Footpaths - The Most Shamefully Ignored Infrastructure

Transport21 Fan

westtip wrote:

Footpaths. Footpaths. Footpaths. especially out of towns. We really don't know how to deal with pedestrians.

Absolutely! I thought I was only one who felt this way.

In the town where I live in here in Sligo the COCO built a footpath/cyclepath from the town centre out to a new secondary school. To say it transformed that part of town is an understatement. Every night it is filled with women walking safe from road traffic. People walking dogs, and kids can cycle to school or just for the fun of it in complete safety. People stop to talk to their neighbours cutting their lawns. It's really socially very healthy.

What's really great is people can walk to the pub and back very safely at night. Well lit etc. Before the footpath was there - no body ventured along the road for fear of being run over. Now it is used day and night. Something as simple as tarmac and kerbing transformed barren ribbon development into a real community.

Footpaths are the one great forgotten piece of infrastructure in provincial towns and they can do wonders for dealing with the negative aspects of the scourge of ribbon development.

There should be at least 4kms of footpaths along approach roads with ribbon development around every town and large village in Ireland. This madness of walking 30 meters from a town centre and straight onto a busy main road with sometimes hundreds of homes along it with no footpath is so 'Oirish'. I have even seen cases of no footpath from the town centre to the development. But footpaths in the development itself. Bonkers.

Yet, it is the norm. So everyone drives the short distance when some tarmac and kerbing transforms the whole dynamic of the town's outlying residential areas. I have seen this happen first hand. So inexpensive to do as well. Footpaths are once piece of infrastructure which are easy to provide and really do provide a social service with little or no maintainance costs.

The country needs a footpath lobby. Serious. Where is the Western Development Commission, Rural Groups and Council for the West on this issue? It's all multi-million euro airports, motorways and railways. Yet they ignore the simple stuff which would "develop" the West in the truest sense.

Even the Green Party seem very aloof from this and yet this is the kind of thing they should be making a big deal about.

Andrew Duffy

In urban areas pedestrian crossings should be provided for every road at every junction carrying more than a given traffic level (I don't know what that level is) or where the road has more than one traffic lane in each direction. Cameras should be used at particularly busy junctions to prosecute drivers stopping their vehicles on crossings.

mikemac

Good point.
Along the second bypass in Nenagh is a 6km long footpath.
It's extremly popular with walkers, joggers and cyclists and lets people exercise in safety.

Think I read somewhere that Dublin City Council spent almost as much in compensation claims for people falling on footpaths as they did on maintaining them.
I don't have the figures to hand but I'll look for them.

Zoney

Footpaths, streetlighting, schools, *public parks* (one thing we are *pathetic* on), public transport, the list goes on...

Welcome to an American state in Europe...

Transport21 Fan

A while back I was chatting to a couple of CoCo planners one about 60 and the other about 30 and what an insight into the old and new Ireland. The older one said than footpaths make it difficult for people to get their cars and in and out of their homes while the younger one agreed with everything I said.

I have heard stories of younger planners and engineers trying to build cycle lanes and footpaths in rural towns and older ones from the same CoCo fighting them every step of the way insisting on carparks and more traffic friendly streets.

It really goes to show you that there is a watershed among planners, engineers and transport people in Ireland. The older generation were completely indoctrinated with the notion of cars, roads and nothing else matters. While the younger generation have a more mature outlook and recognise the needs of prestrians.

So I would not goes as far as Zooney saying we are all Americanised - although we do aspire to the worst elements of US living at times.

We were like that, but it is changing. I would say that Ireland as a nation aspired to being little better than American trailer trash culture up until about 2000, then the Irish became more sophisticated overall - well other than the provincial media.

It really only the most in-bred halfwits who expects planning permission to build a house right next to a N Road these days. Most others have wised up to the serious quality of life and health and safety problems this presents to their families.

The footpath issue needs to be taken to a national level as it is something than can be sorted out very quickly. We probably have far more rural railways and regional airport runways in this country than town approach footpaths. That's a warped sense of priorities. What is really says is "communities do not matter."

Navan Junction

Funny you mention that - I was talking about the lack of footpath and bicycle lanes from Celbridge to Hazelhatch.. Don't know if there are any plans there but it would be useful

daymobrew

Zoney wrote:

Footpaths, streetlighting, schools, *public parks* (one thing we are *pathetic* on), public transport, the list goes on...

Welcome to an American state in Europe...

When I think about footpaths, streetlights and public parks, I look to Mountain View, California where I lived between 1996 and 2001. They had great public parks (free bbqs and tennis courts in one!), footpaths everywhere and good cycling facilities.
Look at the width of this typical cycle lane in the area. Some even have room for parking AND bikes.

In my estate in Dublin 15 (built between 1996 and 1999), some roads only have footpaths some of the day. Some none at all - squashing stuff in. Bad form. Sometime this year Fingal County Council are installing a footpath leading up to a nearby school (12 months after it opened!).

cyclopath2001

Now that's what I call a cycle facility. And, unlike Ireland, I suppose cars & trucks were not allowed to use cycle lanes?

From what I've seen Fingal CoCo doesn't know how to build proper cycle facilities, even within our unambitious local guidelines & rules.

murphaph

Navan Junction wrote:

Funny you mention that - I was talking about the lack of footpath and bicycle lanes from Celbridge to Hazelhatch.. Don't know if there are any plans there but it would be useful

And having grown up in Newcastle I can remember more than one person being killed on that road.

Footpaths, streetlighting, schools, *public parks* (one thing we are *pathetic* on), public transport, the list goes on...

Welcome to an American state in Europe...

How very true. We don't do 'public property' very well at all do we. Even simple things like ESB poles and telephone cables strewn about everywhere, even in urban areas. These were all buried years ago in the rest of Western Europe. You'll very rarely find poles in urban areas there, but you will in suburban sprawlville, USA. In fact, streetscape pictures from the states can look very like ones on the edges of towns here....(this one has a footpath which really is fairly rare in such locations in the states)....

ardmacha

I had an foreign friend here a year ago and the difference between North and South that he noticed was not the colour of the postboxes but the much greater availability and better quality of footpaths in the North.

Even simple things like ESB poles and telephone cables strewn about everywhere

absolutely, the ESB are responsible for much visual vandalism in this country. Local authorities vary in the their approach to this, some provincial towns have made good progress putting lines underground, others haven't done anything. For instance on the N2 Carrickmacross have placed their lines underground, while nothing has been done in Ardee. In the likes of Dun Laoghaire otherwise pleasant suburbs are festooned with ESB wires. Now clearly these cannot be put underground overnight, but there is a litte effort made. The Upper Kilamacud Rd was widened and completely reconstructured, and although the existing footpath was entirely replaced, no effort was made to place underground the wires on the side of the road, although there are few houses to be serviced by these. How difficult would it have been to lay a conduit when the whole footpath was dug up and the plant was there.