This evening.
Dr Gonzo writes:
What’s the point of the Bikes scheme as a realistic travel option if around Pearse Street the collections are woefully inadequate from 4pm on? Closest station with spaces was Talbot Street which meant missing train….
Anyone?
Sponsored Link
Maybe I’m wrong but are they more for casual use rather than commuting?
you could say the same thing about Irish Rail this morning… am I right?!
If they were designed for casual use then that would be a huge waste of taxpayer’s money. What they need to do is a little bit of load balancing before each of the busiest periods of the day.
They do this. It’s undone in about 10 minutes of rush hour.
They may as well just let 20 people jump into the back rather than waste time carrying bikes if thats they way people are going to use them.
Taxpayers money? I thought they were mostly funded through sponsorship (JCDecaux and Coke)
And even if they weren’t, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re designed for casual use or commuter use; at the level of use they get they’re not a waste of money either way.
In a sense they are funded by the people of Dublin as JCDecaux got a ton of free advertising space around the city in return for the bike scheme. The ratebook value of this advertising was far in excess of the cost of the scheme.
Still taking that side I see.
Simply, I disagree strongly :)
Ah Jaysus, lets not start this again Clampers :)
So JCDecaux are pumping money at a loss just to provide us with ‘free’ bikes? That was nice of them!
@ Eliot Rosewater
Not really.
JCDecaux are getting people to pay a yearly subscription to ride around town advertising Coca Cola on their behalf.
Have you been paying attention at all?
@my left testicle (that sounds all wrong),
I was agreeing with Munkifish. We gave JCDecaux a fair whack of free advertising around Dublin in exchange for providing the bikes. JCDecaux wouldn’t be doing the whole bike thing if they weren’t making shedloads more from the advertising. Which we gave away.
Something something irony something paying attention.
Small point; I think they are funded not by taxpayers but by JCDecaux, who in exchange for providing the service were allowed to put up lots of new advertising display units, e.g. on Henry St.
Supply & Demand shocker!
They should make them wear helmets, amount of idiots on those things flying around in the morning is terrifying. Also a short “how to cycle like a normal person you fool” course should be obligatory before youre allowed rent one.
That’s harsh. Bad hair day?
Can you explain how making them wear helmets will magically make them “cycle like a normal person”?
Why do the anti-cyclist brigade have such a hard-on about helmets? They make precisely zero difference to how anyone cycles, before we even go into the negligible additional safety element.
Make helmets compulsory = Dublin bikes scheme (and cycling in general) dies overnight. Simple as that.
I say this as a helmet wearing cyclist btw.
It wont make them cycle like a normal person, but it will make less of them die.
Are you just trolling or is your tinfoil helmet on too tight?
How many Dublin Bikes cyclists have died so far?
One but I think there were other factors at play.
None I’d guess. They don’t exactly build up great speed.
I dont have any information on that but I would guess around 500 billion
How many of ‘Them’ have died so far?
Has there even been one DB-related fatality?
What difference does wearing a helmet make to those idiots flying around in the morning? How will that make them cycle more considerately?
I understand your point about people on Dublin bikes, but why frame it in terms of their lack of a helmet? If you can’t stay on the point of your topic have you considered that maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about? Something that’s further confirmed by the personal attack in your reply.
What is wrong with you? He clearly made two separate points – one about wearing helmets and one about general cycling behaviour!? He said ‘ALSO’. Clearly he’s not implying one equals the other, and you’ve had ample time to figure that out but haven’t… Stop getting angry and so bloody self-righteous and use a fuppin brain cell before arguing with someone
Me thinks you don’t understand what the ‘tinfoil hat’ characterisation means.
+1
Melbourne have compulsory helmet wearing and yet their bike schemes seem pretty successful
+KnifeySpoony
Do they? I was under the impression that when they & New Zealand brought it in, cycling numbers fell dramatically?
I lived in Melbourne and can tell you that “pretty successful” comment is absolute rubbish. The Melbourne system has very little use and from everything I saw, would have to be considered a complete failure in comparison to Dublin.
Normal people don’t carry around bicycle helmets with them on the off-chance they decide to rent a bike. Melbourne looked in to loaning people helmets to try and improve the system’s popularity – unsurprisingly “shared helmets” didn’t do much to generate enthusiasm from the public.
Melbourne has a nice climate and a flat relief, but their general cycling levels are really not what you’d expect. I can only assume the helmet law is largely to blame, it’s quite vigorously enforced by the police.
Too true. Some are real idiots. I wonder who you make a claim against when theres an accident.
There’s a stop on townsend street, nassau street and lime street….maybe more. that;s off the top of my head
“Closest station with spaces …”
What kind of input are you looking for here? Are you telling Dublin Bikes via Broadsheet that they should be rotating the bikes more often? Maybe try getting in contact with Dublin Bikes or looking for alternative transport.
I think they do a pretty good job of rotating them, under the circumstances.
I disagree. 2 years living in city centre and cycling all over. The Thomas st bridgefoot st, Francis st, cornmarket, Christchurch, rcs, national concert hall, Stephens green stations always either full or empty. Especially after 8pm. What’s the point in it going until 12:30 if all the city centre stations are empty in the evening?
I would presuuuummmmeeee someone named “Doctor” Gonzo could afford a taxi across town.
Better yet I’m sure there’s plenty of trolleys he could borrow from the hospital for a spin, wha?.
In fairness though, if it becomes a situation that you might miss your train because you don’t know if you’ll be able to return the bike when you arrive then it makes them pretty pointless.
My comment was to be read in a Homer Simpson voice. Apologies, Mr Kyle, if that was not clear, for I am one of your biggest fans.
[Not to be read in a Homer Simpson voice.]
Oops. I’ll get my coat.
at other stations there’s no bikes at all — for awhile they started removing bikes at 9am and 5pm in Portobello, evidently just to fupp with us.
That’s just the way it works. There’s no bikes outside Heuston station after a certain time because everybody takes them into town with them. Similarly, all of the Smithfield stations are full after 5pm because people cycle up as far as they can get towards home and drop the bikes off.
There’s not much DB can do, other than add more spaces and more bikes to each station (or the busier ones anyway), and they’re in the process of doing that.
That’s not how it works. There is a team of guys who go around the city redistributing the bikes. They are probably stretched thinner now that the new stations have been put in. I would make a complaint to DB about it (remember it’s not a free scheme, we paid for it in advertising) and get them to put on more vans to deal with the problem.
We also actually pay for it. I know it’s feck all but we do pay €20 a year minimum.
Fair point (and of course that’s the min sub, you could potentially spend more depending on how long you have the bike)
Maybe you could buy your own bike.
They would only be pinched by Decaux sponsored thieves.
Rebalancing is the most expensive part of the operation, I’d imagine — lots of labour costs with staff driving around. Easier to cut costs by not bothering.
“Easier to cut costs by not bothering.”
And that concludes our summation of Irish Economics 101.
On your way our, please collect your diploma scrolls
It’s Ireland. Get used to it. You should be by now.
That’s the spirit!
This is becoming more and more common. Countless occasions in last month, I’ve used a DB to save 10 minutes when I’m running late – then spend 20 minutes waiting/looking for a free space to deposit the fecking thing. On one occasion, brought it back to where I picked it up. Utter waste of time.
Just an idea, assuming you have a smartphone with data access: before taking the bike out check the stations at the start and end of the trip on the app. Doing this saves me from the hassle of station capacity issues.
Don’t talk to me about ‘station capacity issues’…
It used to keep me awake at night, until I saw the light.
I simply paid €459 for a smartphone, downloaded the app., and now I know when I can’t use the service I already paid for.
It’s great.
You do realize that for 459 yoyos you can buy a very decent bike, right?
If you hold down CTRL and ALT and press ‘4’ you’ll get a Euro symbol.
Yoyos are not a stable currency.
Sorry, that was a Windows-specific solution
But you sound like a Mac user.
I’m not sure how it works in Appleland. I presume that you pay a yearly-subscription for an App that can produce a Euro symbol, or something.
You can convert dollarS and poundS to yoyoS. Can’t do that with your beloved €, can you?
By the way, Linux.
No!
Not this again…
Linux is my Kryptonite.
-You have bamboozled me
I admit defeat.
Nothing can beat the smugness of a Linux user.
You win, by default.
Smug because of one’s choice of OS? Dude, you have issues. Has anyone been mean to you?
Step One; Install Linux
Step Two; Lose your sense of humour, if you ever had one.
Step Three; Be smug.
Step four; Ker-ching!!!
Ah FFS, you have given out about Linux, the app, the bikes, the smartphone, my smugness, the stability of the yoyo and my perceived lack of sense of humour. You are starting to sound like my wife – she isn’t very good at making laugh either…. Wait, honey, is that you?
:D
you’re married to your left testicle?
Because the apps don’t have up to the minute information (not accurate, anyway).
Exactly.
Whining plebes whining
Hopefully someone who works for Dublin Bikes will read your query on Broadsheet and make some changes to their operation so that you can get your train.
Commuters ruin the dublin bikes scheme.
Why not just leave the bike propped up against the machine? I’ve done it many a time, never failed to be returned. Costs the same.
@Dr Gonzo – it’s called the Bikes to Work scheme. Get one. A Brompton might suit you. Oh. Right. You need to be in paid employment.
SAM
“One-way charges on rental cars are insane. I think if everybody drove one way, it’d all work out in the wash. What do you think?”
WILL
“I think every rental car in America would be at the Grand Canyon and the Tropicana”.
– The West Wing
Oh, well if it was on ‘The West Wing’ we should pay attention, obviously.
All we need now is a Grand Canyon and/or Tropicana.
Thank you for your input.
Like quoting the West Wing is departing wisdom. You probably work in a suit.
They’re not for commuting. Simple. Not a waste of taxpayer money either as coke pays for ’em!
Suck it up soldier.
Get.
Over.
Yourself.
This is a serious issue, folks. The DB scheme is now clearly a victim of its own success. It’s expensive to move the bikes from the full stations to the empty ones, but that’s the price of a successful system.
Despite the recent “expansion”, announced with great fanfare, there are no new stations in places people would find them useful as an alternative to joining the traffic, like Ranelagh, Sandymount, Donnybrook, Clonskeagh, Rathmines, Harold’s Cross, Cabra, Fairview, Clontarf. None at UCD, DCU, or even at TCD.
This looks to me like they are deliberately crippling the system rather than respond to demand.
Why? Just money? They are making more than €1 a week from clamping alone, so that would be a particularly annoying logic…but I suspect that is the reason.
There are two bike stands right next to Trinity. The one in the bloody picture for this article is next to Trinity.
Personally, I find it amusing that JCDecaux managed to persuade the very demographic that would normally be reticent towards advertising sugar-fuelled and tooth-rotting drinks to ride around town promoting Coca-Cola.
Whoever came up with the idea doesn’t just deserve a promotion and a payrise.
He/she deserves a medal.
Pure genius.
Totally. There really is a whole generation of new idiots born every minute.
Pretty sure the Coke ones have nothing to do with JCDecaux and are all DCC, hence the advertising by Coke.
I love it. All the fools paying to advertising Coke.
People need to get that it is a bike sharing scheme. That means that sometimes there won’t be a bike when you want one and sometimes stations will be full because other people use the service! The company do make an effort to rebalance stations but if you want a bike to be always available for your own use buy one (and a lock).
People need to get it that there are guys whos job it is to redistribute the bikes and technology to see how bikes are distributed around stations.
That means that sometimes there won’t be a bike when you want one and sometimes stations will be full because other people use the service!
And that’s why I would NEVER consider using this ‘service’, in a nutshell.
I cannot for the life of me fathom how or why people defend or promote this crap.
Be a walker, not a w****r.
You don’t look ‘cool’ on one of these bikes. You look like a gobshiote.
Neither should you go to restaurants, cinemas, sport events and anything else that has a limited number of tickets/seats/bikes.
You go to those things without booking??
Cmere t’me Left Testicle, is it possible to be a w**** and a walker?
And cmere too, didn’t you mention on some other recent incoherent ramble that you were going to do a Houdini on us and disappear, never to return again?
Forever and ever is not two days dude. Did you know, it’s like only 48 hours.. Ya fooping eegit.
Administrators,
Yiz missed Left Testicle’s W****r above.
In the interests of fairness, I think you need to give his one some asterisks too. Thanking you.
Trick is to get the dublin bikes app and make sure there’s spaces at your destination before you take your bike. Or a good few spaces if you’re travelling to a stop some distance away.
It’s a great service, but it would be unrealistic to expect stations everywhere immediately. There was an article some time ago about the council’s intentions to expand the service also, from DCU to UCD and Inchicore to the west (see here http://www.irishtimes.com/news/dublin-bike-scheme-set-for-tenfold-expansion-1.675533).
There will always be an issue with stations around transport hubs (the stop at the science gallery for example) as they will be full by 5.30 as people cycle to the dart station, and empty by 8.45 as everyone takes one to get across town to work. Expansion should include an expansion of the capacity of the stations, in addition to adding more stations. (To note Pearse Street stop has 30 spaces, Heuston Station has 145 between 4 stations within 1 minute walk.
All you bicycle riders, let it be known that I’m not taking a pop at you.
I love you all, and I hate car drivers.
I just have an aversion towards being exploited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oUxPWnrXNk
There’s also always a queue at Charlemont in the morning. I’ve been held there for upwards of twenty minutes on occasions. Not really dependable.
Boo hoo…Cop on to yourself.
You aren’t ‘availing of a service’, you are the conduit of a product that someone sells to someone else who thinks it’s worth the price they pay.
Put up, shut up or stop.
Never for a moment think that you matter, or that they care.
You don’t.
They don’t.
That is definitely the spirit.
You should all listen to the airplane Wi-Fi sketch by Louis C.K. you bunch of entitled little first world whiney brats.