Hire bikes used less in Mullingar

A public bicycle hire scheme that was introduced in Westmeath’s two biggest towns earlier this year has proven to be more than twice as popular in Athlone than in Mullingar.

A meeting heard last Thursday that the pilot scheme operated by Moby Bikes on behalf of Westmeath County Council had been a success, and 2,072 bike hires were recorded in the two towns during a six-month period starting on May 1.

Sixty five per cent of those hires (1,357) were in Athlone, and Athlone had more than twice as many people using the scheme, at 702 individual users compared to 338 in Mullingar.

Council official John Jackson said tourism was one of the reasons the take-up was higher there. “We found that a lot of tourists were using them in Athlone, which was fantastic. I saw myself people using them as far out as Moate, hiring them in Athlone and bringing them out on the greenway.

“Athlone was a little bit more spread out in terms of locations for the bikes, and that was a learning for us. To continue with the scheme, we’d need to expand a bit more in Mullingar – it’s a bit more condensed there.”

Athlone Marina during the summer and the TUS campus during the autumn were the two busiest bike hire locations in Athlone, while Mullingar Town Park during the summer and, more recently, Mullingar hospital were the busiest hiring sites here.

In his review of the pilot scheme at the December meeting of the council’s Environment, Climate Action, Water and Emergency Services committee on Thursday last, Mr Jackson said the number of bikes currently available in the two towns had been reduced for the winter.

Athlone had 40 bikes available for hire through the ‘Moby Move’ smartphone app during the summer, while there were 30 in Mullingar, but that was recently reduced to 15 bikes in each town.

Mr Jackson said the council would have to seek sponsorship to continue the scheme. “If we want to permanently keep the scheme we will have to consider some kind of sponsorship option because that’s what most of the other schemes elsewhere have done. They have a main sponsor, for example Coca Cola (in Galway).

“There is a large Westmeath crest on the backs of the bikes, and that would be an ideal position where, hopefully local, sponsors could get on board (with advertising). That’s something we have to look at.”

He said the scheme running permanently in both towns would cost Westmeath County Council around €50,000 a year. “To keep the scheme permanently, we’ll have to keep expanding the locations (where bikes can be hired) as well,” he said.

Mr Jackson said that while public bike hire schemes had previously been in place in cities such as Dublin, Athlone and Mullingar were the first “rural towns” to adopt a scheme of this kind.

“It had never been done in a rural area, but we decided to pilot it to gauge first-hand if it would work and if the public would take to it.”

He said the operator, Moby Bikes, was “absolutely thrilled” with the take-up of the scheme in the two towns.

July was the busiest month for the scheme in Athlone, when 321 individual bike hires were recorded, while the fleadh helped make August the busiest bike hire month in Mullingar (186 hires).

The fact that there hadn’t been any significant damage caused to the bikes since the scheme was introduced was important, said Mr Jackson.

“I had people telling me the bikes wouldn’t last on the streets, that they’d be damaged or stolen, but that wasn’t the experience we had,” he said.

“We had very little damage to the bikes. We only really had two or three incidents where a bike was damaged, and even in those incidents it was minor damage.”

Councillors welcomed the report on the scheme. “It’s brilliant to see how well it’s taken off in terms of the usage,” said Cllr Paul Hogan.

Cllr Louise Heavin described the scheme as “hugely successful” and said she had personally found it a convenient way of getting around Athlone at times. “I think we should be looking for sponsorship (to continue the scheme). It’s €1,000 per bike per year, which is not a huge amount for bigger companies.

“We have some great companies in Athlone and I’m sure employees would use them. The more bikes we have, moving around, the more use they will get. This was only a trial and I can see it doubling or tripling in usage over a year or two,” she said.