Dublin Bikes at Heuston

superrdave

Does anyone know why the westernmost dublin bikes stop is only at smithfield? surely they could have some further west.... i mean, they go as far south as portobello and as far north as the mater hospital

paulm17781

Last I heard, they didn't put one at Heuston as it would be too popular. Yes, only in Ireland. :rolleyes:

trellheim

that's correct. There is no DB rack at Heuston, and it was specifically discussed.

noelfirl

In an old thread the official reasoning was given...

DCC_Cycling (Elaine) wrote: »

Why is there no bike station at Heuston Station?
In order for the scheme to work, the bike stations must be ideally no further than 300m apart. This will ensure that in the unlikely event of a bike station being full, users will not have far to travel to the next nearest station. Heuston station serves many commuters and therefore it is likely many users would arrive at the station at approximately the same time (evening rush hour peak) on bikes taken out from a number of different stations. If the bike station at Heuston were full and there wasn’t a sufficient number of bike stations nearby to accommodate the user, users would be likely to miss their train. This would put many people off using the service.

It is predicted that the usage of the service at Heuston would be such that a high concentration of stations would be required in the vicinity and furthermore on the approach from the city centre (every 300m) for the scheme to work effectively. Given that there are 450 bikes overall, this would spread the scheme quite finely, with core areas in the city centre suffering as a result.

If the scheme proves to be a success, it is likely the scheme will be extended to a ‘phase 2’ which will include Heuston station and other areas outside the city centre core.

d'Oracle

Recent news reports mentioned taking in the Storehouse, so one would assume that Phase 2 is coming in.

Magic I say.

The Swordsman

paulm17781 wrote: »

Last I heard, they didn't put one at Heuston as it would be too popular. Yes, only in Ireland. :rolleyes:

The problem is that you would need a thousand (probably a slight exaggeration) racks full with bikes in the morning and a thousand empty racks waiting to accept bikes in the evening to meet the potential demand. And then you would need enough capacity in the city centre for the influx of cyclists first thing in the morning. In the evening every bike in town would probably end up in Heuston.

paulm17781

The Swordsman wrote: »

The problem is that you would need a thousand (probably a slight exaggeration) racks full with bikes in the morning and a thousand empty racks waiting to accept bikes in the evening to meet the potential demand. And then you would need enough capacity in the city centre for the influx of cyclists first thing in the morning. In the evening every bike in town would probably end up in Heuston.

So we're in agreement, it was designed badly. Are you also using the mantra that it is better that no one can used them over a few people?

loyatemu

the initial phase was only 450 bikes - now you can argue that the council should have got a better deal from JCD, but with that number of bikes you can only cover a certain footprint, and that obviously was going to encompass the city centre.

The Swordsman

paulm17781 wrote: »

So we're in agreement, it was designed badly. Are you also using the mantra that it is better that no one can used them over a few people?

I wouldn't say it was designed badly. The real problem is Heuston is too far from the City Centre and to cater for it would require an extraordinary solution.

There is no point in having something there that you cannot depend on. For example, imagine the chaos if a hundred people turned up in Heuston in the evening and there was nowhere to put their bikes as all available racks were taken and the next nearest bike station was a mile away. Kind of defeats the purpose.

The only way the system can work properly is to have bikes available when people need them and somewhere where they can be parked when people are finished with them. There are currently some problems in this regard, but DB try to solve this by moving bikes on the back of lorries from full stations to more empty ones. I'd imagine that if there was a bike station at Heuston (even a fairly large one), you would need a convoy of lorries working for a large part of day to transfer bikes to and from Heuston.

MadsL

now you can argue that the council should have got a better deal from JCD

I did. No-one listened.