Council's effort to install bike bunkers is facing pushback from car owners

Dublin City Council's programme for installing secure on-street bike parking has been running into opposition from car owners who don't want it to replace a car parking space with one of these "bike bunkers", a council executive says.

"As you can imagine, you've got 20 parking spaces, and we come along and say we're going to take out two of them or something like that to give spaces for people on bikes, it doesn't go down particularly well," said Brendan O'Brien, the council's executive manager for traffic, at a council committee meeting yesterday.

Government and council policy is to push more Dubliners to take fewer car journeys, or abandon their cars altogether. One alternative – along with public transport and walking – is to travel by bike.

This means less car traffic on the roads, less competition for car parking, and – for those who would instead have driven cars with internal combustion engines – less air pollution, and fewer carbon emissions.

But for people who live in the denser parts of the city – in terraced homes, or over shops, for example – finding a place to store their bikes safely at night or whenever they're not in use can be a problem. So, the council looked for a solution and piloted the bike bunker back in 2014–2015.

In 2023, council officials said they'd decided to launch a programme of installing a large number of these lockable bike boxes around the city. They then awarded a contract to Bleeper late last year to install and manage 300 of them, and the company – overseen by council staff – has been doing that.

At yesterday's meeting of the council's Mobility and Public Realm Strategic Policy Committee, O'Brien said that "from the point of view of a scheme, we think it's successful".

People who want one near them can request that via a website. So far, people have requested 3,384 spaces in bike bunkers, according to a report O'Brien presented at the meeting.

Then the council looks at demand and available space, and decides where and when to install them. Each one can hold six bikes, and the council charges users €100 a year per parking space inside them.

So far, the council has provided 336 spaces in 56 bike bunkers in the city. "There's only two bike bunkers at the moment that we've out there that has space in them, so all the other ones are fully subscribed," O'Brien said.

However, there's been pushback on some streets, from people who haven't been thrilled about the installation of one or more bike bunkers there, O'Brien said.

"Bike bunkers are really for locations where people don't have driveways, garages, etc.," he said. "Where people don't have them, it tends to be they have no place for a car either, so traditionally the car is outside the door, and also traditionally there is less space on the street than everybody wants."

So far, most installations have gone fine, but "some of them have generated quite a few complaints", he said. The team installing them does not "want to be in a situation of fighting every single street over and over again the same kind of battle".

So he suggested coming up with some sort of formal policy for allocating limited "kerbside space" to the various uses competing for it: private car parking, shared car parking, bike bunkers, trees and flowers, and others.

This could be something the team could point to when dealing with car owners who aren't happy with losing a parking space on their street.

A hierarchy of kerbside uses

At the meeting yesterday, O'Brien asked councillors on the committee for their thoughts and ideas on what such a policy should look like.

He opened the discussion by suggesting that, "it may be that we're saying 10 percent of spaces could be removed, but no more than 10 percent. Or no more than 15 percent or whatever."

Bike bunkers haven't really come up as an issue in Ballymun-Finglas, said Sinn Féin Councillor Anthony Connaghan, who represents that local electoral area.

"It doesn't really affect my area," Connaghan said. "We're just outside the canals, or maybe it will. I've only ever had one person on to me about bike bunkers several years ago."

For other committee members, though, it was an issue that did seem to have come up.

Siobhan McNamara, of Dublin Cycling Campaign, who is a member of the committee, questioned why cars always come first.

"It seems at the moment the kind of default is that public space is for cars, and then any other competing, you know, use has to come second to the car," McNamara said.

Jason Cullen, of the Dublin Commuter Coalition, who is a member of the committee, said that the council should look at "percentage of use of public space globally on a street".

"I don't know what the number looks like, is that 50 percent of the space on a street should be for the public good, and 50 percent can be for private use? I don't know. Maybe that's a discussion that should be had," Cullen said.

"I certainly think that the vast majority of space on the street should be for public use, and not be for the private storage of personal vehicles," he said.

If the council is having trouble finding places for bike bunkers, it should just ask residents on a street, said Caoimhe Clarke, of Irish Doctors for the Environment, a member of the committee.

"I'm in one of those areas where someone was upset because it was in front of their house," Clarke said. But "I'm more than happy to have that sit in front of my house instead of a big car".

Fine Gael Councillor Ray McAdam, who represents the north inner-city, said he opposed a fixed percentage, but that he wanted the policy to include "a clear hierarchy for kerbside space", so it's clear what happens when different competing uses come into conflict with one another.

On that list of potential uses that might be in competition with each other for kerbside space on city streets, "there's no mention of healthy space", said Cullen, of the Dublin Commuter Coalition.

"You know what's way better in a car parking space? A swing set for children to play on would be amazing," he said. "So I'd love to see some reflection of play in there, or benches, or things like that."

Costs

Another issue that councillors brought up during the meeting was the cost to users of the bike bunkers.

A bike-sized space in a bunker is €100 a year. Whereas a driver can get a full car parking space for €40 a year via a residential parking permit.

"I choose not to have a car because I've got car share. I've got a bike bunker, and I can use public transport," said Clarke. "And yet, my bike bunker space costs double the price of the car parking space."

Yes, "It would nearly be cheaper for a person to buy a van that was unroadworthy, put a tax disc on it, take the wheels off it and adapt it into a place to park your bike – in terms of the cost per space, you know," said Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney, who represents Clontarf.

At current prices, each bike bunker is going to be generating €600 a year, said Cullen. "If we have such a huge, what is looking like revenue income from this now, we should look at dropping that price."

O'Brien did not respond at the meeting to committee members' concerns about the costs of the bike bunkers. However this issue has been raised repeatedly over many years.

In 2019, Shane Waring, who led the Dublin City Council Beta Projects team that piloted the bike bunkers all those years ago, detailed the costs involved in buying, installing and maintaining them.

Without a subsidy from the council, it would cost €165 a year for a space, rather than €100, Waring said. So “it’s already subsidised so the question is how much it’s subsidised for”.

The plan now is for O'Brien and other council staff to formulate a draft policy, bring it back to committee for more discussion, and eventually bring something back to the full council at one of its monthly meetings for final approval.