The Galway City Bike Share Scheme has been labelled "an extremely poor service", suffering from "a lack of maintenance", and which is in need of "a full review".
This is the view of Social Democrats candidate for Galway City East, Owen Hanley, who is calling for a "full review on the performance" of the Bike Share scheme and the money being spent on it.
Mr Hanley has alleged that the Bike Scheme costs €23,000 a month to run in the city, but that many stations, "particularly on Lough Atalia Road and Newtownsmith", have been "out of service" for some time. "Schemes like these work all over the world but Galway's usage is suffering from poor service, poor rollout, and poor cycling infrastructure," he said.
Mr Hanley is calling on the Galway City Council to undertake a city wide roll-out of stations in order to make the scheme accessible to estates and communities. "Once again," he said, "transport schemes not based on cars are treated as afterthoughts in this city."
In response, a spokesperson for City Hall said the issue of expanding the scheme, especially into Salthill, has been raised in the council and that there is "strong support" for such a move. While the maintenance of the stations is held by an external contractor, the issue will be raised with the council's roads and transportations department.
