Dublin’s Lord Mayor Oisín Quinn officially opened the first of the capital’s new dublinbike stations on Thursday 28^th November. He was joined for the launch at North Wall Quay station near the Convention Centre, Dublin 1 by City Manager Owen Keegan and JCDecaux Ireland Managing Director Joanne Grant.  JCDecaux operates dublinbikes on Dublin City Council’s behalf.

“Today Dublin City Council and JCDecaux are announcing the opening of the excellent new dublinbikes station with 40 bike stands at North Wall Quay in the Docklands. We are also opening a new station today at Deverell Place, off Gardiner Street, and an extension to the popular Talbot Street station. These are the first of 58 new dublinbikes stations which will open between now and July 2014”, said Lord Mayor Quinn who also announced that an extra 50 dublinbikes would be available from today and that an additional eight stations will be open by mid December. 

This first batch of new stations will be located at:

• Clonmel Street                                                                                         
• York Street West                                                                       
• York Street East
• Great Strand Street
• North Wall Quay at Excise Walk
• Fenian Street
• Grattan Street
• Mount Street Lower

Joanne Grant Managing Director of JCDecaux Ireland said “we are delighted to commence the expansion of the dublinbikes network which will integrate the scheme even further into the fabric of Dublin city. We would like to thank our subscribers for their support of dublinbikes and the people of Dublin for recognising the positive impact that dublinbikes has had on city life here in the capital. We intend to build on this and to continue to deliver a world class bike scheme to the city of Dublin.

Today’s opening was the first part of a €35m expansion which will see the existing dublinbikes network increase to 102 stations and 1,500 bikes by July 2014. Critical to the expansion has been the support of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport who have provided capital funding of €5.2 million in 2013 through the National Transport Authority.

The Deverell Place Station has 30 stands and an extra 20 stands have been added to Talbot Street, bringing its capacity to 40. Larger stations are a feature of the expansion and will improve capacity considerably during morning, lunch and evening periods of peak demand. Extra bikes will be introduced in batches as new stations open.

Members have taken over six million dublinbikes journeys since the scheme transformed public transport in the capital in September 2009.