Say goodbye to Coke bikes in Cork City as we know them
The Coke bikes on South Mall in Cork City. Picture: Larry Cummins
Coke bikes, Coke Zero bikes, TfI bikes, call them what you like, but they are on borrowed time. Minister Darragh O’Brien announced this summer that the TfI Regional Bike Share Scheme that operates in Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford will be wound up by the end of this year.
Launched over a decade ago, the scheme was a big hit in Cork with almost 300,000 trips taken on the bikes in 2016. It’s easy to understand why a public bike share scheme became so popular on Leeside: a compact city centre without a central public transport hub and key trip destinations like a university and hospitals all within a 15-minute cycle.
At just €10 for an annual subscription, it was — and still is — widely regarded as a bargain. Members can outsource all the hassle of owning and looking after a bike for a nominal charge. Return the bike in under half an hour, and you don’t even pay for the trip.
The scheme had a good reputation. In 2018, I was part of a small group that set up an initiative called ‘CyclingWorks Cork’. The idea was simple: we’d ask companies and large organisations in Cork to write to the Minister for Transport and the National Transport Authority (NTA) to voice their support for the delivery of a cycling network in Cork City.
Once we began talking to companies, I was struck by how many had already written to politicians and transport bodies asking that the public bike share scheme be expanded to facilitate their employees’ commute.
One can only speculate as to why the Cork scheme didn’t take advantage of its popularity at the time and begin to push out of the city centre.
did report, however, that a French company in the consortium that operated the scheme was suing another company in the consortium and the NTA. The French company claimed that new stations were being installed in Galway without their knowledge or consent.
Around the same time, many stations in Cork were taken offline with white covers placed over the docking bays. By 2019, annual trip numbers were dropping sharply, but the NTA suggested that the drop in usage could be explained by an ‘improved bus service’.
Speaking to , Cllr Colette Finn summed up the mood music of many people in Cork: "The scheme was being allowed to wither on the vine".
2020 saw the first signs of real positive change. New stations were promised for CUH, MTU, and County Hall, the first real expansion of the scheme outside of the city centre. Earlier this year, the NTA announced that 100 electric bikes were entering the scheme in Cork.
A new ‘lite’ station with nine stands was also rolled out this year, although the location did raise a few eyebrows: in front of a 45,000-capacity stadium.
To me, the TfI bikes are a relic of the previous decade. While the scheme works for many people, it’s been too slow to grow, too slow to innovate. 2024 annual trips are down on 2019 numbers, which themselves are down on 2016. We need a solution now to bring us to 2040.
It is perhaps for these reasons that the NTA has initiated a tender process for a "publicly procured, but privately owned and operated, shared micromobility services to replace the existing TfI schemes".
The new scheme needs to be many things to many people. For people who drive a few miles to work, it needs to be an affordable, reliable, and attractive alternative to their car.
For commuters, it needs to help bridge the gaps in the public transport system. For people who don’t own a car, it needs to help them with their day-to-day needs, but also help them bring home the Christmas Tree.
By this time next year, we could have dozens of shared mobility hubs dotted around the city (including the Northside this time) and suburbs. With one app, you could unlock a bike, or e-bike, or an e-cargobike, or an e-scooter, or an EV. The same app might even give you access to a nearby locker or small storage unit.
You can sit in the shade under a tree (a real one) while you plan your route. City Hall could take an active role in ensuring the scheme evolves to meet the needs of the city’s residents and visitors. The system might work so well that Cork avoids the whole dockless bikes and scooters question.
And now for the less optimistic among us: the existing docking stations relaunched by private operators. Multiple apps and accounts are needed to access marginally different bikes and scooters with ads strewn across them, despite hefty subscription fees.
Under pressure to provide more solutions, City Hall licenses dockless operators. We spend the next 10 years stepping over fallen e-scooters on Pana.
- Conn Donovan is a primary school teacher based in Cork City. From 2020 to 2022, he was chairperson of the Cork Cycling Campaign.
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