Check out Dublin’s bikeshare system, and compare it to ours
dublinbike, the biggest bikesharing system in Dublin, Ireland, opened in 2009, a year before Capital Bikeshare. Put side by side, the two make it easy to see how one transit system can learn from another.
Photo by William Murphy on Flickr.
dublinbike had 450 bikes and 40 stations when it started, and it added 100 bikes and four more stations in 2011. By contrast, CaBi started with 400 bikes and 49 stations and has since grown to have over 3000 bikes and 300 stations.
dublinbike dock. Photo by author.
CaBi’s much faster expansion might be because stations are cheaper to install. While CaBi’s stations are all above ground, the wiring at dublinbike docks is all embedded underneath the asphalt. Having to dig up pavement to install a station costs a lot more money than simply setting one down, and it’s possible that its installation costs will slow dublinbike’s plans to expand.
The two systems’ designs encourage different kinds of use
The dublinbike bikes themselves come with a little lock in their baskets in case you want to hold on to your bike without docking it. It’s quite handy if you want to venture away from a bike for just a brief moment, like to run into a shop or walk through a park.
CaBi bikes don’t come with locks, which means you almost always have to dock a bike if you’re not using it. This helps ensure bikes for people who want them just for short trips.
Dublinbike basket with mechanism. Photo by author.
Dublin also doesn’t have any 24 hour memberships (which cost $8 in DC), only offering a three-day membership instead for 5 Euros (about $5.50). Combined with the option to lock bikes up wherever, this makes me think dublinbike made a conscious decision to cater more to tourists than CaBi.
Dublin is a pretty bike-friendly place. People there ride all sorts of bikes, and the network of bike lanes is about as big as DC’s. There’s a network of two-way protected bike lanes all around the airport, as well as a wide network of bus lanes that people can ride in, which amounts to an additional lot of super-wide bike lanes.
dublinbike is quite popular, and it’s one of the world’s great bikeshare systems. While DDOT drew most heavily on Copenhagen’s system when planning CaBi, it makes sense to think Dublin’s played at least a small part in helping shape CaBi into the success that it is.