Cork car park operators urged to consider offering indoor bike parking

Cork City Council said it may not have a publicly-managed indoor bike parking facility restored before the end of the year — three years after its first one closed

Cork's first indoor bike parking facility, in the former North Main Street shopping centre, closed in early 2021 after just a few months in operation. File picture: Denis Minihane

Private car park operators in Cork have been urged to consider offering indoor bike parking in the city centre.

The call follows confirmation from Cork City Council that it may not have a publicly-managed indoor bike parking facility restored before the end of the year — three years after its first one closed.

The call came from Green Party councillor Colette Finn following the March meeting of the city council.

She has been pressing the council to establish a new indoor bike parking facility since the city’s first one, in the former North Main Street shopping centre, closed in early 2021 after just a few months in operation.

The eight-space facility was installed in late September 2020 as part of the council’s Re-Imagining Cork City project, which saw up to €2m being invested in the city’s cycling infrastructure, with support from the National Transport Authority (NTA), partly in response to the covid pandemic.

But when the shopping centre’s then vacant Dunnes Stores outlet, which closed in 2016, was adapted for use as a HSE covid vaccination centre and opened in January 2021, the indoor bike parking facility was removed.

Work to find a replacement indoor bike parking site has been ongoing since.

The council’s director of the operations directorate, David Joyce, said the council had identified a potential replacement site and NTA Active Travel funding has been secured to deliver the project.

He said “engagement” with the property owners was ongoing and if agreement could be reached, the project would be progressed with a view to having it operational before the end of the year.

However, it was not possible to give a definitive timeframe "as there are still too many unanswered questions and steps to be completed", he said.

Ms Finn expressed frustration it was taking so long but also surprise that private car park operators, especially those close to the city’s bus and train stations, had not spotted the gap in the market.

“I would pay a proportionate fee for bike parking with locker storage,” she said.