NTA: Costs putting brakes on Cork bike scheme expansion

The National Transport Authority (NTA) has cast doubt on whether it will extend the public bike scheme in Cork to the suburb of Douglas.

An email sent by NTA chief executive Hugh Creegan emphasises the NTA’s support for adding more stops in Cork but notes that extending the scheme to Douglas would involve substantial cost.

In the email, sent on February 24 to Labour’s Cork city south-east local election candidate Peter Horgan, Mr Creegan said the availability of financial support for the ongoing operation of the system is “a major constraint”.

The NTA has already confirmed plans to add as many as 10 additional stations in Cork this year and said that site identification is already under way.

Interest groups, such as Cork Chamber, had hoped this extension would include areas like Mahon, Blackrock, and Douglas but in his email to Mr Horgan, Mr Creegan cast some doubt on the latter.

In his email, Mr Creegan described the Cork bike scheme as “very successful” since its launch and noted that the NTA is keen to expand it further. However, he notes that operating an expanded scheme is potentially an issue.

“While we are able to obtain capital funding to enable the build-out of new stations and the provision of extra bikes, the availability of financial support for the on-going operating cost is a major constraint,” he said.

Roughly half of the €1.1m spent on the three regional bike scheme in Cork, Galway, and Limerick is spent in Cork, with half of this covered by Coca Cola sponsorship and membership subscriptions.

The remaining cost is the responsibility of the NTA but it is not funded by central the Government for this amount.

“Expanding the Cork bike share scheme will significantly increase its operating cost. The exact amount of the increase would depend on the size of the expansion but would be a number of hundreds of thousands of euro per year. The NTA simply does not have this funding.

“Accordingly, while the NTA can fund the very significant capital cost of the expansion, we would not be able to support the on-going operational costs and would need others to provide this amount,” said Mr Creegan.

“In relation to extending the scheme as far as Douglas, this would add about 3km in linear distance to the scheme and would require a lot of bike stations to make it function properly.

“Generally, for this type of bike share scheme, bike stations should be located no further than about 400 metres apart to account for the need to have a second station nearby if the primary station becomes full or has no bikes available.”

In addition, the further that a scheme extends from the central area of a city, the higher the level of truck-based redistribution of the bicycles that would be required – this adds substantially to the operating cost.

“I don’t state the above to reject in any way the idea of extending as far as Douglas, only to indicate the challenges, particularly the cost of operation, that would be involved.”

Mr Horgan expressed his disappointment that the extension of the scheme may not include Douglas. He said doing so could help to alleviate traffic congestion

in the area.

“Not only would it work to reduce traffic in and out of the city centre, it also would create a triangle network between Douglas, Blackrock, and Ballinlough for short-term journeys in those areas,” he said.

“We have to be bold and ambitious on alternative transport.”