Slowly and belatedly, secure cycle parking is beginning to appear, especially at stations (thanks Irish Rail), where it is essential to encourage cycling, especially to support so-called multi-model journeys
Tag Archives: Infrastructure
Cycle lanes / paths and other interventions, but excluding Greenways
Submission by Maynooth on Dublin – Galway Euro Velo #2
Our member organisation Maynooth Cycling Group (see also Facebook) has drafted our Part 8 submission to Kildare County Council about the proposed Royal Canal Greenway that forms a critical part of the Dublin to Galway Euro Velo Route #2.
The Part 8 planning process deals with the route from the county boundary with Dublin through Kildare to Maynooth. This is an important sector of the overall route as it passes close to major employment centres based around Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth. It needs to be a high quality greenway so that it takes commuters out of their cars to reach the likes of Intel, Hewlett Packard, etc. There are lots of schools along the route and it will need good connections to all schools if we are to get many more students to use their bikes to get to school and end the school run by car.
The local authority is just not getting the bigger picture.
This is why it is crucial that we continue to monitor all planing application having anything to do with transport and that fail to address the urgent decarbonisation of our transport system from its present unsustainable growth path.
FAQ: Why do you ride like that?
“Biking in the middle of the lane like that sure looks dangerous.”
Driving in the middle of the lane actually protects cyclists against the most common motorist-caused crashes: sideswipes, right hooks, left crosses, and drive-outs. A bicycle driver’s top safety priority is to ensure he or she can be seen by motorists with whom they might potentially be in conflict, and bicycling in the middle of a lane is one of the most effective ways to do that. Most overtaking crashes involve a motorist who attempts to squeeze past (illegally) in a lane that is too narrow to share. Read more + video animation
Cyclists in Paris can now legally ride through some red traffic lights in the city
A pilot scheme launched by the City of Paris in 2012 had revealed that allowing cyclists to treat red lights as yield signs would ease bike traffic in the city, would not lead to more road accidents, and could even prevent the accidents that sometimes arise due to cyclists in drivers’ blind spots.
A new policy permitting cyclists to ride through red lights under certain conditions will therefore be rolled out between July and the end of September. New signs will indicate when bikes can either turn right or go straight ahead, even when the lights for cars are on red. In all cases, cyclists will still need to yield to pedestrians and any other vehicles that have the right of way.
Give the green light to cyclists at junctions
Galway Cycling Campaign is calling for all traffic light systems to be rectified so that they give the green light to cyclists at junctions.
Sensors at many junctions in Irish cities are turning green for motorists, but not for cyclists. Read more
Dublin traffic plan proposes banning cars from key city streets
Cars will be banned from key streets in Dublin city centre in a radical new transport plan to make the capital more cycle and pedestrian friendly.
Some €150m is to be spent over the next eight years on shutting areas such as College Green, Westmoreland Street, Suffolk Street and Bachelors Walk to motorists.
The proposals are part of the Dublin City Centre Transport Study, launched today by The National Transport Authority and Dublin City Council. Read article
The Business Case for Converting Street Parking Into Bike Lanes
… here’s the thing about the “studies on possible economic impacts” requested by retailers, or really wherever bike-lane plans emerge: they’ve been done. And done. And done again. And they all reach a similar conclusion: replacing on-street parking with a bike lane has little to no impact on local business, and in some cases might even increase business. While cyclists tend to spend less per shopping trip than drivers, they also tend to make more trips, pumping more total money into the local economy over time … Read Article
The City – The Shrinking Playground of Dublin
“Now that the evenings are long and bright again, the children are out in force in Dublin’s streets. The hop-scotch courses and home-made swings abound, as the children turn the streets into one big playground. Children have played in the streets since streets began… streets make almost ideal playgrounds, full of things to climb on, pavements to draw on, pedestrians to jeer at, and that constant element of danger that spices all the best-loved children’s games.” Maev Kennedy, The Irish Times, 1978
But no more … read article
Construction of €5m Dublin cycle path to start in six weeks
Construction of the “missing link” of the Dublin Bay cycle path is to start in six weeks time, more than a decade since planning of the route began.
Dublin City Council plans to spend in the region of €5 million to fill in the missing 2km section of its flagship cycle route from the Wooden Bridge to Causeway Road in Clontarf.
Work is due to begin on April 1st and will take 18 months to complete, with construction taking place in phases to comply with bird habitat conservation regulations.
DCC welcomes new contra-flow bus/cycle lane on Camden St – Richmond St corridor
On Wed 14th January at 11:00 h, Dublin City Council will open a new contra-flow bus/cycle lane on Camden Street Upper – Richmond Street, which will run past the ‘Bleeding Horse’ pub (i.e. south towards Rathmines).
Dublin Cycling Campaign has been working hard behind the scenes for many years to persuade Dublin City Council to provide a southbound contra-flow cycling facility on this corridor. The new traffic management arrangement also comes into being in the context of the Luas Cross City works on Dawson Street and, Suffolk Street. Dublin Cycling Campaign sits on the City’s ‘Cycle Forum’, where projects like this get progressed.
The now-soon-to-be-reconfigured “Bleeding Horse gyratory” was voted (among members) as one of Dublin’s 10 worst junctions in Dublin Cycling Campaign’s survey in recent years. The new contra-flow bus/cycle lane enables cyclists, heading south towards Rathmines, to avoid taking the annoying and very cycling-unfriendly and unsafe detour around by the Odeon pub and back onto Harcourt Road; instead they can now travel outbound directly (and legally) past the ‘Bleeding Horse’ pub towards Rathmines bridge. This represents important progress in making Dublin more cycle-able.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICE
The conversion of cyclist-unfriendly, multi-lane one-way streets and gyratories to streets with contra-flow cycling facilities and cycling friendly junctions is one policy objective of the National Cycle Policy Framework, the government’s overarching plan to increase the modal share for everyday cycling from its current national figure of approx 2% to 10% (which essentially means bringing the modal share of cycling in Dublin City from approx. 8% to 20-25% of trips). The provision of high quality contra-flow facilities for cyclists – and exemptions for cyclists on one-way streets with safer 30km/h speed limits – is also recognized internationally as a key intervention in making streets more attractive for urban cyclists.
However … while Dublin Cycling Campaign broadly welcomes the new traffic arrangements, we also think that the City Council did not go far enough in terms of providing for cyclists: the street network is still remarkably impermeable for cycling. For example, for cyclists traveling along the South Circular Road (Harrington Street section) towards Camden Street, they will still be required to turn left towards the city centre; the new traffic management arrangements:
- do not enable cyclists to turn right onto the new contra-flow bus/cycle lane so as to continue southwards to Rathmines
- do nothing to enable cyclists to continue directly onto Harcourt Road (so as to be able to turn right towards Ranelagh); Harcourt Road will remain as a one-way street.
Furthermore, Dublin Cycling Campaign has some concern about mixing so many buses with so many bikes on the corridor: it is essential that the drivers of the buses pay special attention to cyclists on this route – and, of course, essential that cyclists ride assertively and sensibly (by, for example, adopting the control road position while using the contra-flow lane). Overall though, we are optimistic that after everyone gets used to the new road layout, the new direct route out of town will improve life for those cycling in the city.
Finally, Dublin Cycling Campaign welcomes the provision of additional cycle parking along the newly configured route and a new special ‘right turn pocket’ to enable dublinbikes users to turn right onto Grantham Street to their docking station.