News
Notice:
Rothar will be closed exceptionnally on Monday Sept 6th. We will be open as usual on Tuesday Sept 7th. If you have any questions please email us at info@rothar.ie
June 2010
ROTHAR 2010 KIDS BIKE SWAP
When: June 13th, 2010 – 1pm to 5pm
Where: Shanganagh Park, Shankill
Come on down to Shanganagh Park and trade up or down for the next
bike. Get there early to get a good deal!
How does it work?
Rothar's Kids Bike Swap event helps to facilitate the flow of affordable
bicycles within the community while simultaneously preventing fully
functional bikes from ending up in local landfills. This event provides
families with a cost-effective opportunity that allows them to trade a child's bike that has been outgrown for a larger bike that provides both a
better fit and ride for their child's next summer season of riding! Families
looking to buy a bike, but do not have a bike to trade in, are welcome to
come after 3 pm.
Throughout the year Rothar receives bike donations, many of which fuel
the Kids Bike Swap event in the Spring. Through their full-service repair
shop and staff of volunteer mechanics Rothar is able to maintain, repair
and overhaul many of the bikes that come through their doors. At the swap, each bike that is brought to be swapped is assigned a trade value, which can then be applied towards a “new” bike. If the chosen bike's value exceeds that of the trade value the “customer” is responsible for the difference.
Rothar is a non for profit bike shop that reuses and recycles old bicycles
reducing waste while providing a sustainable mode of transport and
community based education to provide social inclusion.
This event has been organised by Rothar with support from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council does not accept any responsibility of any nature or description arising out of any claims or disputes or breach of contract arising out of any activity concerning the Rothar - Shanganagh Bike Project.
April 2010
The Lower Deck, Rothar Fundraiser Gig -
April 10th from 8pm
Lineup:
Owensie
http://www.myspace.com/owensiemusic
Yeh Deadlies
http://www.myspace.com/yehdeadlies
Groom
http://www.myspace.com/groomtheband
Betamax Format
http://www.myspace.com/betamaxformat
Doors: €6 before 9pm/€8 after - Raffle on the night, win a bike!
February 2010
Rothar will be closed on Monday Feb 1st for stock control. We will have extended opening hours from Tuesday Feb 2nd.Rothar will open from the following hours:
10AM - 6PM Monday - Saturday and 10AM - 8PM on Thursdays
November 2009
Bike maintenance class on December 5th!
Learn the basics of bike maintenance and repair.
Bookings: 086 8956157
We will guide and instruct you in the basics of looking after and making small repairs to your bicycle.
Learn how to mend punctures and keep your brakes working and pick up some useful safety tips
November 2009
Bike Mainteance workshop
Learn the basics of bike maintenance and repair
Sunday 22nd November 2009 2pm - 6pm
Price: €30 > 10% discount for Cultivate Members.
Location: Cultivate, The Greenhouse, 17 St Andrews Street, Dublin 2.
Bookings: 01 674 5773
Experts from Rothar will guide and instruct you in the basics of looking after and making small repairs to your bicycle.
Learn how to mend punctures and keep your brakes working and pick up some useful safety tips.
November 2009
Rothar has a new home!
We have secured new premises! We should be in shortly - the new address will be
171 Phibsborough road, Dublin 7, by Doyle's corner. We will post here when we have sucessfully moved...
October 2009
A spokeswoman for re-cycling
The Irish Time - Saturday, October 31, 2009
MICHAEL KELLY
A friend of mine found a mint-condition mountain bike on a skip near his house recently – a prime example of “throwawayism”. According to Social Entrepreneur Ireland award winner Anne Bedos, it's quite common for people to throw good bikes away. Rather than just get mad about it, Bedos decided to do something – she believes that salvaging abandoned bikes is an environmental imperative, and can also be used as an instrument of social change.
Her bicycle recycling organisation Rothar saves bikes from the scrap heap and works with at-risk people from Dublin youth groups to fix them up. The spruced-up bikes are then sold at a community-based bicycle shop, typically for less than €100. Genius. www.rothar.ie
October 2009
Source: Metro Ireland, edition 29/10/2009
October 2009
Rothar has a newsletter! If you are interested please send us a request to info@rothar.ie
October 2009
...2009 is definitely a bike year!
Dublin bikes were introduced, the Council is encouraging cycling as an healthy and sustainable alternative to cars, and the amount of cyclists has increased by 4% the past year! On a smaller scale, Rothar has developed since its creation in May 2008 and incredibly so since the opening of the workshop in April 2009.
Also, it has been a very busy summer media wise:The Dubliner and LeCool magazines wrote very positive articles about us, TG4 will air a documentary about Rothar in November, and we are helping Dublin Community TV to put a documentary on cycling together.
Rothar was also present at the Cool Earth Festival in Dun Laoghaire in August and at the Electric Picnic in September in Stradbally. We participated in the SITRIC SOUP (the harvest festival on the street) on October 18th in Stoneybatter and we will launch a wonderful Christmas party with fellow cycling organisations in December.
Finally, we are getting an invaluable help from our volunteers and our partners (DIT, Dublin City Council, Dublin Cycling Campaign, Maynooth University etc) and we are looking into developing more workshops with kids in Dublin.
For those who are new to Rothar, here are the main activities we are proposing at the moment:
- bike recycling
- bike maintenance classes (one every couple of weeks)
- second-hand bike sales
- second-hand parts sales
- cycling classes
- open community workshop where you can avail of tools and space to repair your own bike
What can you do for Rothar?:
- donate a bike
- help fixing bikes
- organise workshops with kids and adults alike
- join our Facebook group: simply search Rothar from your FB page and become a fan!
- spread the word!
June 2009
We are now on Facebook - Feel free to check in here
June 2009
Article from the Event Guide:
ROTHAR - BIKES FOR THE COMMUNITY:
Anne and Stephen from Rothar told me about their venture and it sounds like a great idea! Rothar was formed about a year ago and it is a social enterprise that recycles bicycles. They accept donations of old bicycles from anybody and refurbish the bicycles to put them back on the road. Activities for young people and adults are provided and bike maintenance lessons and cycling lessons are on offer. Rothar sells either the whole refurbished bikes or second hand parts and even jewellery made from recycled bicycle parts is available. A very nice and well structured website on www.rothar.ie is well worth a visit to find out more about this interesting idea. And if you need a bike or have an old bike that you want to get rid of, think of www.rothar.ie.
June 2009
Just to let everyone know that bike sales are on Saturdays now in the workshop from 2 to 6. Many thanks, Anne.
June 2009
The Dubliner magazine, the best of Dublin...
Issue May 2009 - Better way to bicycle
"...Cycling in Dublin, as both a means for transport ans a pastime, is undergoing a resurgence in popularity, exemplified by how difficult it has become to find somewhere to lock one's trusty two-wheeler. Now a community-based project called Rothar aims to further instill our love for environmentally friendly, cheap mode of transport, by making bicycles available to socially and economically disadvantaged groups.
The idea behind Rothar is that unwanted bikes (scrap and otherwise), donated by the public, are taken and tuned-up, rebuilt and recycled, whereupon a new owner is found. Providing training for priority groups is also a key focus, empowering those involved with vocational training in bicycle repairs and maintenance. Newly renovated bikes will also be sold, for as little as €80, at various markets and fairs in Dublin in order to help Rothar cover the costs and overheads of running their workshop..."
SJ
April 2009
The Government recently announced plans to increase the number of cyclists on our streets four-fold by 2020 – but what changes need to be made to encourage more people on to bicycles, FIONA McCANN .
IT'S GOOD for the environment. It's good for your health. More people are doing it than ever before. So how come cycling in Ireland is still such a hard slog?
The Government on Monday launched the National Cycle Policy Framework, with the aim of increasing the number of people in Ireland who cycle every day from 35,000 now to 160,000 in 2020. Recent figures released by Dublin City Council reveal the number of cyclists is steadily climbing, with 8 per cent more on the road last year compared to 2007, and a total increase of 30 per cent between 2003 and 2008.
Yet the amount of bicycle journeys taken in Dublin amounts to 3 per cent of total trips, whether by car, bus or tram. This compares with 30 per cent in Amsterdam.
So why aren't more of us on two wheels? It can't be the expense, given that bicycles are cheaper than cars or public transport, and even more so following the incentive in last winter's Budget offering tax relief on purchases of bicycles up to €1,000. Admittedly the weather is less than ideal, but Dublin is relatively low on steep inclines, and covers a small enough geographical area to make for ideal cycling. Yet if the Government is serious about increasing the numbers on bicycles more than four-fold, the first question to ask is: what's stopping us from getting on our bikes now?
“Our biggest barrier to getting people cycling is perception of risk,” says Ciaran Fallon, Dublin City Council's new cycling officer, the first of his kind in Ireland. “What we want to do is make cycling safer and make it feel safer.”
CYCLE LANES SEEM like a good place to start. According to Fallon, there are already 209km of bicyle lanes in Dublin alone, though a quarter of those are shared with buses. The problem is, they're often on the roads that least require them, have an alarming tendency to disappear without warning and are prone to potholes, which can wreak havoc on a cyclist's sensitive areas. Having to share them with double decker buses renders them largely ineffectual.
“They're not ideal bedfellows,” agrees Fallon of buses and bikes. “There are lots of difficulties, in the sense that buses are stopping very regularly and they're awkward for cyclists.” The Government's new policy promises to retrofit roads and bus lanes to accommodate cycling lanes, but it's no mean feat in a city like Dublin.
“In an ideal world you would segregate the lanes and give everyone their own space,” says Fallon. “But we're dealing with a road pattern that evolved without planning, so we have to work with what we have. If we want cycling to grow in the city, we must reallocate road space for cycling.”
Fine sentiments and a welcome initiative from the Government, but cycle lanes won't solve all the problems facing those braving it by bicycle. And Dublin is only the start. According to Shane Foran, regional spokesman for the cycling campaign group Cyclists.ie, the problems facing cyclists are countrywide. “Certainly in Galway the purpose of cycling facilities is to benefit motorists rather than cyclists,” says Foran. “The cycle lanes that are being put in are dangerous, do make cycling inconvenient, and do make cycling unattractive.”
GETTING TO AND FROM your chosen destination by bicycle can be difficult enough, but finding a place to park is often close to impossible. In Dublin, the few available parking spots are almost always already taken on any given day, nearby fences are festooned with “Bicycles will be removed” signs, and there's usually already a bike or two wrapped around a nearby tree or knocked to the ground. This, Fallon says, is about to change – the council has plans to increase parking facilities for bicycles by 20 per cent by the end of the year. Not only that, but the location of the new parking stands will be decided by cyclists, or indeed anyone who cares to add their suggestions to the forthcoming website Dublin.ie/cycling.
“People can click on it and tell us where they want the cycle stands to go, and we'll aggregate those points and see where the demand is,” says Fallon. Part of the National Cycle Policy Framework also includes a provision for new secure bicycle parks in bus and train stations, as well as adapting trains and buses to carry bicycles.
Such initiatives are welcome and much needed, as are plans to reduce speed limits in certain urban areas and around schools, and to provide shared bicycle schemes. Yet they're unlikely to resolve the biggest problem faced by cyclists: motorists.
“The real problem [for cyclists] is their fellow citizens in cars,” says Fallon. “Most drivers are careful and courteous, but a minority are careless and a really small minority are reckless.” It's the minority that make some cyclists feel that taking to the roads is taking their lives into their hands. How to deal with drivers who simply don't look, or notice, cyclists on the city roads? One solution is to educate potential drivers about how to behave around cyclists, while at the same time ensuring cyclists – currently not required to undergo any formal training before they take to the roads – are trained to use the roads correctly, an initiative outlined in the National Cycle Policy Framework.
As Foran sees it, “there needs to be acknowledgement that the roads infrastructure is there for the entire community and not just as a private race track for those who have bought motorised transport”. According to both Foran and Fallon, the single biggest thing that can be done to increase safety for cyclists on Irish roads is to get on your bicycle. “There's a thing called the safety-in-numbers effect, which argues that the more cyclists a motorist encounters, the more cautious they become in the presence of cyclists,” says Foran. “The rate of accidents among cyclists will go down as the number of cyclists increases.”
THOUGH THIS MAY not resolve the conflicts that arise from motorists and cyclists sharing the roads, it'll certainly sway things in the favour of the pedal-pushing cohort, and might go some way towards making Ireland more cycle friendly, especially given how far we lag behind our European counterparts, say in Amsterdam, where the motorist is automatically deemed at fault in the case of an accident involving a car and a bicycle, or Copenhagen, where more than a third of commuters cycle to work every day.
We even fall behind US cities such as Portland, Oregon, where a reported 3.5 per cent of commuters cycle to work. In fact, such is the popularity of cycling in that city that one lawmaker even proposed introducing a registration fees for cyclists, though without success to date. Is that what the future holds for Irish cyclists? Not if Fallon has anything to do with it. “My thinking is, when I see a cyclist on the road, they're freeing up road space for other motorists, they're reducing congestion, and they're reducing pollution,” he says. “There's a case for paying them rather than penalising them.”
Test run: my journey to work
LIGHTS ON? Check. Helmet? Check (despite some research that suggests it might do me more harm than good). I head out along Oxmantown Road through the side streets of Stoneybatter, most of which have no cycle lanes, but boast little traffic and plenty of room for bicycles.
A passing car pushes me towards the kerb, and forces me to negotiate a ramp that I suspect causes me more discomfort to roll over than the driver in his car seat, but I'm not complaining. Yet.
Once onto Manor Street, I'm in a bus lane, and a bus overtakes me to pull in ahead. Do I stop behind and wait in the exhaust fumes or try to overtake it again? I choose the latter and sweep around the bus without incident (if you discount the broken glass).
Turning the corner onto North King Street, things get hairy. It's one-way traffic but feeding in two different directions. I end up on the left hand side of the right lane, cycling a wobbly line as cars whizz by on both sides. The knowledge that I'm relying on the oncoming driver's visibility is scary, but on the curve into Queen Street I see a bicycle lane. Hurray! Except it ends about 500m later, just where the road narrows and a bit of space would come in handy. Traffic is heavy, and cars press to the kerb, too close to pass until I turn onto Arran Quay, which is one long cycle lane of joy, if you discount the buses and taxis. There's even a fellow cyclist or two, and it finally feels like there's a place for us.
That is until the road markings at Church Street confuse the issue, with the emergence of a third lane for left-turning vehicles. There's a bus idling there without an indicator on, so it's anyone's guess what the driver's intentions are. Reminded that 75 per cent of fatalities involving cyclists are caused by heavy vehicles turning left, I bide my time behind the bus.
Lights change, we're off, and the bus is ahead, pulling in just past the Four Courts to offload passengers. I go to pass it on the outside, but the driver decides to move out as I approach, clearly unaware of my presence, and I'm forced to brake and swerve back in behind it.
I continue to O'Connell Bridge, where in order to turn right I have to get across three lanes of heavy traffic. Putting one hand out to indicate is all very well, but I have to steer as well. A motorist pauses to let me cross in front, and I become better disposed towards cars again. The good cheer lasts until I cross on to D'Olier Street and then it's bus havoc again, and a mystery as to where a cyclist is supposed to be.
I finally make it to the left turn on to Townsend Street, where the road narrows again and I am forced to suck up bus exhausts as I wait for the lights to change before I reach the Irish Times building.
Plans to continue around Westland Row and across the canal to compare the behaviour of drivers and the presence of cycle lanes on both sides of the river are abandoned: I've inhaled enough bus fumes for one day.
Cycling stats:
35,000 The number of people who cycle daily in Ireland
3 Percentage of total daily journeys in Ireland that are taken by bicycle
209 Kilometres of bicycle lanes in Dublin
25 Percentage of bicycle lanes that are shared with buses
1.9 Percentage of adults that use a bike to go to work, according to the 2006 Census
April 2009
Many a female cyclist will have gone into her local bike shop, been blinded by the racks of fluorescent fabrics and wondered if it would ever be possible to buy cycling gear that wouldn't make her look as if she had been attacked by a highlighter pen. Why, she may have wondered, did it seem beyond the imagination of designers to come up with garments suited to the demands of the cyclist that didn't risk the wearer being mistaken for a member of the team mending the water mains?
For the past few years, a growing number of designers have quietly been doing just that. And very soon, their work is going mainstream. From Thursday, Topshop , that barometer of the nation's style, will be stocking cycling accessories in its flagship Oxford Street store. It will be selling panniers, saddlebags, retro cycling caps and much more. All are designed by Cyclodelic (cyclodelic.wordpress.com), an all-female design company based in east London, which "believes that girls who cycle don't have to forfeit fashion over function".
The Cyclodelic Topshop concession, which could be rolled out nationally and even internationally if all goes well, is part of a resurgence of women's cycling. Last summer, Her Gear, which claims to be the UK's only shop catering exclusively for female cyclists - "an alternative to the greasy fingernailed, Masonic, very macho environment you find in a traditional bike shop," according to owner Stephen Peters - opened in Kensington, west London. Recently you had Duffy wobbling around on a bike in the Diet Coke advert, model Agyness Deyn is rarely photographed without her vintage steed, and last year Courteney Cox presented Jennifer Aniston with a Chanel bike for her birthday. The sustainable transport charity Sustrans has recently launched bikebelles.org.uk , a website designed to encourage women to get in the saddle. And last month, the London Cycling Campaign organised Birds on Bikes, a night-time ride taking in locations linked with the achievements of women in the capital. Plus, of course, there was the stunning success of the women from the British Olympic cycling team in Beijing. But despite all this oestrogen-fuelled activity, only a minority of women cycle.
According to new research from Sustrans, 79% of British women do not cycle at all even though 43% have access to a bike. It is a sad state of affairs given that cycling was a key part of the women's movement. Taking to two wheels liberated women from their cumbersome corsets and petticoats by allowing them to get from A to B in "rational dress", without their husbands. And though cycling these days is more about emancipation from the public transport network than the male overlords, the fight to dress well in the saddle goes on.
Article courtesy of Helen Pidd, The Guardian, April 6th 2009
March 2009
Rothar will be present at the coming Flea Market on March 29th. If you need a second hand bike, look no further! The Dublin Flea is held at, The Coop, Newmarket, Dublin 8 “a bizarre bazaar of vintage clothing, bric-a-brac and what nots in Dublin's city centre”.
About the flea market, see http://www.dublinflea.blogspot.com
For more info, please contact us.
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Mission Statement:
Scarce resources, environmental destruction and social inequalities are key challenges in today's society. Rothar reuses and recycles scrap bicycles, reducing waste, providing a sustainable mode of transport and community-based education to promote social inclusion. Our organisation advocates for self-empowerment of disadvantaged communities by promoting vocational training and eco-friendly mobility.
Contact us - Email: info@rothar.ie | Telephone: 086 8956157
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Contact us - Email: info@rothar.ie | Telephone: (01) 8602615 | 086 8956157
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