels in the city.
The council is setting up 15 additional stations in Grangegorman and adding additional capacity in other areas of the city. It is currently funded to the tune of 1.2 million euros by the National Transport Authority, said a spokesman for the council.
However, the map of bike stations still has some errors. To the south, the streets around Coombe, Dolphin's Barn and South Circular Road have no train stations.
Harold's Cross, Rathmines, Drimnagh and more to the south do not have them either. To the north, Cabra, Drumcondra and further north have no resorts.
"Every time I talk to the people of Rathmines and Harold's Cross, one of the first things people ask me is, 'Can we have more of these Dublin bikes?' Said Patrick Costello, Green Party advisor. "There is a huge demand accumulated for DublinBikes in general."
The "DublinBikes Strategic Planning Framework 2011-2016" has defined a five-year vision of several phases of expansion that would eventually extend the reach of DublinBikes to outdoor areas such as Sandymount, Whitehall and Harold's Cross.
"I would like to see the extension of the program, but there are significant costs involved," said Green Party Councilor Ciarán Cuffe, chair of the council's transportation committee.
"This requires central government funding and we are still in the third phase of a comprehensive DublinBikes expansion plan, so we are several years behind what we would like to be," said Cuffe. .
A council spokesperson echoed this. Any expansion beyond Grangegorman's additional stations "will likely depend on the identification of additional sustainable funding for the costs of investment and operation," they said.
It will also depend, he said, on a "strategic review of the impact of station-free bike rentals on the business and operational model of Just Eat dublinbikes," they said.
The next generation
DublinBikes has 66,739 long-term subscribers and 9,757 short-term subscribers, according to its own data.
Colm Ryder of the Dublin Cycling Campaign said he saw DublinBikes as an intensively used and successful program. "I think the number of people who have never used a bike and used a bike because of the bike system says so too."
The arrival of bikes without a station will also allow bike sharing to spread to other parts of the city, he said.
DublinBikes must be returned to designated DublinBikes car parks. Systems using stationless bikes are a little more flexible, allowing riders to park in front of the Sheffield stands across the city, the same metal tubes that all cyclists can lock their bike.
Two stationless bike operators have been licensed in Dublin to date. At present, one of them, BleeperBike, has 500 bikes without a station available for rent in the city.
Hugh Cooney, the CEO of BleeperBike, said the neighborhoods that use the most BleeperBike so far are Rathmines, Donnybrook and Ballsbridge. These areas are not currently served by DublinBikes. "Most trips arrive in the city center," he says.
On the north side, Phibsborough, Mountjoy Square, Stoneybatter and Cabra are also popular departure points for BleeperBike users, he said. (There were 13,000 rides in October, with an average cycle time of 16 minutes per carousel.)
However, not all areas out of reach of DublinBikes are covered by BleeperBike.
Some areas are shaded in red in the mobile application, indicating that users can not park or take their bikes there. The "green" areas are parts of the city where bicycles are available for rent.
It depends on where they were used. "The areas where bicycles were driving once a week were not in the green zone because it was a huge logistical cost for us to get bikes in these areas for one or two bikes here or there, where most of the bicycles were staying in the green zone, "said Cooney.
Some areas of the city are still not covered by these two systems. "The economic model is a weak margin, so we need to be in areas of intensive use," he said.
Stay affordable
The cost of the DublinBikes program remained low, subsidized by advertising and sponsorship.
An annual subscription to DublinBikes costs 25 €. After paying this, runners can use a bike for half an hour without any additional cost. the next half hour is € 0.50, and so on. DublinBikes says that 96% of its shopping is free.
The annual fee was last increased in February 2017 – and DublinBikes councilors' budget notes indicated that it was not expected to rise to € 30 within two years.
The additional DublinBike stations in Grangegorman should mean that cyclists will have no increase to pay for the moment, says a response from council officials in discussions around next year's budget.
But the sponsorship agreement with JustEat includes a clause stating that, if the number of members decreases, the amount that JustEat pays sponsorship to the board also decreases.
Council figures show that the council's expected rental income this year from this program is 1,740,000 euros, instead of 1,750,000 euros in its budget.
The figures do not show that it does not receive 400,000 euros of digital advertising. It should therefore show a loss of 162,000 euros this year.
The figures of the council show that the funding provided by JustEat for 2019 is 330,000 euros, against 360,000 euros. Rental income should increase from € 1,740,000 to € 1,850,000.
Private bike sharing systems are more expensive for users than DublinBikes.
Bleeperbike offers customers five levels of pricing. Currently, users who recharge 4 € in the app can enjoy walks lasting five hours. A daily pbad costs € 8. A monthly subscription is priced at 10 €. Three months, it is 20 € and an annual subscription is at the price of 75 €.
Cooney says that at the moment, the company is focusing on increasing the number of users of the service rather than on adding bikes this winter.
He says he'll be looking at advertising partnerships for the new year. However, Bleeperbike will have to obtain the approval of the Dublin City Council, whose statutes of December 2017 stipulated specific guidelines for the appropriate advertising partners. No advertising on alcohol, for example.
L & # 39; s future
Cooney says that he believes that bikes without a dock are the future of bike sharing in Dublin. "The infrastructure is much cheaper to build. You get the same service with a much smaller capital investment. "
The stationless bike rental systems rely on a bicycle parking provided by the council, which costs the council money. Systems must pay the board a fee per bike to cover these costs.
Cooney stated that his main costs were related to personnel, parts and maintenance of the bike, as well as the payment of licenses and insurance for the bike.
Although registrations on the DublinBikes program have slowed down, several advisers claimed that DublinBikes' demand for expansion remained in demand among their constituents, even with the introduction of dockless bikes.
"Stationed bikes offer reliability and predictability. Stationless people do not have that right now. They do not have the volume and do not have the reliability of the presence of a bike when you need it, "said McAuliffe of Fianna Fáil.
Regarding the future of DublinBikes, "At some point, to allow for continued expansion, we will need new investments," said Green Party's Costello.
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