More on-street parking spaces on residential roads would be reallocated to “bike bunkers” and other shared mobility schemes under “sustainable kerbside” policies being devised by Dublin City Council.
More than 3,000 requests for spaces in bike bunkers – secure metal bicycle storage sheds which take up one car-parking space and can accommodate six bicycles – have been received by the council.
A report presented to councillors on Wednesday noted “demand for the service is significantly greater than the number of spaces currently available”, and a “significant number of additional bike bunkers will need to be accommodated”.
However, the report to the council’s mobility committee acknowledged the reallocation of parking spaces “is likely to be not well received” by residents who use on-street parking.
A 10-year contract was last year awarded to bike hire company Bleeper to provide bike bunkers across the city, following an earlier pilot scheme in inner suburbs including Portobello and Stoneybatter.
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To date, 233 spaces have been provided, which drew 2,048 applications from bicycle-owning residents. This has left 1,815 people on waiting lists.
A total of 3,384 residents, mostly living in homes with no gardens or limited storage space, have made requests for bike bunker spaces. The annual charge for a space is €100 per bike, twice the current residents’ parking charge.
The bunkers were designed to provide secure cycle parking “in areas where there are dense residential streets mostly without driveways, mainly within the canal areas”, the council said.
“Within these areas there can be quite a lot of competition for kerb space, and the most frequent use is for on-street car parking.”
On many of the streets where paid parking and residential permits have been introduced, “the existing demand for parking spaces means that removal of existing car parking spaces to facilitate bike bunker installation is likely to be not well received”, the council said.
“This presents a policy question for the council: how should limited kerbside space be allocated when there is demonstrable demand for both residential car parking and secure cycle parking?”
There was a “clear policy basis” in the city development plan for the “reorganisation and loss of [parking] spaces” to serve “sustainable development targets”, the council said.
The local authority’s traffic division has asked councillors to consider the development of a “Sustainable Kerbside Policy Direction”, which could provide for a “proportion of existing on-street parking spaces to be allocated to sustainable transport uses where appropriate”.
“One option for consideration would be a target or indicative range of 10–30 per cent of suitable kerbside parking provision being available for sustainable transport uses,” the report said.
The council stressed this would not mean that 10 to 30 per cent of parking spaces would “automatically be removed”. Rather, it said, this would provide a basis for assessing each street, taking account of residential parking demand and permit numbers, demand for secure cycle parking and availability of alternative parking.
Issues such as accessibility requirements, disabled parking, road safety, local traffic conditions and the availability of alternative locations for sustainable transport infrastructure would also be considered.
In addition to bike bunkers or other types of cycle parking, the spaces could be used for “shared mobility parking” including car-sharing schemes.
“This would allow the council to consider kerbside space as a strategic transport asset, rather than treating the existing allocation of parking spaces as fixed,” the report states.