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18 comments:
Pushing Fingal to follow up on the development plan aspirations is a great thing to do!
All the best Ken!
I cycle all over Dublin and find Malahide to be one of the trickiest places to cycle to/from. Attitudes towards cyclists need to improve along with room for cycling. Parts of the motorway are tricky to circumnavigate by foot also.
I'm a malahide resident and I fully support this campaign. Deirdre - Malahide.
Hi Ken,
A bit like Kathleen, got bikes for myself, Liz and Kids and tried to use them from Portmarnock. It's actually almost impossible to leave the area without taking you life in your hands. Even trying to get to Gannon Park is a problem unless you you use the coastal footpath. I fully support any attempt to improve cycleways round Portmarnock/ Malahide.
Cheers,
Chris Shackleton
Keep up the good work Ken. This will greatly help the fitness level our children as they cycle to school and sports and will cut down on C02 emissions as the parents will have less drop offs and pick ups!
All the best.
Please Please Please listen to our concerns regarding the safety for cyclists on our roads. I recently moved from Baldoyle to Malahide. When living in Baldoyle, as a family we enjoyed cycling from Baldoyle and along the coast road to the bull wall in the safe environment of the cycle lanes. However since moving we have only taken our bikes out on one ocassion as it would be less dangerous to visit west beiruit rather than attempt to cycle safely on our roads. This issue is beyond the enjoyment of cycling and exercise it is a matter of life or death !
Darren Costello
I'm very glad to see a campaign like this starting up in Fingal. We do have some wonderful amenities for cyclists, but there's a great deal of scope for improvement.
I enjoy cycling in the Phoenix Park, but getting there can be hellish. Coolmine Cross, a busy junction close to my home, was recently upgraded. It has new traffic islands, turning lanes and pedestrian crossings, but there are NO cycle tracks. It's a shameful missed opportunity, particularly when you consider that within a kilometre radius of the junction you'll find two secondary schools, a primary school, a railway station, and Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
I could list dozens of other examples of bad planning, construction and maintenance of cycling facilities in this area. I'd be hard pressed to encourage an inexperienced cyclist to start cycling around here (and if they did, the bike would probably get nicked, but that's a whole other day's rant...).
Dublin City Council's own investigations into cycling in the city found that getting kids cycling was a crucial part of fostering a cycling culture (see here, section 3.2). I've lived in places where cycling is a pleasure; there's no real reason why this couldn't become one of them.
Fingal's public representatives should be lobbied to promote cycle training programmes for schools; to sign up to BYPAD (like South Dublin County Council); to help do away with the lunacy of mandatory cycle track use without any proper standards for the tracks themselves; to argue for proper mirrors on HGVs; to help get VAT removed from cycle helmets, and perhaps even from bicycles altogether; and maybe even to have a go at cycling around the areas they represent.
I agree that we need to make cycling safer in Dublin, but I don't think you should confine your campaign to off-road cycle tracks. They're fine for kids starting out but eventually, if you're to be a genuinely safe cyclist, you need to learn how to deal with traffic.
I'm a regular cyclist from Malahide to the city centre. I think some of the poorest cycle infrastructure exists in the Malahide/Portmarnock/Swords area. Segregated cycle paths are needed.
I fully support your initiative and wish you well with it. I am based on the south side of the city and am an active cycling commuter, road racer and mountain biker. Great to see some like minded people coming together to support cycling. Well done !!!
Hi,
Just came across your site from a post on boards.
I'm a pretty avid cyclist myself - commuting and leisure - and not generally a great fan of off-road paths because most of the ones in Dublin are so bad, especially with regard to junctions (which is where most of the accidents occur.) They may bump up and down driveways, ending and starting again every 50m - in such a case, what is the point. A bad cycle lane is actually often worse than none at all because cyclists won't use it but many motorists see it's existence as license to harras and threaten cyclists (usually by simply deliberately passing too close, but also even things like reaching out to push the cyclist while passing!)
However there can be exceptions if they are designed right - including the new path from Goatstown to Sandyford (where I work), which rejoins the road
well before each junction without requiring a cylist to swerve into or yield to traffic. I'm also a fan of the Clontarf-Sutton path which only has a single break in the middle (so you can keep going for many km without a need to stop) and which I cycle on daily.
With the winter light getting scarce though, I really think this path needs to be lit. Currently along much of the length there are lights only on one side of the adjoining road - the opposite side of the road to the path - and the path is very dark indeed early morning or basically any time in the evening. I am always well lit myself but other cyclists often are not and of course the runners and walkers are not lit _at all_. Added to that it's a mixed-use path and runners/walkers often stray into the bike half. I find myself cycling along it really straining just to make sure I see others in time to avoid hitting them (oncoming unlit cyclists appear pretty quickly!)
The path is used quite extensively by children cycling to/from school and while there is generally enough light right now by the time they are going to/from school, this won't necessarily be the case in the middle of winter.
There are of course also issues on the path with regard to overgrown bushes at the side and inappropriate location of bins in the middle of the lane but on the whole it's not a bad path and wouldn't be so much of a problem if there was enough light to see these obstacles!
This really would be the biggest issue I would have right now with Fingal's cycle facilities, it really is quite scary. The drop onto the beach on the walking side is also a bit worrying if a cyclist had to swerve suddenly due
to an unseen obstacle.
Good luck with the campaign;
What better way to see this lovely city and county than by bike - particularly out your way Ken! It is in everyones interest including drivers and pedestrians that safe and comfortable cycle-ways are provided throughout this city and county. Best of luck with the campign Ken.
excellent idea much needed!!! as a racing cyclist, i see a huge amount of problems in our area. this can only be changed by many voices saying the same thing under one banner. all cyclists must be encouraged to support such initiatives, the most important thing is to get kids riding bikes in safe environments.
ragards
dave casey
I'm a cycle commuter too (D15 to D3). Portions of the Navan Road have a nice cycle lane, though the rest of my route is without. I would like to see more.
I believe education and experience can overcome many of the dangers out there. A handlebar mirror helps too.
I too plan to confront FingalCoCo about the lack of implementation of the cycling portions of their development plans.
I enjoy both cycling and walking and live in Donabate. I wish there were some way to get off the peninsula by cycle or on foot.
Now would be an ideal time to widen the Hearse road for this purpose before all the green-belt land on either side gets built on.
I think this site is a super idea and its fantastic to hear so many people who are showing an interest.
Cycling is the quickest way to navigate around the Swords/Malahide area these days. In addition, there is rarely a problem getting parking. The Fingal deveopment plan has some great routes mapped out for off road cycling, so we just need to keep the pressure on our elected representatives.
We should also lobby that the standard of bike lanes currently being built are less than useless. Kerbs that buckle your wheels, dangerous junctions and no seperation from the main roads are all crazy ideas, making these lanes more dangerous to use than the open road. The council should stop wasting our money on building these "efforts" which are obviously not designed by cyclists.
I live in Donabate and would love to be able to cycle to other coastal and inland areas without putting my life in danger. We have such beautiful scenery on our door step and people should be encouraged to go out cycling or walking instead of spending weekends in shopping centres or in front of computers etc.Maybe if the pathways were there people might just go and discover the joy there is spending time excercising outdoors. Thank you and good luck to all the people involved in trying to get out cyleways up and running. It is much appreciated.
We support the goals of the Safe Cycling Campaign and would love to have a safe way of taking our kids cycling. It's something we enjoyed when we were young but as things stand it just seems too risky. The view from a bike is so much better - especially when it comes to observing nature! Carol and Mark Harrold
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