Having learned from trials, council is now planning a long-term bike-share scheme for Fingal

Fianna Fáil Councillor Howard Mahony said he wasn’t happy as a presentation on one of Fingal’s bike-sharing schemes wrapped up.

He and the other councillors at the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart/Castleknock/Ongar Area Committee on 1 February, had listened to speaker Peadar Golden, manager of operations in Ireland for Tier Mobility, a provider of shared e-bikes and e-scooters.

But, while Golden showed that the council’s partnership with Tier has proven popular with cyclists in Fingal, the councillor said he was dissatisfied.

As mayor, he had overseen the launch of its pilot scheme back in June 2022, he said. “But even on that occasion I had fear. Some of my fears were realised.”

His main issue was with Tier’s e-bikes being parked illegally or dumped. Mahony said that while driving on the Carpenterstown Road, on three occasions over the course of the pilot, he has had to get out of his car to move these bikes off the road.

At the moment, e-bikes rented through the two bike-share schemes in Fingal can park up either at particular public stands or in designated virtual parking areas. Data from the Tier pilot, though, showed – at one point – that a fifth of cyclists were still leaving them in other places.

Solutions to dumped bikes that are being explored include greater penalties for poor parking and more available parking.

Sinéad Murphy, manager at the council’s Active Travel Unit, said they had been rolling over the pilot with Tier since it launched in summer 2022.

But now her unit is reviewing issues that Tier and councillors have spotted, and taking those into account as it tenders for a longer-term contract for e-bike-sharing in the county, she said.

They expect to put that tender out this spring, she said.

A trial run

In June 2022, Fingal County Council announced it was partnering with Tier for its first e-bike sharing pilot, which would see 100 Tier e-bikes in Blanchardstown, Swords, Malahide, Portmarnock and Howth – and, later, more bikes as it expanded to Balbriggan too.

In August 2022, the council also announced a second batch of e-bikes, in collaboration with the operator Bleeper and ESB.

Together, Tier and Bleeper counted 36,000 journeys in 2023 in Fingal, said Emma Court, the council’s walking and cycling officer, at the area committee on 1 February.

Within Fingal, Dublin 15 was where e-bikes were used the most, said Court. Golden, Tier’s manager, said Blanchardstown accounted for 30 percent of Tier journeys.

Tier has an active fleet of 260 e-bikes but vandalism has been an issue, Golden said, with about 100 vehicles damaged each month.

Last October was their worst month, he said. “Twenty-eight vehicles were either put on fire, or stolen or thrown into water, which actually means we need to decommission vehicles.”

Tier responded by introducing “no-go” zones where the bikes stop working, he said.

“When they go into these areas, the actual speed is reduced to 3 kph.”

Ramping up fines

Most of the discussion at the meeting though wasn’t about vandalism but about responsible parking.

There are designated public bike racks where cyclists are supposed to park Tier’s e-bikes. And, some virtual parking bays, which are painted spots on the ground in areas where bike use is high and parked-time is short, a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.

To deter users from abandoning or illegally parking their bikes, Tier launched a service charging a penalty for users who parked outside a designated area, said Golden at the area committee.

The user is charged €2 extra, known as a convenience fee. But this scheme wasn’t successful, Golden said.

Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly said that she had received a large number of complaints from people in Dublin 15 while the convenience fee was in place.

“The increase in poorly parked bikes coincided with Tier’s introduction of the convenience fee,” she said.

Donnelly said later that she had written to the council and was told that badly parked bikes in Dublin 15 had risen from 5 percent when the service launched in June 2022 to over 30 percent the following summer.

Golden told the area committee that the convenience fee was in place from June to September 2023 and 23 percent of trips during that time ended outside the mandatory parking zones.

“But once we switched off that service, it enabled us to understand where the parking infrastructure was required,” he said.

Vehicles not parked within a mandatory parking area were on average 65 metres away from a designated zone, he said. This stresses the need for parking density to improve, he said.

Donnelly said that when the convenience fee test was over, Fingal County Council asked Tier to replace this with a more substantial abandonment fee.

Tier can charge a €20 fine for irresponsible vehicle parking, says the council’s website.

Donnelly asked Golden at the area committee how many abandonment fees had been imposed.

George Chamberlain, Tier’s senior corporate communications manager, said on Tuesday evening that Tier have, to date, fined 80 users who have abandoned their bikes outside of business areas.

“Users who abandon a vehicle outside of a parking bay are charged for 60 minutes of additional journey time,” he said.

Also, since moving to the abandonment fee in September, parking compliance has been 95 percent, said Chamberlain.

Reviewing virtual bays

More than 90 percent of their parking spots are Sheffield stands and their bikes can lock to them, Golden told the committee. If this isn’t done, the user can’t end the trip, said Golden.

The other 10 percent of their parking spots are virtual parking bays. Whether or not to continue to roll out these given the ease and low cost at which they can be created, and the stated need for more parking density, is one discussion point.

At the meeting, Green Party Councillor Pamela Conroy asked Golden if Tier would consider alternatives to these virtual parking bays.

One of her constituents, who is legally blind, had tripped over a bike in a virtual parking bay, she said.

She has talked to the council’s active travel team about some kind of different surfacing around the bays, she said. “So that somebody who’s blind can actually sense that there is something there to be avoided.”

Golden said virtual parking bays had been used in schemes across Ireland and more widely in Europe, but he agreed to discuss with the council’s active travel unit how they might be improved.

Chamberlain of Tier, said on Tuesday, just nine of the parking bays in the Dublin 15 area virtual.

Sheffield stands are supplemented by virtual bays for a number of reasons, Chamberlain says. “They can be implemented and moved quickly, easily and cheaply as they do not require physical infrastructure to be installed.”

They also allow a degree of flexibility in the scheme to meet the needs of users in Fingal, he says.

A spokesperson for the council said on Tuesday evening that virtual bays can significantly increase parking density. “The current design was done as a pilot and is currently being reviewed.”

Murphy, the manager of the council’s active travel unit, said that as they draw up the tender for a longer-term e-bike scheme, they’ll take into account what they have learnt.

“To ensure that we get what we want for the citizens in the county and continue to give them mobility as a service,” she said.

Many of the issues raised by the councillors will be addressed in the coming contract, Murphy said. “But we will maintain some elements of flexibility in the contract also that we can adjust as and when needed.”

The council spokesperson  said they envisage that the successful operator will be in situ at the start of the second quarter of this year.