Derry is ‘ripe’ for civic bike scheme, says Department for Infrastructure transport policy director Liz Loughran

This is the view of Liz Loughran, the director of transport policy at the Department for Infrastructure, who said Derry is a leading candidate for a similar scheme to the successful Belfast Bikes.

During a briefing of the Stormont Infrasturcture Committee Ms. Loughran said Derry has a big enough population to justify a city-wide fleet of jump-on, jump-off bikes.

“I think that the Department put some capital start-up money into the Belfast scheme. I cannot remember how much, but it was not a huge amount. The council contracts somebody to run the scheme for it. You need a reasonable population density to run those schemes. Derry is clearly ripe for one, particularly if you could manage to use e-bikes in the scheme,” she said.

Anne Madden, policy and media adviser with the charity Sustrans, which campaigns to make cycling and walking easier and more attractive for citizens, told the committee that a consultation on a bike scheme did take place in Derry in 2016.

“An e-bike share scheme was considered by Derry council. It did a feasibility study, but I do not know what happened to that. I think that, due to budget constraints, it was shelved, at least for the time being. Certainly, an e-bike share scheme is of great interest, given that there is hilly terrain there,” she said.

This rang a bell with committee member Andrew Muir, who recognised the notoriously hilly character of Derry’s city centre streets, some of which have more severe gradients than a Hors Category climbs of the Tour de France.

“Getting up Shipquay!” joked the North Down Alliance MLA, about Derry’s most famous street that a study by the Ulster Medical Society from 2011 calculated runs to ‘180 metres in length and ascends 30 metres yielding a gradient of 1 in 6 (17 per cent)’.

Under the Belfast Bikes scheme there are 47 docking stations and over 300 bikes. A consultation did take place in Derry and Strabane to gauge public demand for ‘conventional bikes, electric bikes and satellite stations outside the city centre and in Donegal and Strabane’ but nothing as yet has been forthcoming.

During the same evidence session Caroline Bloomfield, director of Sustrans, said the recent shift towards the promotion of more sustainable transport has been a positive development.

“It was great to see the rapid progress that the Department made in pop-up infrastructure. We saw that on the Dublin Road and Grosvenor Road in Belfast, at the quay in Londonderry and with some pedestrianisation in the Cathedral Quarter. That was all really positive, and it happened really fast,” she said.

The reinvention of the old Waterside railway station as a North-West Transport Hub provides further scope for progress, according to Ms. Bloomfield, who said: “We are keen to see the hub in Derry being used. The facility has been built. The revenue funding is needed to run it as an information centre, running led rides, behaviour change programmes, bike maintenance and all that. We are really keen to be able to do that.”