If you have a look at Irish news sites, or indeed newspapers, you’ll be hard pressed to find any positive news stories regarding Ireland’s National Transport Authority, the country’s official public transport body, or its customer-facing brand, Transport for Ireland (TFI). Likely, all you’ll find is stories about overcrowded vehicles, unreliable services, and projects that are behind schedule and over budget. So far, so normal for Irish government bodies. However, when you look more closely, you’ll find the occasional bright spot in all of this drudgery. One of these bright spots is TFI Bikes, the agency’s public bike share system in Cork, Galway, Limerick and, most recently, Waterford.
Now, this system hasn’t been without controversy, from serious funding shortfalls and lawsuits in its Coke Zero Bikes days to the fact that local councils in Galway and Limerick seem to be doing their level best to sabotage the very existence of the system within their cities. However, as far as Cork is concerned, the story is a lot more positive. Ever since the NTA took over the ailing Coca Cola Zero Bikes system directly and rebranded it as TFI Bikes, the system has been on an upward trend from my experience. Now, with it being nearly a year since my last blog post on TFI Bikes, it is time to take another look at it. How has the system changed over the last twelve months, and is it continuing on its upward trend?
Let’s start by looking at usage numbers. On a purely subjective basis, these appear to be increasing rapidly. There seems to be a much higher number of TFI Bikes on the streets than in previous years. Granted, I only really have the time of the pandemic and a few months leading up to that available for any real comparison, so that might very well influence my judgement. Still, I don’t remember ever having to stand in line to get a bike at one of the numerous TFI Bikes stations in the pre-pandemic years, whilst this happened on multiple occasions in 2023 and 2024.
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| Being stuck in a TFI Bikes queue at a traffic light was definitely a new experience for me last year. |
However, personal experience can only take you so far, and I’m still an analyst at heart, so I decided to dig into the actual raw numbers. The Central Statistics Office turned out to be invaluable here, having data that goes back all the way to the start of the bike sharing scheme here in Cork, back when it was still branded as Coca Cola Zero Bikes. The data only goes as far as April 2024, so I wasn’t able to get data for the 2024 summer season, which is generally the busiest time for the system, but the data turned out to be pretty interesting regardless. For starters, TFI Bikes in Cork remains by far the most popular of the four regional bike sharing schemes, with the number of trips in Cork exceeding the number of trips in Galway, Limerick or Waterford by almost and order of magnitude. Interestingly, TFI Bikes Waterford, whilst being the youngest of the four systems, has already exceeded the number of trips seen in Galway and Limerick and established itself as a pretty solid second place in terms of usage.
Let’s leave the wastes of “not Cork” and get back to the real topic. The statistics for Cork are actually pretty interesting. According to the CSO, the system reached peak usage in October 2015 with 36,875 journeys in a single month. Ever since then, peak usage has been slowly dropping before finally dropping off a cliff in the autumn of 2019, when the system reached its lowest point. My blog post on the system from January of the same year makes for some grim reason. The numbers read slightly less dramatic, showing the number of trips per year decreasing from 291,174 in 2016 to 241,064 in 2020. Naturally, the numbers for 2020 and 2021 are even grimmer, showing 81,054 trips in 2020 and just 54,615 trips respectively as an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The damage done by both the years of neglect and the pandemic is clearly visible, although both the number of journeys (orange line) and the number of subscribers (blue line) is rising again.
Source: https://data.cso.ie/table/TOA22 |
The relaxation of restrictions as well as the rebranding and subsequent rehabilitation of the network from the fall of 2021 onwards would make itself felt though, with journey numbers getting black in to the six digits in 2022 with 109,700 trips and 143,557 trips in 2023. As for this year, from January to April, the system had already registered 44,779 trips. The system is clearly on the up again, and the same general trend can also be seen in the number of subscribers for TFI Bikes in Cork. Here too, the peak was reached early on in the system’s history, with 7777 subscribers in December 2015. The subscriber count shows a similar decline as the number of trips, although the “cliff” at the end of 2019 isn’t quite as pronounced. The number finally bottomed out at 3752 subscribers in November 2021, after which it increased again, standing at 5379 in April 2024.
The story is a bit less clear cut when it comes to the actual network of TFI Bikes stations within the city. Now to be fair, the network has expanded considerably beyond its original network of 32 stations wedged in between Kent railway station and UCC. New stations were added at CIT/MTU/Choose your own Acronym, the Mardyke and, most recently, outside of Cork County Hall. On the other hand, existing stations have been taken offline at quite a prodigious rate. Granted, some of them, such as the ones at Washington Street, Union Quay or the College of Commerce were taken down because of construction work. However, others, such as the former station at South Gate Bridge, or the Mercy Hospital, have just been taken down without any apparent reason. Meanwhile, the construction and commissioning of new stations has slowed to a crawl. The reinstated TFI Bikes station at Washington Street still hasn’t come back online despite being physically complete since June 2024. Coburg Street station, meanwhile, which was taken down due to the remodelling of MacCurtain Street, has seemingly disappeared for good.
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| The TFI Bikes station on Washington Street as it was under construction in February 2014... |
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| ...and several months later, at the end of July. The station was functionally complete, but even at the time of writing this in early November 2024, it has not become operational yet. |
Which brings me to what, in my eyes at least, is the biggest issue affecting TFI Bikes in Cork, maintenance. It has certainly been the most prevalent and noticeable issue for me as a regular user of the system. Now, to be fair, wear and tear is to be expected in any bit of public infrastructure, especially in a country where said public infrastructure seems to be fair game for any type of vandalism. And in general, the number of bikes I see on a regular basis that have been the subject of vandalism, such as having their lights kicked off or saddles bent out of shape, are still few and far between. However, the wear and tear is noticeable, and I’ve had to return a few bikes that just felt unsafe. Having written that, two years on from the big TFI Bikes rebrand, the bikes are in a much better shape than they were two years into the operation of Coca Cola Zero Bikes, which, by 2016/2017, were showing serious signs not just of wear and tear, but of neglect.
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| In September and October of 2024, a lot of TFI Bikes stations had half of their bike stands covered up without any apparent reason. |
The picture is much the same when it comes to the actual TFI Bikes stations. Whilst it’s been some time since bike rental stations were out of action wholesale over extended periods of time, in my experience, you can expect to have 10-15% of bikes at any given station to be unavailable and locked into their stands due to technical issues or because the rental didn’t close. The latter in particular has been an issue for mer on multiple occasions, with Kent East TFI Bikes station being the worst culprit in this regard by quite a large margin. It’s still not a deal-breaker, and I’m honestly not sure if it’s the station hardware as such or the network connection, but it has definitely gotten me in trouble with my boss for being late more than once.
However, the biggest source of frustration has got to be the touch screens. These have gone partially or totally unresponsive at a number of stations, with Kent East once again being a pretty prominent example. However, this doesn’t seem to be a permanent issue either, as a station that is unresponsive one day might be perfectly fine the next day and vice versa. I have a feeling that it’s a combination of temperature and humidity that’s causing some sort of issue but given that it is generally frowned upon to open up public infrastructure with a cutting torch, I haven’t been able to verify this myself. More importantly though, this particular issue might be on the way out. More on that later on in this blog post.
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| The touch screens integrated into the station kiosks, as seen here at Kent West TFI Bikes station, have been a constant source of frustration for many people. |
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| There's nothing more frustrating than swiping your TFI Bikes membership card at a station and then not being able to enter your pin because the screen isn't responding! |
However, even with all these issues, the state of repair appears to be a whole lot better than it used to be in the Coke Zero Bikes years. Repair crews are out and about regularly, both with some heavy vehicles and, for smaller cases, with e-bikes, which always gets a chuckle out of me. Bike stands that are out of service seem to get fixed much quicker than in the bad old days, and damaged bikes are also withdrawn from service much quicker than in the past. On the whole, the system, whilst still rough around the edges, no longer feels abandoned.
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| From Grand Parade... |
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| ...via the bike lane on South Mall... |
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| ...and the occasional stop at a bakery to get some treats for the team... |
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| ...my daily commute saw me cycling to Kent station on a regular basis. |
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| Regular lunchtime trips to grab something to eat or, in this case, get the very iPad this post was written on,... |
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| ...were also part of my daily routine, whether the final stop was Patrick Street,... |
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| ...or Peace Park station on South Mall. |
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| The bike lanes along the North Quays, Penrose Quay or South Mall make TFI Bikes that much more convenient. Honestly, without those, I probably wouldn't have taken up cycling again. |
But enough with the endless preliminaries, let’s get to the meat of this thing. Wait, do bikes have meat? Anyway, what is it actually like to use TFI Bikes these days? Well, I haven’t actually used them since early October, when I left my job in the Cork Docklands, but prior to that, they used to be part of my daily commute. I’d use them to bridge the gap between Kent Station, where my former employer’s offices are located, and Grand Parade, the closest stop of my local bus route. During that time, it was, for the most part, just a fun and convenient system to use. Of course, the fact that most of my bike ride would happen on South Mall, Parnell Place, Patrick’s Quay and Penrose Quay, all of which have physically segregated bike lanes, certainly helped in that regard. This all but eliminated any conflicts with motorists, although drivers would still regularly find ways to run red lights, block intersections, mount the pavement, and all kinds of other shenanigans. Where do those people get their driver’s licenses? Win them at the Ploughing?
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| Yes, I've taken these shots whilst stopped at a red light, I'm not suicidal! |
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| Still, even with the new bike lanes, these intersections are still a major hazard area. Even when pedestrian or bike crossing lights are green, there's no guarantee that a motorist won't just barrel through regardless. |
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| Blocked intersections are also a regular occurrence. This intersection between South Mall and Parliament Street is a particular hot spot for that. Not in this picture though, thank goodness. |
Anyway, when things do go wrong, such as a bike rental not closing, the customer service team is usually able to get this sorted out within just a few minutes. Now, I used to work in a call centre myself, first at DHL and later at Apple, so I know how things are on the other side. And I can comfortably say that TFI Bikes customer service has been uniformly excellent. Once again, it feels like someone actually cares about the system, which is always nice. And technical issues can occur even in the best-run system, I’ve worked in Customer Service for long enough to know that.
The ability to check out bikes directly from the TFI Bikes app is an absolute game changer!
Most importantly though, TFI Bikes is actually getting new features, including one quality of life update that, whilst absolutely massive for TFI Bikes users, seems to have flown completely below the radar ever since it was introduced. For much of its history, the TFI Bikes app has been a companion app with very little utility apart from checking nearby stations for available bikes and looking up your account history. I’ve had it on my phone ever since the system started but never really used it much. However, on July 12th, 2024, an update was pushed out for this app that introduced two new features. One was the ability to provide detailed feedback on a rental after returning the bike, which made it much easier to point out specific issues that required attention. The second was something called “App Release”. This allows registered users to check out a bike simply by selecting the bike station and stand in the app. This. Is. A. Game changer! I mentioned earlier that some stations had issues with unresponsive touch screens. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to wrangle with such a touch screen, and I may have accidentally summoned the odd elder god or eldritch entity with my cursing. This feature has saved me more than once, to the point where nowadays, I just walk straight up to the bike I want, whip out my phone, and release the bike straight from the app. Beyond the app, it appears that the current bike locks are also in the process of being replaced by more compact models that are permanently mounted to the bike.
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| These new locks started appearing on TFI Bikes in Cork back in May 2024. Unfortunately, their roll-out seems to have stalled. |
So, where does TFI Bikes stand in the early days of November 2024? Well, as mentioned above, I left my job in early October and haven’t really used the bikes since. However, despite the fact that a TFI Bike led me to eat dirt for the first time in twenty years back in July, I believe that the system is in a better position than it has been in years. It’s just a joy to use, especially when used in conjunction with the ever-increasing network of bike lanes in the city. Yes, the state of repair could be better, but the technical issues are nowhere near bad enough to be a dealbreaker for me. Besides, the system is seeing actual tangible improvements for the first time in years. However, despite the fact that customer service has been great in my experience, communication remains the big Achilles heel of TFI Bikes. There’s still no presence at all on any of the major social platforms, beyond the occasional Facebook ad, which is simply not acceptable in this day and age. All in all though, TFI Bikes is a massive asset for Cork, something clearly reflected in the usage numbers. I can only hope that the potential of this system isn’t going to be squandered by either the NTA or the ever-clueless Cork City Council.
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