The Velibs are coming?

Why would we want more cars in the city centre?

The rows of bikes really do add further lustre to Dublin’s gleam on a good day 🙂 A nice civic touch and those blue fenders look great.

@GrahamH wrote:

🙂

So here’s my multi-million dollar idea for a tiny feature that should have been employed on every bicycle. What’s the most annoying thing about taking out a db? (aside from cracking your fingers off trying to manipulate stubborn saddle adjustment levers). Well, trying to guage the correct saddle level for your height. Indeed this can take the best part of half a minute if you get it wrong once or twice, as is regularly the case, often all the while stressing over whizzing passing traffic and/or trying to hold the bicycle up straight in the cumbersome process.

The solution? A simple incising of the steel saddle pole (to use strict engineering parlance) with numbered notches, or alternatively (and probably more expensively) coloured rings, which would enable the user to instantly adjust the seat, to say, a ‘4’ or a green or blue level. The first option would surely cost extremely little, while making the user experience a lot more efficient.

You should suggest it to them. Given that they take a couple in every day to repair, they could add your suggested improvement to them while they maintain them. Over time all of the bikes would have the feature you propose.

these things seem to be victims of their success – critical mass appears to have been reached. I pass 3 of these stands on my walk to / from work depending on the route I take and i see the same thing every morning – empty stands and a queue of people staring into the distance for a blue bike. The opposite is seen in the evening with cyclists milling about waiting for a slot to become free – anxiously looking because their free 30 mins is coming to an end.

I’d imagine that DB are still taking subscriptions though……….

It has been a marvellous success on virtually every level, from operation, to maintenance, to design, to location choice. If there is one irritant, it is how the db user figures are now being thrown in with those who ‘cycle’ in Dublin, massively inflating the 2009/10 figures over previous years. Whereas this trend must be welcomed in terms of promoting a wider cycling culture, for the majority, hopping on a db to dawdle down Dame Street on a route they previous walked could well be termed laziness. In fact, it is. And it produces more carbon emissions.

@wearnicehats wrote:

these things seem to be victims of their success – critical mass appears to have been reached. I pass 3 of these stands on my walk to / from work depending on the route I take and i see the same thing every morning – empty stands and a queue of people staring into the distance for a blue bike. The opposite is seen in the evening with cyclists milling about waiting for a slot to become free – anxiously looking because their free 30 mins is coming to an end.

Yes this is by far the biggest problem with the operation of the system. The worst affected stations are commuter-related points and those in peripheral locations. The former are stations like Prince’s Street, where a single bus arriving on O’Connell Street has the potential to clear out the entire station (never mind 500), while the latter are stations like Mountjoy Square, Smithfield and Merrion Square East, which by their isolated nature experience excessive one-way traffic at peak periods.

It is interesting to note the same trends in operation at lunch hour. Every day, the Christchurch Place station empties of bicycles by 1.10pm and often remains empty until 1.50pm or so. By 2.15 it is often full. The destinations these bicycles are destined for in turn become clogged, namely the likes of Chatham Street, Molesworth Street and South Leinster Street, where people go for lunch.

Stations with a consistently excellent turnover of bicycles are those with a perfect equilibrium of supply and demand, such as Exchequer Street outside Fallon & Byrne, Jervis Street at Wolf Tone Park, Cathal Brugha Street, and St. Stephen’s Green with its high volume of varied traffic flows.

No question there rumpel. And the proposed expansion of the system seems rather half-hearted from what I’ve read. Indeed, extra points should have been installed at busy stations within months, if not weeks, of the success of the scheme being noted. We still have nothing in that regard. Pretty much half of Prince’s Street could be consumed with such a facility.

They should probably open new DB stations around Town to balance supply and demand. This way the people looking for bikes and those looking to drop them off would have more options. Now that the scheme is so successful, it should be relatively easy to arrange this expansion of the network.

The maps on each of the stations are also very useful, Too often Ireland seems determined to keep itself a secret from itself. With maps being provided at each of these stations, it will be easier for tourists to navigate our Fair City. That will improve their experience of Dublin.

@hutton wrote:

Oh you mean the blue fenders that they also tried to sell off as advertising space, but were unable to in the recession :rolleyes:

Seriously?? :confused:

http://allirelandtravel.blogspot.com/2009/07/company-seeks-to-raise-15m-in-bike.html

€1.5m….

It’s a pretty fluffy article, but the following will be in the June issue of Cheers Magazine, in the Tried and Tested column. Thought I’d preview it to Archiseekers 😉 Just don’t tell the editor.

Dublin might be one of the most pedestrian and cyclist friendly capitals in the world. There are no monumental avenues to cross as there are in Paris or New York. Motorists have mostly been beaten into submission by thousands upon thousands of jaywalkers unlike Rome, the vehicular homicide capital of Europe. The entire city centre slopes gently towards a thin river with a frankly excessive number of bridges. And if the main thoroughfares are packed too tightly with traffic and crowds, a pedestrianised side street is never far away. We actually have it so good that Dubliners have lost all sense of proportion when it comes to distance. It might be an arrow straight road from Cineworld on Parnell St down to Temple Bar but many’s the time that friends and I have ducked into TP Smyths on Jervis St because of “the distance” we would otherwise have to travel from the cinema to a decent pint.

Cheers secret headquarters, a hollowed-out volcano near St. Stephen’s Green, is inconveniently located for northsiders such as myself. Its location was especially inconvenient when I got off the DART at Tara St one evening in May to find an entire month of belated April showers bucketing down. With the usual half-hour walk from the Liffey completely out of the question, the solitary thought that ran through my mind as I pedalled soddenly along Dame St like a starfish on the run was, “thank God for Dublin Bikes.” I was still dripping dolefully when I arrived at the staff meeting, but at least my exposure to the Irish climate had only lasted for ten minutes and not thirty.

Dublin Bikes is a cycling scheme that was launched in September of last year to massive acclaim. The city resounds these days to a gentle trill from the bells of over four hundred rent-a-bikes provided by Dublin City Council and advertisers JC Decaux. From forty stations across the city centre, handsome blue-fendered bicycles are available to revolutionise the Dubliner’s relationship with his city’s streets.

I am a long-time pedestrian and now first-time urban cyclist. Living out on the city’s fringe, where the postcodes meet the county, cycling into town has never been a realistic option for me. My poor bike has been looking at me reproachfully for years now, all too aware of the big, cycle-tracked world that it has long been denied because of the bus stop right outside my front door. In any event, I came to the Dublin Bike scheme with no knowledge of transporting myself by wheel along hectic traffic arteries.

I still remember my first time and that youthful flush of nervous anticipation that I felt as I sidled up to the station beside the GPO. Perpetuating the usual gung-ho enthusiasm that I reserve for stupid notions that enter my head, I had paid the €10 fee for the annual Long Term hire card. I climbed onto a bike and wobbled embarrassingly too and fro until my feet had a grip of the pedals and I of long repressed memories of how to actually cycle. And then, with a beseeching prayer to the Creator, I swung out into traffic with the world, as a friend once unforgettably put it, as my lobster.

It was a revelation on that short initial trip up to the Bull & Castle by Christchurch (I didn’t cycle for my supper so much as for a session) and it remains so today. Dublin is a fantastic city for cycling. With a good pair of legs under you and the bike in the third of its three gears, you’ll find yourself moving at roughly the same speed as most motorised traffic as you curve around Parliament House on College Green and shoot down the middle of Westmoreland St, like an interplanetary space probe breaking orbit. No longer the drudge of the trudge from one end of the city centre to the other when you can freewheel down the long, southside hill from Camden St to the Liffey and then cycle up to the top of Capel St within ten to fifteen minutes. If DIT’s student body cops onto the benefits of these bikes for travelling from one faculty building to another, there’ll be none left for the rest of us. Dublin Bikes bring the points of an already compact city centre even closer together. What has been for decades referred to as “town” now truly feels like one.

I know I’m babbling but these bicycles are an absolute joy. In the week that I wrote this article, I found myself spending a pleasant afternoon criss-crossing the city centre on Dublin Bikes, conducting interviews. Build up speed on the little plateau in the Liberties from High Street to Christchurch and then down little Castle St and Dame Lane, avoiding as many traffic-strewn main roads as possible. A quick turn up South Great George’s St and then a left onto Wicklow St, where the cars were outnumbered by tourists. Then an intrusion onto Grafton St, the mecca of pedestrian Dublin, where my wheels and bell were not appreciated, and a right turn to Nassau St, where the buses could be outpaced and the smart cyclist raises his rear from the saddle, so as to avoid losing a filling from the full-body shocks and vibrations that the potholed surface throws up. And finally to the Georgian serenity of Merrion Square, where I could lazily pedal under the dappled leaves and almost forget that my journey had a destination.

If you haven’t tried Dublin Bikes, then I urge you to pony up the price of a small coffee and buy a three day ticket for €2. Experience the convenience of cycling around town in a bike that you can leave behind at the end of your travels. In the sun, it beats walking. In the rain, it replaces it.