On May 2018, BleeperBike was one of the operators to be granted a license to operate a low-cost bike hire scheme under the regulations of Dublin City Council’s Stationless Bike Hire Scheme. These regulations cover the administrative area of Dublin City Council. Within the regulations, a certain number of bikes must be available for citizens within this area in order to manage the balance of supply and demand.

As part of the agreement for the license, the stationless bike provider is requested to share cycling data with Dublin City Council. This is a key element in engaging with the city council by bringing in a transparency layer to the cycling behaviour and patterns within the city. With the cycling data that BleeperBike makes available, the personality of the cycling profile of the city can be analysed and visually mapped in order to identify areas with high cycle data that is not captured as part of our yearly count.

BleeperBike also operate this bike sharing scheme in the other neighbouring local authorities providing a flexible cycling option to the Greater Dublin Area.

Usage to date

BleeperBike currently holds 450 permits to operate on-street bike hire within the administrative area of Dublin City Council, the scheme has been operating for 5 months. As can be seen in the graph below, during the 3-week period 22 Oct to 11 Nov, there were 400 bikes available for hire (50 bikes in for repairs/maintenances). The red lines represent the numbers of daily rides and the yellow line represents the actual bikes used each day. After just 5 months in operation the bikes are getting over 2 rides per day on a typical weekday.

Operating area

BleeperBike has recently introduced a green zone policy, where cyclists are encouraged to finish their journeys and during October there were approximately 13,000 trips inside the green zone. The green zone covers 67.7km2 of Dublin, this compares favourably to the operating area covered by Just Eat dublinbikes which is the City’s fixed-station bike share scheme. BleeperBike operates as a complementary service to the existing fixed-station scheme whose stations are mainly centred around the city centre.

With BleeperBike sharing data with the city council and using data analytics techniques and data visualisation tools, patterns of cycling can be presented and investigated to provide quantifiable analysis. It can show an insight into cycling trends and the influence cycling infrastructure has on such trends. Using the cycling data, a ‘carbon saving’ element can be quantified and the presentation of this data by visual means can be used to promote and encourage this ‘carbon saving’ sustainable means of transportation and mobility.

Authors: Hugh Cooney, CEO BleeperBike / Maggie O’Donnell, Dublin City Council

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