Velib like bicycle rental kiosks are being constructed in Dublin

Chips Lovell

Raam wrote: »

If the baskets are full of booze, where will we put the cigars?

Simple, smoke them on the way up.

Lumen

el tonto wrote: »

We could bring flagons in the baskets.

Raam wrote: »

If the baskets are full of booze, where will we put the cigars?

That's right, taunt the recovering smoker.

lukester

Anyone else tried sprinting out of the saddle on one of these?

They don't lend themselves very well to it. Best suited to the hasty matron style of cycling. I think a handbag in the front basket improves the drag co-efficient considerably to boot.

tomasrojo

Steering's very twitchy, so no sudden lateral movements is a good idea. Also have to remember not to try to lean the top tube against my leg at the lights.

BeerNut

tomasrojo wrote: »

Also have to remember not to try to lean the top tube against my leg at the lights.

This one gets me every time.

Chips Lovell

Yes, they're not really built for out of the saddle stuff. Every time I try it I end up regretting it.

godihatethehils

right who's for a velib boards 12 pubs of christmas pub crawl then??? :D:D

Lumen

godihatethehils wrote: »

right who's for a velib boards 12 pubs of christmas pub crawl then??? :D:D

It's still October! Ban her!

godihatethehils

godihatethehils wrote: »

right who's for a velib boards 12 pubs of christmas halloween pub crawl then??? :D:D

happy??

Chips Lovell

Given the amount of bike crashing that happened at the last Christmas party...

DirkVoodoo

el tonto wrote: »

Given the amount of bike crashing that happened at the last Christmas party...

That was one person, who's accident rate appears to be independent of alcohol consumption.

I would like to try the Velib out. I wonder would they mind if you swapped out the pedals?

Raam

I think beers should happen.

Chips Lovell

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

I would like to try the Velib out. I wonder would they mind if you swapped out the pedals?

Must look the next time I hire one.

Just wait until someone invents a garmin mount for one.

godihatethehils

Raam wrote: »

I think beers should happen.

you twisted my arm. i agree

@dirk, if you want help with the pedals shout, i'm very good at that sort of thing :rolleyes:

tomasrojo

Anyone post this already?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1105/1224258098806.html

Quite good article; very positive about the scheme:

Even so, it would be churlish to acknowledge that the use of the city’s waterways as a final destination for the bikes has been a whopping 100 per cent lower than I predicted. I doff my hat to all concerned.

TM

I presume he meant "it would be churlish NOT to acknowledge ..."?

His extremely strained "NoGo" joke about the Collins Barracks area is pretty pathetic too... :rolleyes:

Beasty

Some commentry on the Paris scheme in today's Irish Times. Interesting points to note:
18,000 bikes damaged and 8,000 stolen since the introduction of the scheme in 2007
The scheme now has 21,500 bikes (up from 10,000 when first introduced)
Anyone using the scheme is henceforth known as a "vélibeur"
"There’s even a dating service, vélibataire, (a contraction of vélib and célibataire – the French for “single”) that offers strangers a chance to meet for a cycle at any of 1,450 stations across the city"

Maybe we will see some of these "developments" in Dublin:)

undo

Beasty wrote: »

18,000 bikes damaged
[...]
Maybe we will see some of these "developments" in Dublin:)

I certainly have seen my fair share of damaged bikes. Mostly not due to vandalism but normal wear and tear. Wobbly steering, gear shift stuck in gear 1, bent shopping basket, missing lock... I tend to report them via the db site if I remember the bike number. No idea whether they read those reports and fix the bikes... but I figure it's my duty .

monument

undo wrote: »

I certainly have seen my fair share of damaged bikes. Mostly not due to vandalism but normal wear and tear. Wobbly steering, gear shift stuck in gear 1, bent shopping basket, missing lock... I tend to report them via the db site if I remember the bike number. No idea whether they read those reports and fix the bikes... but I figure it's my duty .

Turn the seat backwards -- it's a sign of a broken bike that staff and users should get used to. It's used in Paris and looks like it's started to be done here too.

undo

monument wrote: »

Turn the seat backwards -- it's a sign of a broken bike that staff and users should get used to. It's used in Paris and looks like it's started to be done here too.

Great idea. I will start using that. Thanks.

alfalad

monument wrote: »

Turn the seat backwards -- it's a sign of a broken bike that staff and users should get used to. It's used in Paris and looks like it's started to be done here too.

thats what i do!

Ekaterina

Hi Elaine,

would you be able to post some update on the db usage statistics? How many subscribed up to now? How many rides per day on average for now? How many rides in different months so far, so that the growth in rides per months could be compared to growth in number of subscribers?

How many rides are made daily for just under 10-15mins, how many for 15-30mins? and how many for longer?

Would appreciate the help!

Thanks,
Ekaterina

bkbk

Hm, very suspicious, new poster, first 4 posts all in just 10 minutes in different threads about dublinbikes and asking strange questions. I suspect a reporter trying to dig for dirt.

---

Formerly bk, haven't gotten my account back since the hack :-(

BostonB

Might be college student either...

ROK ON

Who is Elaine?

BeerNut

ROK ON wrote: »

Who is Elaine?

Corpo cycling rep, it says here.

SubLuminal

is there to be a Velib meetup then? Sounds like fun, I'm up for it!! Especially if a sensible beer or two is involved..

Ekaterina

bkbk wrote: »

Hm, very suspicious, new poster, first 4 posts all in just 10 minutes in different threads about dublinbikes and asking strange questions. I suspect a reporter trying to dig for dirt.

---

Formerly bk, haven't gotten my account back since the hack :-(

Hey, bkbk, as BostonB rightly guessed I am a DCU student researching dublin bikes for one of my college projects. The statistics that is available at dublinbikes.ie is from 26th of Jan and not as detailed as I would prefer it to be to actually be more suitable for my project. I did not want to say that all my research is for a college project until asked as on the other threads I tried to get an unbiased opinion that would be without people trying to help me unconsciously...

monument

Ekaterina wrote: »

Hey, bkbk, as BostonB rightly guessed I am a DCU student researching dublin bikes for one of my college projects. The statistics that is available at dublinbikes.ie is from 26th of Jan and not as detailed as I would prefer it to be to actually be more suitable for my project. I did not want to say that all my research is for a college project until asked as on the other threads I tried to get an unbiased opinion that would be without people trying to help me unconsciously...

That's not an approach that is welcomed here or on most online communities. Be upfront about things and people are more likely to help you.

Ekaterina

monument wrote: »

That's not an approach that is welcomed here or on most online communities. Be upfront about things and people are more likely to help you.

Hey, monument, thank you for the advice! As you can see from my posting history, I am very new here. It is my boyfriend, whom I always see on boards.ie cycling forums while myself just never really used it before. So apologies for the wrong approach taken, will try to be better in future

So, what my project is all about:

It is a team DCU project for the module "New Enterprise Development" where we were given a task to develop a business idea and conduct a market research on it to check its viability. The business idea is NOT intended to be implemented in practice ans is for study purposes only.

My team's idea was to supply rental helmets at dublin bikes stations. To sort out the hygiene issue we thought of one-way (can be recyclable) helmet inlayers that would be provided for free, plus free sanitiser liquid.

We even created an online survey for db users, but never got a chance to get a right place to post a link to it (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C67CKXH). And we were surveying face-to-face at db stations recently as well. We found out so far that some db user would welcome the helmets and would even be willing to pay a small additional fee for this service while others would only use the helmets if they were free of service charge and only would cost "less than the bikes per year" and the third group of db users would not really use them at all.

All statistics I was asking for is to be able to make a theoretical revenue projection in the report on this college project which is due within 2 weeks now.

If any of db users would find 5 mins to complete our survey - it would be a great help as well as if some more detailed opinions on this purely theoretical business idea could be posted on this forum, which would make it almost like a focus group that we had to conduct for the project as well.

So may thanks to everyone for help and sorry for the wrong initial approach again!

SubLuminal

hey

hate to piss on your parade but the rental helmets idea is fundementally flawed -

if a helmet gets banged once - dropped, knocked, smacked off something, etc etc - thats it - it is dead. They're designed to protect your head for one impact - the outer shell deforms into the inner foam / padding which condenses and absorbs the impact..

So with a rental helmet, there'd be no way to discern if your helmet was knackerd and likely to provide less protection than a watermelon shell, or pristine and good to go..

You can't rent out helmets to people that might offer no protection/be damaged. Morally its corrupt and legally i'm pretty sure it'd leave you wide open to all sorts of bad things..

bkbk

Ekaterina wrote: »

Hey, bkbk, as BostonB rightly guessed I am a DCU student researching dublin bikes for one of my college projects. The statistics that is available at dublinbikes.ie is from 26th of Jan and not as detailed as I would prefer it to be to actually be more suitable for my project. I did not want to say that all my research is for a college project until asked as on the other threads I tried to get an unbiased opinion that would be without people trying to help me unconsciously...

Then I apologise for accusing you of being a journalist! :P

Lots of students come to boards for help with their research and that is cool. But it is better to say so up front.

Ekaterina

bkbk wrote: »

Then I apologise for accusing you of being a journalist! :P

Lots of students come to boards for help with their research and that is cool. But it is better to say so up front.

Hey bkbk,

I will the next time, just as you noticed very new here, don't know how the things work yet really... asking my boyfriend every 2nd time how do I post this, etc...

tomasrojo

Also helmets need to be fitted. An ill-fitting helmet is no use, and that is accepted by people either side of the helmet debate. So you'd have to sort that out.

And hygiene goes beyond germs or lice. Your plan of spraying helmets means that you'd be wearing a helmet perfumed with alcohol and the sebaceous emissions of up to several hundred previous users, even with disposable liners. And disposable liners add to the day-to-day cost of the bike-share scheme anyway.

Not trying to be negative, but no bicycle share scheme anywhere has helmets included, except for a rather poor attempt in New Zealand (where helmets are mandatory, unlike here), where helmets are locked to the bikes.



No attempt to assure good fit, or hygiene. I would say it's pure tokenism, but of course it's required under the terms of the mandatory helmet law. People tend to put them in the basket and not wear them. And who can blame them.

http://aucklandcyclechic.blogspot.com/2010/01/auckland-bike-share.html

SubLuminal

when I was studying for my motorbike license, my instructor told us "never ever lock your helmet to your bike - chances are, some f**khed like me will come along, and piss in it."

Now fair enough, this guy was a looper. I feel he taught us well, so - but his point remains. One kick, and your helmet is knackered.

One hit one use.

just sayin'.

sexpot

Ekaterina, I tried to do your survey there but it would not let me input it as it wouldn't accept the answer for the the last question. Also, the survey is badly laid out and worded in some sections, might want to sort that out before asking people to do it.

Ekaterina

sexpot wrote: »

Ekaterina, I tried to do your survey there but it would not let me input it as it wouldn't accept the answer for the the last question. Also, the survey is badly laid out and worded in some sections, might want to sort that out before asking people to do it.

Thanks for the advice! I think I fixed the last question now... It did not recognise numbers smaller than 1 as "positive numbers" so I removed the requirement for the answer to be "a positive number". And as for wording - I am a non-native speaker of English and it is not even my 1st foreign language... And the 3 other members of the team for this project who are all native English speakers said that "it was fine" and never bothered correcting it... What can I do...

Ekaterina

tomasrojo wrote: »

Also helmets need to be fitted. An ill-fitting helmet is no use, and that is accepted by people either side of the helmet debate. So you'd have to sort that out.

And hygiene goes beyond germs or lice. Your plan of spraying helmets means that you'd be wearing a helmet perfumed with alcohol and the sebaceous emissions of up to several hundred previous users, even with disposable liners. And disposable liners add to the day-to-day cost of the bike-share scheme anyway.

Not trying to be negative, but no bicycle share scheme anywhere has helmets included, except for a rather poor attempt in New Zealand (where helmets are mandatory, unlike here), where helmets are locked to the bikes.



No attempt to assure good fit, or hygiene. I would say it's pure tokenism, but of course it's required under the terms of the mandatory helmet law. People tend to put them in the basket and not wear them. And who can blame them.

http://aucklandcyclechic.blogspot.com/2010/01/auckland-bike-share.html

It is a very interesting article - thanks for the link, tomasrojo!

Ekaterina

SubLuminal wrote: »

when I was studying for my motorbike license, my instructor told us "never ever lock your helmet to your bike - chances are, some f**khed like me will come along, and piss in it."

Now fair enough, this guy was a looper. I feel he taught us well, so - but his point remains. One kick, and your helmet is knackered.

One hit one use.

just sayin'.

Let all this be the problem of the hypothetical business of mine. Assume I could handle it.

It is an absolutely theoretical project based on some assumptions. We assume that there are rental helmets at db stations (run by a private business, not DCC, but in cooperation with DCC and at their permission - yet another assumption). We further assume that one-way inlayers/hairnets or alike can ensure satisfactory level of hygiene & that the helmets are being checked on a daily bases & damaged ones are being replaced.
In this theoretical hypothetical situation the question of my project is: does the business run bankrupt as none uses the helmets really or does it remain viable and, if so, under which payment structure does it have a chance to remain viable:
only yearly charge & then free use;
yearly charge & than very small fees for each time used;
yearly charge & than a free limited time period after which charged hourly like the bikes them selves.
And how high/low do all the above fees can be to not put people off using the service (those people who hypotetically see rental helmets as a good idea and believe that they could protect them in a fall and even in a collision maybe - it does not really matter if helmets really can or cannot protect, it matters if there are people who believe that they can - and our survey shows that just under 85% believe that helmets enhance their protection in a collision, against 8% of those who believe helmets cannot provide any protection in a collision & 8% that are in between).
It is all out of business point of view. Not out of safety enhancement or cycling promoting point of view. You all know how business actually works - business abuses peoples ability to believe what they are told in the advertising (where we are told stuff that is only partly true or even just about not exactly a lie).... I am very sorry to be in a Business Studies at DCU, but cannot change it really - it is my final year...

droidus

Ekaterina wrote: »

And how high/low do all the above fees can be to not put people off using the service (those people who hypotetically see rental helmets as a good idea and believe that they could protect them in a fall and even in a collision maybe - it does not really matter if helmets really can or cannot protect, it matters if there are people who believe that they can - and our survey shows that just under 85% believe that helmets enhance their protection in a collision, against 8% of those who believe helmets cannot provide any protection in a collision & 8% that are in between).
It is all out of business point of view. Not out of safety enhancement or cycling promoting point of view. You all know how business actually works - business abuses peoples ability to believe what they are told in the advertising (where we are told stuff that is only partly true or even just about not exactly a lie).... I am very sorry to be in a Business Studies at DCU, but cannot change it really - it is my final year...

So you want to sell to people the feeling that they are safer, whilst simultaneously making them less safe by offering them ill-fitting and possibly damaged helmets??

This is a deeply cynical approach, but apart from that, I reckon the business will last only until someone falls off their bike and then sues the **** out of you when they suffer head injuries.

BostonB

I've seen a few people with helmets and hi viz jacks on the Dublin Bikes. Which means they go out with them planning to get a bike. It must be part of their daily commute. However you can't always preplan when you are going to grab a bike. I think its fine that people are allowed to make their own choices, re helmets.

Ekaterina

droidus wrote: »

So you want to sell to people the feeling that they are safer, whilst simultaneously making them less safe by offering them ill-fitting and possibly damaged helmets??

This is a deeply cynical approach, but apart from that, I reckon the business will last only until someone falls off their bike and then sues the **** out of you when they suffer head injuries.

Well, business is cynical by definition. Watch couple of Jamie Oliver's shows of what are we being fed to find out how are we killing ourselves by only refusing to cook at home and eating the junk we are offered by food businesses all around instead.

And I do not know why "ill-fitting and possibly damaged" (which should not be on purpose or a goal anyway) is worse than none? Own helmet is the best, rental is so so, non is worst, provided we believe in helmets as such.

Ekaterina

BostonB wrote: »

I've seen a few people with helmets and hi viz jacks on the Dublin Bikes. Which means they go out with them planning to get a bike. It must be part of their daily commute. However you can't always preplan when you are going to grab a bike. I think its fine that people are allowed to make their own choices, re helmets.

Thanks for the opinion! That is what we based our idea on. Some people might be glad to have a choice...

droidus

Ekaterina wrote: »

And I do not know why "ill-fitting and possibly damaged" (which should not be on purpose or a goal anyway) is worse than none? Own helmet is the best, rental is so so, non is worst, provided we believe in helmets as such.

Wearing a damaged helmet (and some would argue any helmet) is worse because it gives people the illusion that they are less likely to be injured. If the helmet has been damaged even once it's useless and offers no protection whatsoever.

Wearing an ill-fitting helmet is worse for the same reasons, but also because the helmet itself could cause head or neck injury in a fall or collision.

So your equation doesn't work. If you're not offering well fitted and undamaged helmets then it is deeply irresponsible to offer them at all, and unless you have a cast iron EUA then you will eventually end up in court.

Lumen

droidus wrote: »

If the helmet has been damaged even once it's useless and offers no protection whatsoever.

That's not true. It still offers abrasion resistance and some impact resistance.

petethedrummer

First you need to establish whether helmets are a good idea or not:
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/

Thankfully there's a basket on the front of these bikes, so if they introduce helmets to the scheme I'd be able to store it there.

DirkVoodoo

Ekaterina wrote: »

Well, business is cynical by definition. Watch couple of Jamie Oliver's shows of what are we being fed to find out how are we killing ourselves by only refusing to cook at home and eating the junk we are offered by food businesses all around instead.

And I do not know why "ill-fitting and possibly damaged" (which should not be on purpose or a goal anyway) is worse than none? Own helmet is the best, rental is so so, non is worst, provided we believe in helmets as such.

Jamie Oliver's own brand stir in sauces are also full of crap - more salt than 10 bags of crisps or seawater. I think you are being sold on something similar to the Nike/Lance partnership - cause related marketing. Jamie got huge attention and publicity doing what some might call admirable work. In return he produces "healthy" food options that people go for first in the supermarket because they remember his brave crusade for school children, despite the evidence that they are worse than most other processed pasta sauces.

Helmets are completely unnecessary and nothing more than personal choice for the DBs. As mentioned, look at paris! Where is the carnage, people dying left right and centre because they aren't wearing helmets? Common sense, respect for the rules of the road and awareness are more important than the faith you are placing in a piece of expanded foam. It is nearly certain that a mandatory helmet scheme for DBs would cause it to crash and burn.

If you want choice, bring your own helmet, nothing is stopping you.

blorg

It is true that an impacted helmet is compromised and should be replaced but this is not quite the same as saying it offers no protection whatsoever.

@Ekaterina- from a purely business perspective though I can't see it being viable. People who want helmets will have helmets and I don't see others paying to rent them at any level that would cover the costs involved.

Remember the bike scheme itself is not profit-making, JC Deceaux are effectively being paid to run it on behalf of the council. It wouldn't be there at all as a stand-alone business concern.

Ekaterina

blorg wrote: »

It is true that an impacted helmet is compromised and should be replaced but this is not quite the same as saying it offers no protection whatsoever.

@Ekaterina- from a purely business perspective though I can't see it being viable. People who want helmets will have helmets and I don't see others paying to rent them at any level that would cover the costs involved.

Remember the bike scheme itself is not profit-making, JC Deceaux are effectively being paid to run it on behalf of the council. It wouldn't be there at all as a stand-alone business concern.

Many people own helmets but do not bring them as it is too much of a hassle for them. Might use rental ones.

Ekaterina

Lumen wrote: »

That's not true. It still offers abrasion resistance and some impact resistance.

Thanks for the info. Good to know, especially if it comes from a moderator.