CYCLING around Dublin city centre takes nerves of steel.

Bikes are bottom of the food-chain on Dublin’s streets — way behind cars, buses, trucks and even pedestrians.

Road surfaces are uneven and patchy, cycle lanes are the product of bad planning — they are often squashed in alongside bus lanes and in many cases end without warning — and cyclists get little or no respect from motorists.

Bike crime is rampant and a recent survey by dublincycling.ie suggests that as many as 20,000 bicycles are stolen in Dublin every year, a number that has doubled since 2009. A whopping 96 per cent of those are never recovered and this alarming stat doesn’t take into account the amount of two-wheelers vandalised beyond use while locked on the streets.

Despite that, the numbers of people cycling in the city has been on the rise for most of this decade.

The Cycle to Work Scheme, which sees the Government fund half the price of a worker’s new ride up to the value of €1,000 and throw in over €100 for safety equipment, has contributed to this increase. So too has the Dublin Bikes scheme. Dublin Bikes is a shared bikes scheme, with users signing up for a €20 annual subscription. They can then take a bike from any of the dozens of stands around town and use them for free — so long as they pop them back in another stand within half an hour.

Since Dublin Bikes opened for business in 2009 there has been over 7 million individual rentals, there are over 42,000 long-term subscribers and on one day — June 12, 2014 — a record breaking 11,096 journeys were made.

According to Dublin City Council, who keep records of this sort of thing, there has been a leap in the number of cyclists on the roads commuting to work daily.

In 2004 just 3,941 people cycled to and from their jobs in town and that jumped to nearly 10,000 last year — the highest figure since the council began keeping records in 1997.

It should hardly be a surprise so that there has been a boom in the bike sales and repairs business too, with new shops opening all over Dublin.

And not all of them just want to get you in the door, take your money and send you back on your way as quickly as possible.

Another truly different bike shop is Rothar, which was started in 2008 by Anne Bedos, a French-born, long-time Dublin resident with an interest in cycling, sustainability and community development.

Bedos graduated with a degree in political science and ended up working in the community development area. From there she made the leap into the world of business, opening up her first branch of Rothar in Phibsboro seven years ago. Since then outlets on Fade Street and Dun Laoighre have been added.

Rothar was and remains, first and foremost, a community-based venture. The business refurbishes and repairs second-hand bicycles for resale, offers bike repairs, and lessons in both bike repairs and city centre cycling.

Nearly all of the staff are volunteers, most of them arrive at Róthar unemployed and many of them come from troubled backgrounds. The idea, which has been an enormous success, has been to train them as bicycle mechanics and give them a new skill to help them re-enter the workforce.

Between them the three branches sustain six full-time staff and a team of volunteers. Over the past five years Róthar has helped to train over 400 people as either bicycle mechanics or baristas (their Fade Street outlet is also a cafe).

Because Róthar deals only in second-hand bikes it recycles, reduces landfill and encourages sustainability.

“My idea was to make cycling in Dublin more accessible,” said Bedos. “Most of our staff are volunteers and many of them have had a rough time of it. Working in Róthar gives them a reason to get up in the morning and creates a supportive environment for them to learn new skills in.”