Cork Bike Share System - Kicking the Coke Habit?

I just noticed that I haven’t really talked about cycling all that much on here in recent times. To be honest, there wasn’t really that much to write about recently. I don’t cycle much anymore, not least due to the continuing poor state of cycling infrastructure here in Cork, all thanks to a city council that doesn’t give a flying fuck. However, things have recently started changing and I think it’s high time to get back to that particular topic.

Cork’s official bike rental system, officially Coca Cola Zero Bikes Cork after its main sponsor, has been a staple of the city ever since it was opened back in early 2015. I’ve been a customer of the system since day one and for a long time, the distinctive red and black bikes were part and parcel of my life on a weekly basis. However, within a year or so of its introduction, things started going downhill. There was no real maintenance and once the time for flashy photo opps was gone, Cork City Council predictably lost all interest in the system. I wrote about this decline before on my blog, and from what I’ve been able to gather, the sister systems in Galway and Limerick suffered from the same neglect, though they apparently also have to contend with an openly hostile council, rather than just a completely apathetic one as in the case of Cork. Then, there was the lawsuit. 

Worn handlebars,...

...bent lights,...

...rusted saddle adjustment levers,...

...and kicked-off rear lights have been part and parcel of the Coca Cola Zero Bikes experience in Cork over the past years.

You see, Telfourth Ltd., the shadowy consortium that was formed as the operating company for the bike rental schemes in Cork, Galway and Limerick, originally used designs and technologies designed by French company Tracetel. This makes sense, given that Tracetel has been involved in a number of similar systems across France, which have on the whole been very successful. In fact, Tracetel was originally part of Telfourth. However, in 2017, news emerged that Tracetel had sued Telfourth and indeed the National Transport Authority here in Ireland over breaches of intellectual property. The dispute was centred around the locking mechanism which secures the bikes to their docking stations when not in use. Tracetel alleged that Telfourth had made modifications to this mechanism to avoid paying royalties. This dispute went up to the High Cork and for a time got so heated that in 2018,  even the French ambassador in Ireland got involved. I have not been able to find any documentation of this dispute going on beyond 2018, so I cannot say how this fight ended, but it certainly didn’t help the already struggling bike rental systems. It was around this time that I personally stopped being a frequent user of the system as it had reached its lowest points and large parts of the bikes available in Cork were simply unfit for use. Together with the city council’s well documented apathy, it seemed as if Coca Cola Zero Bikes would be left to whither on the vine.

Things appeared to start changing in 2019. Don’t get me wrong, the system was still in a bad state, a number of stations had been offline for months, while many others had a number of bike stands blocked as inoperative, some for well over a year. However, following a campaign by the Cork Cycling Campaign, replies from the National Transport Authority indicated that they were actively looking at ways to extend the system in Cork, subject to funding of course. There was talk about new stations at CIT, Model Farm Road Business Park as well as more stations around UCC, but nothing came of these plans, at least not in 2019. Intriguingly though, two new stations actually went online in Cork. Both of these are located at the new south entrance of Kent Station, and both featured very different computer terminals and, more importantly, ran a new software that seemed to be devoid of any Coca Cola Zero branding. And to be fair, over the course of 2020, a number of stations that had been offline for extended periods came back online, though the state of repair of the system was still atrocious. 

New bike share station outside of the IDA's Model Farm Road Business Park. It looked like this from June until October. You'd have gotten a quicker result waiting for Godot than waiting for this to be finished.

Even before the new bikes appeared, the Coca Cola Zero branding had begun disappearing from the station terminals...

as kindly modelled by the two terminals at the south entrance of Kent Station in Cork.

Things really began to change in 2021. I’d already noticed in 2020 that the News section of the Coke Zero Bikes website had actually begun to live up to its name and announce station outages in a somewhat timely manner. It was in spring that some really interesting things started happening. It began with social media reports of new docking stations being built around the CIT campus as well as Model Farm Road. Sure enough, on one of my first trips into the city, I was able to catch one of these stations myself from the window of a 220 bus. It looked as if expansion was actually going to happen. Except for the fact that the Model Farm Road station at least seemed to languish in a semi-completed state for months. As summer turned into autumn, a new riddle appeared. The number of bikes available at stations throughout the network began to plummet. By early October, most stations only had single digit number of bikes available for rent at any one time, while some were completely stripped bare. Where had those bikes gone? Your guess is as good as mine. At the same time however, more stations had gotten the new de-branded software, so something was happening with the system. Then, on October 18th, 2021, a message appeared on bikeshare.ie stating that five new stations around the CIT campus, well technically the MTU campus at this point, as well as around UCC and Model Farm Road, had just been opened.

By mid-October, many docking stations throughout the network looked like Lower Glanmire Road, with only a smattering of bikes available.

My first sighting of a TFI Bike "in the wild" I have to say, I like the design changes.

At the same time, new bikes started appearing throughout the network. Only a few at first, they have since become more numerous. These new bikes also lack the Coca Cola Zero branding that has been showing up on the station terminals. Instead, they are now branded as TFI Bikes, using the Transport for Ireland brand that the NTA has been expanding to cover public transport services across Ireland. This makes sense, given that back in 2020, the National Transport Authority announced that it would not be renewing its sponsorship agreement with Coca Cola. But there’s more to these new bikes than just them kicking their Coke habit. These “second generation” bikes display some subtle but well-thought-out changes. The mud guards on both wheels have been extended, keeping the rider drier and cleaner than on previous models. In addition, the rear mud guard has been modified to better protect the rear light, which on the original Coca Cola Zero bikes had been a favourite target for being kicked off by certain members of society. It remains to be seen whether this will work. Another subtle change is a new gear shift mechanism, which ditches the original visual indicator in favour of a simple printed on scale. This should make maintenance a lot easier, especially since the gear shift was a major issue on the first-generation bikes. As of the time of writing, I've only had one test ride on these new bikes, from Grand Parade to Kent Station, but from that test ride, it seems as if these bikes represent a return to form for the bike rental system.

While it remains to be seen whether the new hand grips are any more durable than the old ones, the simplified gear shift is absolutely a welcome sight for me. One less point of failure.

Both the new mudguards and the increased protection for the rear lights look like major improvements for me, especially compared to what you see on this TFI Bike's immediate neighbour.

Which brings us to the present moment. The second-generation bikes are replacing the original bikes bit by bit, and the Coca Cola Zero brand is slowly disappearing from Cork. While on the surface, this is most certainly a good thing to have new investment in the system, it does leave me with a number of questions. The big one affects me as a customer. How will the re-branding affect existing customers? At the moment, the bike rental system still operates Coca Cola Zero branded apps and websites for customers to register or manage their accounts. Will these assets be rebranded under the TFI Bikes brand, or will they just be shut down? Will the existing membership cards continue to work once the Coca Cola Zero brand has disappeared, or will customers be issued with new cards? Will Leap Cards be integrated into the system, and will it become possible to link existing Coca Cola Zero Bikes memberships with leap cards? Don’t get me wrong, I believe that moving the provincial bike rental schemes under the TFI brand is the right decisions in order to position them as an extension of an emerging integrated national public transport system rather than just being a disparate vanity project. 

The re-branding and expansion efforts here in Cork clearly demonstrate however that there are still massive issues surrounding these bike rental systems. Communication is still next to non-existent, and no, a News item on a poorly visited website and a barely used app does not constitute effective communication. Neither the expansion of the station network nor the rejuvenation of the bike fleet elicited as much as a press release, and just like Coca Cola Zero Bikes, TFI Bikes is non-existent on social media, save for a few discussions amongst Irish cycling campaigners. This would have been an easy opportunity to break the cycle (pun fully intended) of negative press coverage surrounding these struggling systems and shape the discourse around public transport in the city. Then, there's the issue of maintenance. Right after launch, the original Coca Cola Zero Bikes had been a pleasure to ride as well, it was the lack of proper maintenance that saw the system fall into disuse over the years. It remains to be seen if the new TFI Bikes will fare better in that regard and to be honest, if the ongoing communications issues are any indication, it doesn't look likely. I hope I'll be proven wrong in this matter, as I believe that bike rental systems are a key component of any urban, or suburban for that matter, mobility strategy. One thing's for sure though. It'll require more than the occasional lick of paint to keep TFI Bikes attractive.