Carlow Town listed as one of 5 areas for inclusion in Mobility Hub pilot project

Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien today published a new National Policy Statement on Shared Mobility and the Provision of Hubs, along with a report on the public consultation process that informed its development.

Carlow Town has been named as one of the five candidates for the Mobility Hub pilot project. It was named along with Cork City, Dundalk, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, and Sligo Town.

The Statement outlines a path for the expansion of shared mobility hubs and services in Ireland. Shared mobility hubs offer people the opportunity to hire a range of transport modes - bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-cargo bikes and electric vehicles - on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis. They also offer people a wide range of choice in how they make journeys, and support the Programme for Government promise to invest in a range of transport options to enhance connectivity across the country.

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Minister O’Brien said: “The development of mobility hubs offers enormous potential for a genuinely new approach to transport – a people-centred approach that offers many affordable options for a range of everyday journeys.

“For example, shared mobility can complement public transport services by facilitating last-mile connections to destinations. This Government is fully committed to promoting and expanding these services and has pledged to establish mobility hubs in each local authority area in the country. The new Policy Statement is an important step towards supporting that goal.”

Alongside the Policy Statement, the NTA, supported by the Department, is developing a Mobility Hubs pilot project under the Climate Action Fund. This will test how a dense network of hubs might be designed and operated on a long-term basis and under the best conditions for sustainable travel.

As part of the pilot, around 300 hubs will be provided across five urban locations. While the business case for the project is still in development, Minister O’Brien today announced the five candidate locations for this project as part of a stakeholder event to inform the development of the pilot.

The Minister said: “The expansion of shared mobility services is an important part of this Government’s commitments in transport. Alongside the Policy Statement, I am delighted to announce that Carlow town, Cork city, Dundalk, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, and Sligo town have been identified as candidate locations for inclusion in a Mobility Hub pilot project. I would like to thank the selected local authorities for their work to date – and to commend their enthusiasm for participating in the project from the outset.”

The hub networks envisaged in these locations will have a similar look, feel and operating model to the shared micromobility schemes that will be in place later this year in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. These will replace the existing Transport for Ireland (TfI) public bikes schemes.