Residents of Dublin may soon have an alternative to DublinBikes, the city’s popular public bicycle share system. A new company GreenBikeClub is to run a pilot programme of an app-controlled system in mid-October 2015.
GreenBikeClub is an alternative bike-share scheme — it does not use expensive docking stations, but instead you use your phone to book and unlock the bicycle, and you can leave your bicycle anywhere within a zone.
“GreenBikeClub will be decentralised, meaning that members will be able to park their bikes anywhere within a certain zone,” explains Gráinne O’Sullivan, who is doing marketing for Dublin-based company GreenBikeClub.
“For the pilot scheme, we’re targeting students, so the first zones will be around Trinity College and in Dartry, around Trinity Halls,” she said. The company hopes that they will “rapidly expand the offering throughout the city and beyond.”
Users are to pay €3 for annual membership and then after that they’ll pay €1.50 per ride up to every 35 minutes.
GreenBikeClub bikes are described as ultraviolet single-speed bikes, although the one pictured above isn’t the final product which will be offer.
O’Sullivan told IrishCycle.com: “With innovative new locking technology powered by your mobile phone, our ultraviolet single-speed bikes can be picked up and left anywhere in the city.”
Although the O’Sullivan said that the new system is not born out of frustration with DublinBikes, it being designed with surpassing with a “decentralised approach”.
“GreenBikeClub was not born out of frustration with Dublin’s current bike share scheme, but rather, because we’ve seen how effective the current scheme has been in encouraging cycling as a primary mode of transport. We want to bring that same opportunity to the rest of the country, and our decentralised approach and pay-as-you-go business model allows us to achieve this in a way current schemes can’t financially justify,” she said.
GreenBikeClub is founded and being funded by three friends — Cathal O’Sullivan, Sam Mealy and Ben Scallon who are all “passionate about encouraging cycling as a primary mode of transport.”
The environment is a concern of the founders: “Cycling and sharing resources are good for the environment, but we’ll also be conserving an area of rainforest equal to the area of our operations with the World Land Trust. Growing in time as we do, these areas will be conserved in the names of our most active early members.”
For more visit greenbike.club.
...That's the end of the article. Keep scrolling if you want to the comments, but IrishCycle.com *NEEDS* readers like you to keep it that way. It only requires a small percentage of readers to give a bit each month or every year to keep IrishCycle.com's journalism open to all. Thank you.
Students to PAY for a bike system!? A bit of blue sky thinking going on but a long way to go yet! No ‘hub’ locations given or any real idea of how system will work. But fair play to them!
Why is “alternative” in quotes?
€1.50 per trip from Dartry to Trinity is pretty expensive for a student.
Student tickets for bus/luas would be no more expensive.