Barry: takes one of the 450 bikes for a trip to Jervis St

It's 9am on Talbot Street in Dublin, and a man in a high-visibility vest is unlocking a Dublin bike from one of the 40 bike stations in the city. He'd rather not speak to us though. Why? He answers surprisingly sheepishly: "Em, I was responsible for getting them in." It's then that the Sunday Tribune notices the Dublin City Council logo on the vest. He cycles off, while a steady stream of commuters lock and unlock their free modes of transport as they make their way to and from surrounding office buildings. A day in the life of a Dublin bike sees people of many nationalities and professions make use of what has been a resoundingly successful project by Dublin City Council and the advertiser JCDecaux.


The project launched in September, charging €10 for annual use, and €2 for a three-day ticket. While pessimists insisted the bikes would be vandalised or stolen, and Dublin couldn't possibly replicate the success of the project in Paris, Brussels, Vienna and other European cities, the exact opposite scenario materialised. Instead, cyclists across the city adopted the scheme with resounding enthusiasm. Over 18,000 people have now subscribed, making it the most successful city bike-sharing project to date. Everyone from city-centre baristas to RTE newsreaders, students to council workers hop on and hop off, with the average usage time of a bike 16.5 minutes. Six trucks travel around the city to shift bikes from station to station, making sure that as many as possible have bikes available.


Although it's difficult to get an exact figure of how many people use the bikes every day, at the time of writing, there had been 182,154 journeys made on Dublin bikes since they launched on 13 September. Most journeys take place during the morning between 8am and 9am as people make their way to work, and at 5pm to 6pm in the evening, a time that shows the highest peak in bike usage. There's also a lunchtime peak between 1pm and 2pm.


Unfortunately, a useful iPhone application by the company Fusio, which provided real-time information as to where bikes and spaces were at each station, was withdrawn when JCDecaux threatened Fusio with legal action after the application was downloaded by 3,000 iPhone owners, somewhat marring the collective sharing experience.


On every bike, of course, is a person, so we set to work to identify some of these 18,000 people, or at least, a number of people using the same bike on one average winter day. To do it, we needed to follow the same bike over the course of eight hours, an arduous task unless you're inclined to hang around bike stations jumping out at unsuspecting commuters. Instead, we adopted a message-in-a-bottle approach, storing a note in the bike's basket asking to call a number if they found it. And in the age of elaborate digital connectivity, this ancient approach actually worked.


First up was Yan Li from Balbriggan, who was off to work, taking a bike from the Talbot Street station at 9.10am. He unlocked bike number 00142. Li works for an IT company, and the bikes save him from a lengthy walk in the mornings. "I use it every day. Before it started, I checked where the stations were going to be, and checked the website. It's just €10 a year," he said. "Where I live, it's very convenient for me. I come from Balbriggan, get off the train at Tara and get a bike to Camden Street where I work." Li took our note, and cycled off to work.


Next, Dublin being as small as it is, we get a call from a friend, the artist Will St Leger. "Did you leave some note on a Dublin bike?" Why yes, we did. Since Yan Li picked up the bike on its first leg, it has been on a mystery journey from Camden Street to Central Bank, which we aren't able to pinpoint. But at Central Bank, St Leger found lucky number 00142, and called the number on the note. He brought it to Seán O'Casey Bridge near his studio, from where he was preparing for an exhibition that evening. We meet him at 2.30pm. "I love them, I really do," St Leger says of the bikes when we catch up with him. "It's not just because they're free, I like them because we all share them. This will be the ethos for the next five years. People are sharing food, sharing accommodation. Sharing is the new economy." Indeed, St Leger's exhibition that night involves sharing images via Bluetooth.


His attitude towards how the bikes are fitting into the capital's new outlook is telling. A few years ago, when hundreds of thousands of new cars were being registered on the city's roads, sharing bikes would probably have been looked down upon as something for the little people. Why cycle when you have a BMW in the garage? But today, with the city being cleared of excess through the collapsing of businesses, the bankrupting of the overstretched and the unemployment of the overpaid, the bike scheme seems to resonate even more. The pooling of services and resources seems to be the smartest way to go.


At 3.05pm, our bike is unlocked by Simon from Lithuania. He works as a barista at the northside end of Seán O'Casey Bridge, at Coffee Angel. "I've been using them for about a month," he tells us. "They're very good, very convenient. It's my main mode of transport because I live in Smithfield." With the note secured again to the bike's basket, Simon is off home, and our bike is on the way to its fifth station stop of the day.


Fifty minutes later, a man called Barry texts the number on the note to say he's just picked up the bike at Smithfield and left it at the Jervis Street station, and 20 minutes after that, Will Irvine calls to say he just cycled on our bike from Jervis Street to Baggot Street Bridge, its final resting place for the night, as the end of its busy working day draws to a close. Due to the demand and success of the scheme, the city council recently announced that it is set to expand the project beyond its current level of 450 bikes and 40 stations.


A spokesman for Dublin City Council said "there are no bikes reported stolen or vandalised," a remarkable achievement, and testament to Dublin residents' respect for the scheme.