Crazy Cycle lanes.

Syth

Right here's a pet peev of mine: Crazy Cycle lanes. You all probable know them, there the cycle lanes that weave around, that stop and start abruptly, that if were roads would be called a waste of the peoples money. Add your own experiences of the ineptitudes of the Irish road makers.

There's one in Loughlinstown that start and stops in a very short distance, less than 100 metres, there is nothing in between the 2 ends so you can't have a real journey using only the cycle lane. It goes along a dual carriage way, so there's lots of paths if you want to cycle on that.

There's another close to that on the road from said dual carriage way to Shankill (where I live), and I don't even know if it's a real cycle way. They just painted the side of the road red, but again it's very very short, less than 20 metres, and it's fragmented into about 3 different mini-cycle lanes. Pure madness.

Release your anger here.

uberwolf

and as for going up and down for every driveway... freaking rollercoaster when you pick up speed, and they sometimes don't even smooth the edges. In stead of the driver of the preciuos car who owns the home having a slightly sharper incline into their driveways, every cyclist has to accomadate every driveway.


Drives me FUPPING mental.

Victor

I think they are going to be (or are already) rebuilding that whole section of road from the M11 roundabout up to Cabinteeely, making it a less "bumpy" climb and installing bus lanes (at least) the whole way.

cyclopath2001

Notice how neither Dublin City Council nor DTO have any photos of their cycle routes?

Here are some real-life photos and a guide to the 'spin' the authorites use to con the public about the 'number of kilometres of cycle route constructed'.

http://www.geocities.com/cyclopath2001/index.htm

lamaq

My personal favourite is the way there is two cycle 'tracks' on the Stillorgan dual-cariageway. One built to the bog standard DLRD Co.Co. specification and the other one alongside that was built when someone threathend to sue them (or so I've been told).

Syth

there is two cycle 'tracks' on the Stillorgan dual-cariageway

Where exactly are the 2 cycle tracks? I regularly go along (some) of that route and I can't remember 2 cycle tracks. I really should pay more attention to the road...

the other one alongside that was built when someone threathend to sue them (or so I've been told).

You can sue the council about cycle tracks?! Tell me more!

lamaq

Can't remember where exactly the two cycle lanes are, near where Stillorgan village is (I don't live near it so I'm not sure). They built the original cycle 'track' so that it went on the foothpath with all the usual yield to traffic, cross with the pedestrians crap. Then as far as I know someone threathend to sue the County Council because it was so bad so they built a cycle lane alongside the bus lane.

This was a few years ago but I think it was someone my brother worked with so I'll ask him the next time I see him. From a legal point of view (and again I'm not definate on this) there is some European Civil Rights law saying that cyclists and motorists must have the same rights, which clearly isn't the case with cycle paths as any cyclist in Dublin knows. There is also Department of Environment guidelines on the building of cycle paths that the County Council didn't follow and I think thats why someone was going to sue.

Greenman

I hate the cycle paths in Dublin and when in Dublin I try and avoid them. Why did they not get Dutch,Flemish Belgians or Germans to design them. They are dreadful!! or have things changed???

robfitz

You can download the Cycle Track Design Guidelines Manual from the DTO website at http://www.dto.ie/publicdown.htm . Now I know why the cycle tracks are the way the are.

Victor

The DTO have someone drawing up a new cycle lane manual - he happens to be Dutch.

Capt'n Midnight

It's round about now that I point that if you stay on the main road - you have right of way over motorists on side roads. Whereas on the cycle lanes you are supposed to yield to motorists on side roads that cut across the cycle lanes. 80% of cycle accidents happen at junctions..

I know a lot of motorists think cyclists are second class road users, and they are right. But motorists are third class road users and are supposed to yield to cyclists when all else is equal... BTW, pedestrians are of course first class road users....

"Ride the high side"

Anyway we don't need cycle lanes - sure aren't motorists supposed to stay 1m (or is it still three feet) out from the edge of the road when there are cyclists around ?

Greenman

Yes in most cases I feel the money spent on cycle lanes in the ROI would have been sent off to Africa.
Did anyone ever see what they did on Taney rd D 14 ? or on Avondale rd in Killiney they put down something really expensive and dangerous and in the end they took it up.
IMO its a mess and I'm happy living here!!!
One of the purposes of a cycle lane would be to show someone sitting in heavy traffic in a car "there is a better,quicker and safer way" ie none of this yielding to motorists on side roads, what a joke!!!

Rusty Rhythm

My guess is none of the people that designed them here use them. They had a major headache trying to figure out what they would do with what was available both with regards to existing roads and funds.
The road/footpath/pothole/crack-in-the-pavement was painted red and added to the cycle lane tally and that's all that counts when the figures are being recited in the Dail and sent off to Brussels.

Stark

Yeah it really pisses me off when a cycle lane abruptly ends, usually in the most dangerous place you could possible think of. And when it ends you find the cars closing in on you from either side.

Or cycle lanes that are on the left of bus lanes so every time a bus stops at a stop you either have to wait behind it (and get a hefty intake of exhaust fumes when it pulls off) or pull out into traffic. Same problem with taxis, people who just randomly park their cars in the cycle lanes.

I hate when cycle "things" erratically change sides of roads. 100m of cycle thing on left side of road, then 100m of cycle thing on the footpath to the right, then swing back to left hand side of road again

That cycle thingy that they show in the above pictures in Fairview is one that's on my way home from work every day, never bother using the thing. Also have to use the one on Amiens street when I'm heading into town, it's a total bitch when it stops as the cars can swing in to reclaim their space pretty quickly.

Syth

The worst is when there is a descent sized road, and they just paint 2red strips on the size, thus dramatically reducing the size of the road, that's gotta be dangerous.

Victor

Originally posted by Syth
The worst is when there is a descent sized road, and they just paint 2red strips on the size, thus dramatically reducing the size of the road, that's gotta be dangerous.

?? Part of the idea of the red asphalt is to pschologically make the road narrower for motorists, making them slow down.

Syth

?? Part of the idea of the red asphalt is to pscholically make the road narrower for motorists, making them slow down.

But some motorists will not slow down and it will be more dangerous. Also cars tns to drive half in the cyclelanes because they are used to roads that are wider.

uberwolf

anyone read the article in yesterdays times?

I'll add the attachment if i can find it, but it mentioned how cyclists (on the cycle lane) skittled through the bus stop without regard for pedestrians on the stillorgan dual carriage way. I find it odd though that he praises the cycle lane, but doesn't realise that it is down to the design of the cycle lane that causes this problem. And that the cyclist have no option but to risk themselves/ or others.

Also the seamless mergers which exist in many places between path and cylcelanes (I'm thinking particularly Templeogue) Will cyclists be fines €40 for cycling on the path here?

heres the txt of that article:


The "motorists are evil environmental hooligans with murderous intent towards the planet and cyclists are healthy saints on two wheels view" just doesn't get us anywhere. Some of the people Rose Corcoran spoke to last week (Pitfalls for Pedallers) don't just miss the plot, many have spokes missing.

Ireland once was heaven for cyclists. In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the unemployed could cycle around all day, getting exercise, and largely, getting nowhere on our uncrowded roads. Does anyone want to go back to that?

Then came industrialisation. Traffic volumes built up and our road network could not cope. Now we are building roads and bypasses and cycle lanes as fast as we can. We are playing catch-up. Not Cowboys and Indians.

The motorist is not the cyclist's enemy. Nor even the truck driver. How are the bikes delivered to the eco-friendly cycle dealer? How does the muesli get to the health food shop? Not by pedal power. Say nothing about where Lycra comes from, or how it gets to form those revolting shorts.

Much has been done recently to provide safe areas for cyclists. But there is much to be done, and cycosnottiness is not going to help. We'll get through the reconstruction period much better with some goodwill.

Personally, I'd like to see a repeal of section 497 of the Road Traffic Act, which says, inter alia, "no cyclist worth his/her salt will ever display anything which resembles a light to the front or the rear"!

Co-existence between cyclist and motorist is not a one-way street. Just as it's upsetting for your correspondent to be forced off her bike and suffer a bruised knee by a combination of truck and pothole, the stress of inching one's way through gridlock for hours on end to get to and from work puts motorists under considerable and health threatening strain.

Senator David Norris should remember his own good fortune in living at one end of the capital's main street and working at the other end, before he next pronounces loftily on the rights and wrongs of a difficult and muddled situation in which commuters find themselves while our road planners catch up with years of under funding and neglect.

Some of the complaints quoted by your correspondent are simply incredible. "Someone is going to get killed (at the cross roads at Dundrum) and I just hope it's not me". So do I, but you have a choice. Get off the bike, cross at pedestrian crossing, remount bike.

Another luminary tells us that buses are "arguably the most dangerous vehicles on the road". Great, that's it, shut down Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, Aircoach, and we'll all be safe as houses. Are these guys breathing in too much diesel? Or what?

The difficulties which all road users face are not being helped by the emergence of an aggressive minority in the cycling community. Like all bullies, they pick on a weaker group, and the target for the Lycra louts is the pedestrian.

There is an extensive recent cycle lane along the N11 from Foxrock to Donnybrook, put in place by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Co Council, which deserves credit for showing a lead in tackling public and cycle transport problems. Extensions are being constructed as I write.

What is the council now forced to do? Protect passengers from cyclists playing skittles with bus queues along the N11 on the steep descent from Leopardstown to Donnybrook. Cycopaths plough through the queues, faces inflamed like gargoyles, roaring words rhyming with duck and plastered, telling the waiting bus queue to get out of the way. I've been there and I've jumped.

The council has just had to erect a chicane, or baffle, to slow down cyclists who would otherwise plough through the bus queue at the morning Stillorgan city bound bus stop. Further back, that cycle lane is about to be diverted around the rear of the bus stop at Galloping Green to protect bus passengers from marauding Stuka dive-bombers on two wheels.

Is "we're all in this together" too complicated for some cyclists to understand?




© The Irish Times

uberwolf

there's a chat about this in motors as well @ the mo