Dublin pilots smart bike parking in the Smart Docklands district

On 19 February 2019 Dublin City Council opened a Bikeep smart bike parking pilot with The Civic Group, Bikeep's partner in Ireland. The first station went into Smart Docklands, the city's testbed for smart city technology, at The CHQ Building on North Wall Quay. It was a single five-dock station, a way for the city to test the idea, gather feedback from riders and decide how to grow from there.

A city with a theft problem

Dublin City Council wanted to see whether smart parking could cut bike theft. The numbers at the time made the case.

• About 20 bikes a day were reported stolen in Dublin, and many more thefts went unreported.
• €510 was the average value of a bike stolen in Ireland. By Bikeep's estimate, theft was costing Dubliners more than €12 million a year, before counting the lost benefits of cycling.
• Just over half of stolen bikes were taken from public streets, and almost a third from homes.
• About 75% of bike thefts recorded in Ireland between 2003 and 2013 happened in Dublin.

How the pilot worked

• Free to use. Riders parked for free with the Bikeep app.
• Locked by the frame. A steel locking bar held each bike, so riders didn't need their own lock.
• Alarm. The dock sounded an alarm if someone tampered with a locked bike.

More on how cities use smart bike parking is on the cities page.