Three Irish cities to get 'mobility hubs' next year, Eamon Ryan confirms
Eamon Ryan, Leader of the Green Party and Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications
Eamon Ryan has revealed that three cities will get communal “mobility hubs” where they access electric cars and electric bikes next year.
However, the cities have not yet been decided as the project will go to tender early in the new year.
Some €40m will be invested in the project.
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The Green Party leader explained that a similar project was initially launched in Finglas two years ago.
Minister Ryan: “We’re going to go big on these. We expect to deliver about 200 of them. We’ll start in three cities. It will cost about €40m. We’ll draw that down as the Climate Fund.
“It’ll be for a lot of urban areas, a lot of people in the city centre or inner suburbs are [finding it] hard to put in an e-charger [if] you don’t have car parking in the front, you don’t have an easy way of charging it.
“So putting in these mobility hubs will allow a lot of people living in the city or suburbs to have access to a car, car-sharing and e-bike sharing and charging scheme.
“We will focus on three cities first because you need the concentration of numbers so then you’re not going to be cut short.”
Minister Ryan said that the three cities where the project will be rolled out have not yet been chosen but that a business case will be sent from the Department of Transport to the Department of Climate, both of which he is the senior minister for, in the first few weeks of the new year.
In Finglas, there are four to five cars and between eight and 10 bikes so it is expected that it will be on a similar scale.
However, the new chargers will only be available to those using shared cars.
Minister Ryan continued: “Cars are parked for 95 per cent of the time, it’s very expensive.
“If you can have easy access to cars on the car sharing scheme like that fully charged, I think it’ll be a game changer.”
The project will go out to tender and will be operational by the end of 2024.