Usage of public bike rental schemes in main cities down 5%

Usage of public bike rental schemes in the country’s four main cities fell by over 5% last year, despite the growing popularity of cycling as a transport mode.

Figures collated by the Irish Examiner show that overall number of journeys taken on the bike schemes in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick dropped from almost 4.7m in 2016 to just over 4.4m last year.

The combined number of journeys across the four schemes was 4,441,028 — an annual decrease of 5.4%.