There is suddenly lots of money around for active travel projects and even for local authorities to recruit more expertise in this area. However, the standards of ‘public consultation’ vary widely across local authorities, and participatory design/co-design, widely used in other jurisdictions, is lacking here. This often means that money is squandered on unsuitable projects, or worse, that projects are cancelled or dropped because of public objections.

The focus of this webinar is to:

• Consider what is effective public consultation for active transport-related projects
• Give examples of best practice from Ireland, and
• Explore the barriers and challenges involved.

Damien Ó Tuama (National Cycling Coordinator with Cyclist.ie and An Taisce) and Fergus Galvin (Director of Transport Services, Waterford City & County Council) will briefly outline the key challenges facing their organisations with regard to public consultations.

This will be followed by presentations from Sandy McGroarty from the Cork Transport Mobility Forum explaining how a Transport Mobility Forum can be a best practice model of stakeholder engagement; Jeanette Fitzsimmons from UCC explaining various approaches to public consultation and participatory design, using examples from Ireland and elsewhere; and Giulia Vallone from Cork Co. Co. giving us examples of good practice in achieving community-centered design in Co. Cork.

The webinar will be hosted by Elaine Mullan, School of health Sciences, WIT, and is open to all.

To register:
Email Elaine Mullan – [email protected]

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications is inviting every member of the public to get involved in Ireland’s Climate Conversation about the journey to net zero emissions by 2050, with a 51% reduction by 2030.

The consultation takes the form of a survey, and covers practical themes that affect our everyday lives, such as travel, shopping including reuse and recycling, food and food waste, home – energy and insulation, and local environment and climate action. 

The survey is open until May 18^th  and can be found on the department’s website here.  The survey is user friendly.  You can opt to respond to only themes that interest you or to all of the themes and you can say as much or as little as you like. One especially useful feature is that you can complete one or more sections, save them, and return later.

Cyclist.ie will be responding to the consultation on the travel theme as you would expect.  We will be proposing measures that will make it easier for people to choose to make some of their journeys by active means. We will post our submission here.  We urge everyone to respond to the consultation and to make you voice count! 

For anyone who would like support or more information before making their submission, the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, of which Cyclist.ie is a member is running a series of workshops  on the Tuesday evenings running up to the closing date for submissions. People can register for one or several workshops which will take place as follows:  

• April 20th – Electricity
• April 27th – Agriculture
• 4th May – Transport
• 6th May – Public Participation in Climate with Clare PPN
• 11th May – Homes and the Built Environment

Stop Climate Chaos feels that some of the questions are not well phrased and that the overall tone puts too much emphasis on individual responsibility for changing behaviour instead of on governments and big corporations. 

The Cyclist.ie Rural Collective, representing cycling advocacy and promotion groups in the regions, welcomes this government funding announcement for walking and cycling infrastructure to nineteen local authorities outside of the cities – as can be read here.  

The allocation of more than €70 m is a good start to a process of providing infrastructure which will enable people living in towns, villages and rural areas to choose an active travel mode for their journey.

The schemes being funded vary from one local authority to another but include a large number of footpath improvement schemes, cycleways, pedestrian / cycle bridges, cycle-parking, pedestrian crossings, and public lighting improvements. We find it interesting that most county allocations reference funding for four specific programmes: 

• Safe Routes to School
• Low-Cost Permeability Measures
• Light Segregation Cycle Schemes and
• Low Cost Junction Tightening / Pedestrian Crossing Schemes.

It looks therefore as if these measures were suggested by the NTA, who will be overseeing and supporting the entire active travel programme, and we look forward to a consistent approach from county to county.

A high point of the funding announcement is that several counties where Cyclist.ie’s Rural Collective is active have received funding for transport studies / urban mobility plans. These include Carlow, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Louth and Wexford. Much to the delight of Jo Sachs-Eldridge, one of the key members of the Cyclist.ie Rural Collective, her native Leitrim has opted to do a County Cycle Network Plan Study! In Kerry, both Tralee and Kilarney are going to get interconnected cycleway networks which again is most welcome. 

It would be churlish not to wholeheartedly welcome this funding. After all, the €72.8m which has been allocated is greater than the entire 2019 funding for the national walking and cycling programme. However, we in Cyclist.ie do have some concerns. These revolve around the standards which will apply to the proposed new cycling infrastructure. In the press release announcing the funding Minister Ryan, Minister of State Naughton and CEO of the National Transport Authority, Anne Graham all used the words “high-quality” to describe the new infrastructure. However, at this point we are unsure whether the Department of Transport and the National Transport Authority share the Cyclist.ie definition of “high -quality”.

Current cycleway standards are to be found in the National Cycle Manual (NCM) and the Transport Infrastructure Rural Cycleway Design (RCD). The NCM is currently being updated and Cyclist.ie is awaiting news on what brief the consultants have been given. We very much hope that it will take account of Cyclist.ie’s A Vision for Cycling in Rural Ireland  and Irish Cycle.com’s CyclingForAll.ie. 

The first three demands in the Rural Vision are for an environment where cyclists are expected and respected, the creation and mapping of useful connected cycle routes, and implementation of best practice design to ensure routes are safe and comfortable for all ages and abilities. CyclingForAll.ie provides numerous examples from the Netherlands of what this design would look like in practice.   

A very positive aspect of this rural funding announcement is that all counties will be supported by the National Transport Authority. Up to recently the NTA only had responsibility for walking and cycling infrastructure for the local authorities in the five main cities and in counties Kildare, Wicklow and Meath. The authority now has a countrywide remit and will be supporting all local authorities in rolling out Active Travel and the Safe Routes to School Programme. We are happy with this outcome, but to ensure adherence to standards it will be necessary for the NTA to act as an oversight body and to withhold funding for any scheme which is not compatible with the new guidance.

Cyclist.ie are seeking a meeting with the NTA to discuss, among other items, our desire to ensure the highest quality of planned schemes being built with this welcome and much needed funding.   

Earlier today, 24th March 2021, we saw the formal launch of Ireland’s longest greenway, along the Royal Canal running all of 130km from Maynooth in Co Kildare to the Shannon at Cloondara in County Longford. 

The launch is a momentous occasion and a major step forward in Ireland’s development of greenways and cycle routes to link up towns and villages via active travel routes. Below is the link to the video of the launch featuring, amongst others, Minister Eamon Ryan and Minister of State Malcolm Noonan.

Cyclist.ie warmly welcomes this development. We have engaged with Waterways Ireland and with the local authorities along this route as it has been developed so as to help ensure that the standards for cycling and walking are met as much as possible. 

This 130km section of the Royal Canal greenway crosses four counties – Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and Longford – and also passes through significant towns such as Kilcock, Enfield and Mullingar. It also includes a completed link section into Longford Town, as can be seen from the pictorial map below.

Significantly, it will also link into the previously completed 40km long Old Rail Trail from Mullingar to Athlone, also part of the EuroVelo #2 cross-continental cycle route, in case you get the itch to travel that bit further when restrictions allow! This off-road greenway route will eventually link to both Dublin and Galway, and Cyclist.ie is working with the multiple agencies, Local Authorities and consultants to help to make the full route a reality.

As might be expected, this canal greenway is relatively flat and thus a gentle cycle or walk along its stretches. And there is some great scenery, wildlife and history to be explored and enjoyed along the route.

We cannot wait to explore it in full, once restrictions are lifted – and one of our active members, David Butterly, is hoping to get his bike hire business on the Royal Canal up and running once again. Check him out at Royal Canal Bike Hire in Maynooth if you get the chance to visit the greenway – and encourage your friends to enjoy this wonderful resource!

Cyclist.ie very much welcomes the Safe Routes to School Programme announced jointly today by Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan TD, Minister for Education Norma Foley TD and Minister of State Hildegarde Naughton TD. See here for the Departmental Press Release on it. 

Safe Routes to School were one of Cyclist.ie’s active travel asks for General Election 2020 (see image below) and we were pleased to see it included in the Programme for Government. 

It is also priority number four of the eight priorities outlined in Cyclist.ie’s Rural Cycling Collective’s document Vision for Cycling in Rural Ireland: “Prioritise safe cycle routes to schools and car free zones at school gates”.

The statement by Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan that “Schoolchildren need more than hi- vis vests to get to schools safely. They need proper infrastructure to make walking cycling and scooting a practical choice for families” is most welcome. Also welcome is the recognition by Minister for Education Norma Foley that “Being active is a key component of wellbeing”. 

However, while expenditure of €15 million this year seems like a good start to a Safe Routes to School scheme, the aim of providing routes to over 100 schools in 2021 falls well short of what is required. There are almost 4,000 first and second level schools in Ireland, so allowing for a roll-out of 100 safe routes annually it will take 40 years to fulfil Minister of State Naughton’s hope that over time “every student in every village, town and city, can safely travel to and from school be it by foot/scooter or bike”.

In reality we know that many schools are situated adjacent to one other and that therefore the same route will often serve more than one school. However, that still leaves a considerable time-lag before all schools can be provided with safe routes. In order to accelerate the process, Cyclist.ie suggests that Healthy Ireland and Climate Action Funding should also be made available for the Safe Routes to School programme. Active Travel is certainly a transport issue but it is also a health and a climate issue.  

For the implementation of routes, consultation with parents and with children themselves will be important to ensure that their needs are met – for example in regard to suitable cycle / scooter parking provision at each school and disability requirements. 

Cyclist.ie strongly recommends the use of quiet streets as one aspect of the Safer Routes to School approach, and explaining to both residents and parents that this provision is for school-children to cycle safely to/from school, and not a race track for commuter cyclists.

Furthermore, attractive and clearly branded materials, such as the pencil barriers and coloured stickers on roads should be designed for national use, so that the messages are clear to all. The emphasis needs to be on a shift away from helmet wearing and hi-vis, and instead focus on safe and clearly marked cycling / walking infrastructure – and it needs to be done in conjunction with standard 30 km/hr speed limits around all schools.