New smart parking in Fingal aims to get rid of abandoned bikes and e-scooters ‘cluttering’ the street
Fingal County Council (FCC) has introduced a new smart parking feature in the county to tackle a rising problem of abandoned e-bikes and the cluttering of sidewalks.
With the new Bluetooth-based feature from Oslo-based company Sparkpark, an e-bike user will not be able to end their trip unless they park their bike within a designated bike rack or “smart bay” and update it on their phone.
The council said it will introduce the initiative across 10 locations in Dublin 15 – Sparkpark uses geofencing technology or a virtual fence area that can detect a bike or scooter within these areas.
The launch comes after Castleknock councillor John Walsh said that constituents were growing “frustrated and annoyed” that companies were not collecting abandoned e-bikes in a timely way at a recent area committee meeting for FCC.
“The industry standard for the removal of abandoned bikes is 36 hours – but companies have told Castleknock Tidy Towns that it can take up to 48 hours to remove an abandoned bike,” he said.
“That’s problematic on a number of levels – if bikes are left around on public walkways, footpaths, and roadways, they are a public health hazard.
"Children, older people and people with mobility difficulties can be particularly badly affected by them.”
At the meeting, FCC management said that it would become the first local authority in Europe to launch Sparkpark to manage bikes and e-scooters in public spaces.
“Most bike shares use regular geofencing on a parking space and it can be accurate from anywhere at five metres to 500 metres within that designated area,” explained council staff.
“A lot of the time, bikes technically look like they’ve been abandoned because the parking zone might not be accurate and users are just looking to finish their trip – this new feature gets rid of that problem.
“Sparkpark uses sensors that are placed over the bike stands and they are accurate to within a centimetre. So you won't be able to finish your trip outside of that space.
“This means means that we'll be able to use it in more areas where we see the pooling of abandoned bikes – in areas that look unkempt, unclean, where the bikes become a hazard.”
Sparkpark has already been trialled in Madrid, Helsinki and Denver where e-bike use is popular.
“In small cities like Oslo or Dublin, people find it hard to walk when these bikes clutter the streets – especially blind people, old people and people using strollers,” Thomas Bråten, co-founder of Sparkpark told the Irish Independent.
“Sparkpark uses an antenna to detect bikes and a digital fence which makes sure a bike has to be parked for your trip to be done. Usually, it’s really hard for people to confirm that they’ve parked their e-bikes.
“This is not just a problem in Dublin or Fingal – we’ve seen it in all cities where e-bikes are popular. You can’t blame the users alone – but this can help helps cities manage them better.”