“We want to get people out of the default habit of jumping in the car for every trip”

As the founder of Bleeper, the Dublin-based bike sharing venture, Hugh Cooney, FCA, is playing a crucial role in supporting and promoting sustainable travel in the nation’s capital

A 2016 trip to China prompted a career change for Chartered Accountant Hugh Cooney who would go on to launch Bleeper, his Dublin-based dockless bike rental start-up, the following year.

“It was when I was in China that I saw the world’s first standalone bike-sharing scheme,” Cooney explains. 

“Up until then, it was all bikes at fixed locations. These standalone bikes each had smart locks which were opened by an app. I really liked the concept, and I spent the next four months or so looking at how to bring it to Ireland.”

Path to accountancy

His foray into sustainable entrepreneurship wasn’t Cooney’s first career shift. Prior to his 2016 trip to China, he had already lived in Shanghai for five years, working for property developer Treasury Holdings, before returning home to train as a Chartered Accountant.

“I moved back to Ireland in 2010. The jobs market was tough at the time due to the global financial crisis. I didn’t want to stick with the property business and decided to add a qualification to my CV. I had always been interested in accountancy and had studied it at college,” he says.

“I saw that Chartered Accountants Ireland had launched its Elevation Programme in 2009 to enable people to become Chartered Accountants without a training contract. 
“I thought it would be perfect for me and signed up for it in 2010. I got a job in PwC’s corporate finance division, did my Final Accounting Exams in 2013 and became a qualified Chartered Accountant.”

A subsequent role with KPMG saw Cooney working on aspects of the Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC) administration. 

“I joined KPMG in 2014 and worked on the sale of IBRC non-performing loans in their transaction services division. We had to get the loan book into a condition where buyers were happy with the information provided,” he says.

Then came that lightbulb moment in China and the launch of Cooney’s Bleeper business: “I left KPMG in April 2017 and Bleeper opened for business soon after,” he says.

The birth of Bleeper

The name for Bleeper came to Cooney one day as he was walking past the Luas stop on Dublin’s Harcourt Street. 

“I heard the ‘ding ding’ sound of the Luas. The bikes make a bleep sound when they are unlocked, so I decided to call it Bleeper.”

Start-up finance came from a mix of sources. “At the start, I had a joint venture with a Chinese company. They contributed the bikes and I raised money from friends and family as well. We started with a thousand bikes and the Chinese company also made the software we used.”

Having the bikes, software and finance in place was just the beginning, however. It’s not possible to simply start a bike-sharing business in a city like Dublin without some form of permit or licence. 

For Cooney, this ultimately came down to the introduction of a set of bylaws by Dublin City Council. 

“Dublin city centre is so complex and there is such competition for road space, Dublin City Council needed to put some rules around it,” he explains, paying tribute to the speed with which council officials and elected members of the Strategic Policy Committee approved the bylaws. 

“It usually takes a few years, but they started working on the bylaws in June 2017 and they were approved the following December.”

The council then ran a competition for two licences, one of which was awarded to Bleeper. “We were allowed to put our first bike in the Dublin City Council administrative area in June 2018,” Cooney says.

Regular Bleeper users can buy a pass, while less frequent users can pay as they go. The pay-as-you-go rate is €1 to unlock the bike and four cent per minute thereafter. 

“Our average trip is 17 minutes, and most people pay us €1.68. Under the bylaws, the bikes have to be locked to a public bike rack,” Cooney explains.

“We are fined if they’re not locked to the racks, and we pass that on to the customer concerned. There is a chain on the bike which they use to lock it to the rack. Compliance is very good—less than one percent of users don’t follow the rules.”

Since its launch, Bleeper has grown to include electric bike leasing and sales divisions. “People can lease a bike just like a car,” Cooney says. 

“They pay by the week and can give it back at a week’s notice. We found that some customers want to buy an electric bike, but they are not cheap. The entry level is €2,000 and they can go right up to €5,000. 

“We opened a shop on Lower Bridge Street and people can come in and take a bike for a test ride before they buy. Business is good and we’ve been profitable for the last couple of years. We are growing revenue every year and hope to continue on that path.”

Mobility Partnership Ireland

Bleeper was one of the founding members of Mobility Partnership Ireland (MPI)—a coalition of shared transport providers launched four years ago—and Cooney was recently elected as MPI Chair for the year ahead. 

“MPI started with three member firms, including ourselves, Moby and Yuko. We had realised that all commercial operators in the sustainable transport space were meeting the same State officials. It was time-consuming and inefficient. We decided to come together as a collective for lobbying purposes and to promote sustainable transport generally,” Cooney says.

Definitions of sustainable transport can vary. “For me, it is anything that is not a single passenger car journey. A car with four people in it isn’t unsustainable. Anything that is not a single occupancy car journey can be sustainable.

“If you read the Climate Action Plan, the goal is to enable 500,000 daily sustainable travel journeys by 2030. It’s not realistic to ask people to give up their cars. People have lots of reasons to hold onto their cars. 

“But, if it’s a sunny day, we can get them to ask themselves if they need to drive to work that day. It’s not about whether people have a car or an electric vehicle. It’s about the amount of time they use it.”

Promoting sustainable transport

Cooney believes more should be done to promote the sustainable travel targets set out in the Climate Action Plan.

“I don’t see the Government advertising their Climate Action Plan target for sustainable journeys. They need to get out there and break the target down into smaller steps,” he says.

Commercially operated sustainable transport services should be supported as part of the this, Cooney adds.

 “A lot of people think public transport is publicly owned and funded but there are lots of alternative commercial providers,” he says. 

“It needs a bit of a shift in mindset. All of the incentives and subsidies tend to go to publicly owned services, but more consideration needs to be given to commercially operated sustainable transport services.”

Since its launch four years ago, MPI has grown to eight member firms, including Aircoach and FreeNow. 

“Our plan is to work closely with the Minister for Transport and the National Transport Authority as one group. We want to break down the ‘us and them’ mentality that currently exists,” Cooney says.

“We can easily get to the 500,000 trips target in sustainable transport if we all work together, and I believe we can get way more than that if commercially operated sustainable transport services are supported.

“We want to work with the government to get more people out of the default habit of jumping in the car for every trip.”

It isn’t always easy to get these ideas across to Government, however. “The process of making pre-budget submissions is very costly and time-consuming for businesses,” Cooney points out. 

“You don’t get written answers or clarity on why proposals have not been accepted. There should be a downloadable template on the Department of Finance website. That would make it easier for businesses to make submissions and easier for the department to run the process. 

“It’s not unreasonable to ask that they make it easier and to give people feedback on their submissions. We have put forward ways of encouraging people to use alternatives to their cars but haven’t got any response.”

On a more positive note, Cooney sees lots of potential for Bleeper to grow. 

“Less than six percent of people in Dublin commute to work on a bike. In Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it’s closer to 50 percent. The government target for Ireland is 15 percent. Our goal is to play a big role in reaching that target,” he says.

Interview by Barry McCall