Cian Ginty

Dublin City Council has said Dublin Bikes users have clocked up 4.7 million rentals, between September 2009 and last week.

The system has 53,000 long-term subscribers who pay €10 annually — around 8,000 extra compared to a year ago without any increase in the number of bikes.

Tourists and others have bought over 38,000 three-day tickets at €2 each — amounting to around 7,000 in the last year.

The average journey time is 13 minutes and 95% of journeys are under 30 minutes, which are free.

Each bike is rented around 10 times a day. The busiest day last month was on Thursday the 5th when the bikes were rented over 5,700 times.

STATS IN FULL:

Dublin City Council has released the first snapshot of traffic management works needed for Luas Broombridge construction, and, so-far, it seems like good news for cyclists.

The works relate to St Stephen’s Green South, an area that is outside the remit of the An Bord Pleanala approval for Luas BXD, so it is subjected to part 8 planning approval by the city council.

It is proposed to provide a new 1.75m wide cycle lanes on both sides of east of the green. The lane on park side will continue northbound, and the council says “It is intended that this link will be extended to College Green.” A cycle lane is for the first time included inside the southbound contra-flow bus lane.

There will be be also be some moving about of bicycle parking and the Dublin Bike station, to fit in with the new footpath layout and crossings. Here are details from the council’s report on the changes:

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UPDATE: John Carroll, an advisor to the minister, has contacted us via Twitter to say: “That list is not in order of priority. It’s a list of priorities.”

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadkar, has released his list of priorities for 2013 — and cycling is down the list.  

Varadkar’s department for the first time covers transport, tourism and sport and cycling ticks all three boxes as a mode of transport, a sport, active leisure activity and an attractor for tourists.  But cycling comes in 18th of 20th of the minister’s priorities for the year ahead.

The full list below, from a press release issued tonight, shows where cycling stands:

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Not just any bike or tree. A large tree on a cargo bike. When you cycle a cargo bicycle in this country, you quickly get used of people looking at you, add a Christmas tree and you notice even more attention. Here’s our tree on the bike last week just after arriving home:

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Last week the Central Statistics Office released its report on commuting habits of the nation and the good news is cycling is up overall, but the section on student travel is depressing reading.

As the graphs below shows, cycling accounted for over 25% of third level students commuters in the mid-80s. Soon after, however, the amount of students hopping on saddles declined ever year for over a decade. The decline continued right up until after the turn of the century when cycling accounted for less than 5% of third level student commuters. As of the 2011 census, it has yet to recover over 5%.

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