It's a Saturday night in Galway, and Fabio Oliveira is standing beside his rickshaw at the junction of Shop Street and Mainguard Street, looking for a fare. The 34-year-old Brazilian has lived in Ireland for three years, but he's relatively new to this game.
Having left his previous job a few months back, he’s been working on rickshaws for about three weeks. It pays the bills, he says, and covers the cost of his English classes but it’s tough work and the income is anything but steady. “Some weeks you can make €300, some weeks you can do €100. It’s never the same.”
Bicycle rickshaws have scuttled along Galway’s pedestrianised streets for seven years but a city council decision to stop renewing their licences will see them take their final trip later this month. For the 30 to 40 workers who earn their keep shuttling tipsy revellers from pub to club to chipper, the future is uncertain.
Down on Quay Street, Edgar Barazs, from Romania, says he has been working on rickshaws for the best part of six years. “It’s a good job but I don’t really like it,” he says. “If I had the possibility to work something else, I would work something else.”
But in the absence of other employment this is his living, and if the council manages to take the bikes off the streets, “it will be heartbreak . . . For many of us this is a full-time job. You’re living from this. What we make in the summer, we spend in the winter. In the winter, it’s very slow, cold, and it’s very hard to make money.”
For many, the bikes are a fun, convenient diversion, but they have also come in for criticism from residents, businesses and local representatives. “The way they’ve been operating in the last number of years, they could and have been seen by many as somewhat of a nuisance and almost dangerous, particularly late at night,” says Michael Crowe, the Fianna Fáil councillor who tabled the motion to discontinue licensing.
In 2010, Galway City Council attempted to regulate rickshaws by obliging operators to hold a licence for each bike. The system came under review a year ago, with the council inviting submissions from the public, businesses, and other interested parties. "The overwhelming response," Crowe says, "was they shouldn't be operating within a pedestrianised zone."
A private company, Promocabs, holds 17 of the 20 licences in Galway. Cyclists rent the bikes at €60 a week from the company’s garage on Dominick Street, and then ply the town looking for fares.
The bikes don't pose much competition to the taxis that crawl along the city's roads: the average journey tends to be no more than a few hundred metres and the going rate is €3 a trip. They are more of a novelty than a transport service.
In the saddle
It's just after 1am and beads of sweat are forming on Seamus Keane's forehead as he comes to a halt at Eyre Square. "It's tiring enough," he says, "but this is actually a decent bike. There doesn't seem to be much of a hill there at the top of Shop Street but you feel it when you've got a bad bike under you." Keane, from Co Mayo, is one of the few Irish people working the rickshaws. He reckons about 80 per cent of the drivers in Galway are eastern European. "There's about three or four Irish fellas doing it, I'd say."
He and some friends started in September, to make some money during college. The NUI Galway student likes the work. “To be honest I thought it would be a rotten job,” he says. “But it’s great banter when you’re out and about and chatting up women and having the craic.”
He would be sad to see the bikes go, but he’ll be finished college soon so whatever happens won’t affect him too much. Instead, his thoughts turn to “the lad that we rent them off. He’s left with 15 rickshaws; I don’t know what he’s going to do with them.”
Indeed, the owner of Promocabs, Leszek Majewski, doesn't know exactly what he's going to do with them. "I may just sell them and close my business down, and let the city council deal with this illegal problem, because I'm sick of the situation," he says.
Majewski has been lobbying the council for years about unlicensed operators. “Everything would be fine if city council enforced the law against the illegal drivers,” he says, adding that there are too many rickshaws operating on the streets of Galway. “It looks like a mess and nobody can control it, really.”
The council has proposed allowing the bikes to operate on the roads but, Majewski points out, 80 per cent of the business comes from the pedestrianised areas. He believes rickshaws should be allowed on Shop Street within a certain window of time, like commercial-goods vehicles do in the mornings. But so far the council has rejected this suggestion.
Back in the city, it’s 2am and the clubs have stopped letting people in. The streets are calm: a busker tunes up, waiting for the crowds; flower sellers start to circle, ready to swoop on any amorous couples trying to make a sneaky getaway.
Then at 2.30am, the clubs start to disgorge hordes of customers, and the streets begin to fill up once again. Bicycle bells ring through the air as bikes jostle for space and passengers.
One driver trundles down High Street, goaded on by his two male passengers, gesticulating wildly as they pass a parked Garda van on the junction of Middle Street and Quay Street.
At the other end of town, Eyre Square, a convoy of three rickshaws – with Fabio Oliveira out in front – pulls up at an ATM. A pink-clad hen party alights to get some money. It’s all giggles and smiles but for Oliveira it hasn’t been a great night. “Too quiet,” he sighs. “Lots of people but no rides.”
He says a lot of passengers are nice but he sometimes meets “very rude people. They treat you like a horse“. When they’re drunk, he adds, “they show more of their personality”.
He‘s tired now, it’s after 3am, and it’s time to go home. “It’s okay,” he says, “it’s part of the job”. But for how much longer?
