Long DublinBikes closures for large events a matter of resources, says council

— DublinBikes stations contuine to be closed for days to facilitated one-day events
— Huge gap between road closure times and DublinBikes station closures  

Multi-day gaps between closing and re-opening DublinBikes stations to facilitate large events which are only a day long is a matter of resources, Dublin City Council has said.

“Station closures are agreed based on the advice of the event organiser in order to facilitate event management and planning. Station closure/reopening times are determined by operational resource requirements as well as any requirements of the event organiser,” said a spokeswoman for Dublin City Council.

The latest example of DublinBikes stations closing for multiple days around events which are only one day or less is the Dublin Marathon 2016, which is due to take place this Sunday.

Four stations — Merrion Square East, Merrion Square West, Fitzwilliam Square East, and Mount Street Lower — will be closed from 3pm on Friday to 10am on Monday. Here’s how the DublinBikes and road closures compare:

  • Merrion Square East DublinBike station is closed from 3pm Friday 28th – 10am Monday 31st, but the roadway on Merrion Square East is only closed between 6am Sunday to 8pm on Saturday and this only applies to the “park side only”.
  • Merrion Square West DublinBike station is closed from 3pm Friday 28th – 10am Monday 31st but the street is only closed between 4am to 7pm on Sunday.
  • Fitzwilliam Square East DublinBike station is closed from 3pm Friday 28th – 10am Monday 31st, but the street is only closed from 4am to 11am on Sunday.
  • Mount Street Lower DublinBike station is closed from 3pm Friday 28th – 10am Monday 31st but the street is only closes from 4am to 7.30pm on Sunday.

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4 comments

  1. Surely the obvious solution is to get the event organiser to pay for the resources necessary to provide the service. The Dublin Marathon is not a charity, its a business, and so should pay

    Reply
  2. I echo Colm Donoghue’s point. But I am puzzled about citing ‘resources’ as the issue when the management of the system is undertaken by JC Decaux and not the City?

    Reply
  3. Apart from the weirdness of not being able to close/open the stations remotely or via JC Decaux staff, why is it even necessary at all to close the stations? If they’re not accessible due to crowd barriers and road closures, no one will be able to, you know, access them to take out or return a bike. It just seems like another gratuitous friction to make Dublinbikes work less well than they should. Other examples are closing the service between 1am and 5am and requiring people to wait 5 mins between returning a bike and taking another one out. These are just silly rules. They have no function apart from making a good service less good.

    Reply
  4. I don’t in any way want to defend the ludicrousness of closing the stations for three days for an event that takes less than half a day but you can’t leave those stations active if they are inaccessible unless you are willing to direct people using the app to a nearby station which you know isn’t accessible.

    Since they are not closing other stations on the route (eg: Hybreasal on the SCR) I assume these particular stations are closed because the organisers are taking over the footpath completely in that area. Still interesting to note that it is acceptable to shut down pedestrians and cyclists but not motorists. Not surprising at all, just interesting.

    Reply

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