When Dublin launched its first bike-share scheme in 2009, sceptics said every last pair of wheels would end up stolen or floating in the river Liffey.



Instead, Dublinbikes was embraced with such fervor that subscriptions immediately surpassed expectations, usage rates topped international rankings and the no-nonsense bikes – three gears with a basket on the front - became a fixture in the Irish capital, whizzing alongside traffic in the congested core.

Today, the scheme is hailed as one the of most successful in the world. There’s just one problem: it’s losing money.

Initially funded through an advertising deal with billboards giant JCDecaux, the scheme broke even for a number of years before running a deficit in 2015. This shortfall, together with a public row over billboards associated with the programme, has halted expansion plans while organisers seek new ways to cover basic operating costs.

This is proving difficult. JCDecaux – the firm behind Paris’s Vélib’ bike-share scheme – funded all set-up costs for Dublinbikes in exchange for the right to advertising space on city land. The scheme has since tripled in size to 1,500 bikes and 101 stations. That’s tiny compared to London’s scheme of 11,500 bikes or Paris’s fleet of 23,600 bikes, but enough to push costs beyond what’s brought in through subscriptions and sponsorships, leaving a €376,000 shortfall that Dublin council says it cannot afford.

“Other bike schemes get major support from the government but with Dublinbikes we kind of have to run it ourselves,” said project manager, Michael Rossiter. “So if people want the scheme to grow to its full extent, hard decisions have to be made about priorities.”

Organisers are wary of the tradeoffs involved with squeezing more money from existing revenue streams. For instance, annual subscription fees have already doubled to €20 since the scheme’s launch or €5 for a three-day pass, compared to the London scheme’s £90 annual fee. If they are raised much more, they could become too expensive for residents on lower incomes, Rossiter said. And while an increase might help the existing programme break even again, it wouldn’t meet the ongoing costs of expanding and managing a larger scheme, he said.

Indeed, organisers hold ambitious plans to expand the network to 5,000 bikes and 300 stations across the city within 10 years.

“An expansion like that would cost €10m a year just to run,” Rossiter said. “The costs would get bigger and bigger and membership will never grow to the extent that it covers that amount.”

A major extension of Dublinbikes into a new university campus in the northside suburb of Grangegorman - which had received capital funding from Ireland’s National Transport Authority – was already shelved this year due to the funding crisis.

Though Dublinbikes could seek a new sponsorship arrangement with Coca-Cola - worth € 300,000 a year under a deal that expires in 2017 - it is the advertising-funded model that has the greatest potential to end the scheme’s funding woes, Rossiter said.

But there are signs the public’s enthusiasm for the ads may be fading. Recent plans to install billboards connected to the scheme were rebuffed by both local residents and by heritage charity An Taisce. The charity said the ads would be “visually obtrusive, out of character with and seriously damaging to the city’s environment.”

“Psychologically I think the key point both the city and users have to address is that this is a form of public transport,” said Kevin Mayne, director of development at the European Cycling Federation. “If you accept advertising on bus and railway stations, then you need to accept it as part of bike share too.”

While ad deals have been crucial to the genesis of bike-share schemes in major cities, not everyone believes they must also be part of their future. Increasing parking charges, folding schemes into public transportation budgets and raising subscription fees while offering discounts to lower-income residents are all viable alternatives, said Eric Britton, a sustainable development consultant based in Paris.

“There will always be people who don’t like ads and I agree with them,” he said. “And I think there are a whole plethora of ways to pay for this out there.”

What ends up holding many schemes back, Britton says, is a failure to look beyond “traditional accounting” to the contribution public bikes make to major cities.

“People who are taking public bicycles, some of them are not taking taxis, some are not taking buses, some are not driving alone in their car,” he said. “Do the numbers and you will figure out the saving in terms of repair and maintenance on the road system, in terms of accidents, obesity.

“If you run the numbers and it turns out it’s all a complete loss, a terrible waste of public money, then ok. But to begrudge them a couple of million euros in public funds before having those numbers, is socially and environmentally irresponsible.”