Calls for 'Leap Card' bike-sharing system for all services in Dublin
Green Party councillors are calling for a single bike-sharing system that unifies all operators in Dublin city.
With the expiration of Dublinbikes' long-standing deal with Dublin City Council coming in September 2027, councillors see this as an opportunity to prepare for a unified bike-sharing system. They hope to develop a single app and account that can bring together services like Dublinbikes, Moby, and Bleeper.
Green Party representatives argue that the current setup, requiring multiple apps, accounts, and logins, creates unnecessary barriers to access. This complexity can then discourage people from choosing cycling as a convenient transport option, as it stands in stark contrast to the way Leap Cards function for bus, trams, and trains across the city.
“With a Leap Card it’s all just one card for each mode of transport, making it so much easier for you to get to your destination,” Cllr Ray Cunningham explained. “The issue with the bike sharing programmes in the city is there’s a barrier to entry that just makes everything so complicated.”
With users required to download multiple apps and provide their bank details to various companies, Cllr Cunningham said they’re less likely to utilise all the different bike sharing options that are available. “If you are used to using Dublinbikes and only use Bleeper once or twice a year you just won’t bother, but if it’s the same account you use for everything then it makes it much easier,” he said.
Chair of the Mobility and Public Realm SPC Cllr Janet Horner said the current system makes even short trips across town unnecessarily convoluted. “On Saturday I had to check three or four different apps and switch between multiple bikes just to complete one journey,” she said.
She believes Dublin needs an integrated transport app that can show users all available bike and transport options in one place. “It’s quite complicated at the moment if you want to use all the various transport apps, just to figure out one journey in the city.
"With the Leap Card, the 90-minute fare made a huge different and helped the idea that it's possible. Now you can take a bus into town for ten minutes and hop on a Luas or DART," she added.
While some bike-sharing services have started integrating with tools like Google Maps, Cllr Horner said the functionality remains limited. She sees the 2027 contract end date as a key opportunity to push for better app integration and clearer information for users.
She pointed to other European cities where all mobility options are displayed in one intuitive system. “People who are used to cities like Amsterdam or London know that there’s a way to make an app that makes moving between transport options easy.”
Cllr Michael Pidgeon has submitted a motion to bring this issue to the upcoming monthly meeting of Dublin City Council, highlighting the need to expand bike-sharing services beyond the city centre. “There’s a huge demand in the city centre, but as you go further out the economic case for their use gets weaker,” he said.
He argued that a clear policy direction is needed to ensure coverage in the areas he jokingly described as “the wasteland where there's virtually nothing.” Cllr Pidgeon also suggested that offering subsidies could help encourage operators to serve less profitable areas.
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