They planned speed bumps on 'flagship' cycle path

fixie fox

This doesn't auger well for design of the new Dublin Bay cycle route.

AltAccount

Any link?

rollingscone

AltAccount wrote: »

Any link?

The 'This' in his sentence is a masked hyperlink.

teacherhead

The council’s traffic department now says that the solution might be for “appropriate personal responsibility” to be exercised by pedestrians and cyclists to avoid collisions.

The sheer genius of it. This is thinking outside the box ad they say.

rollingscone

It just shows the narrow and unrealistic view that the council has of the acceptable cyclist (basically the photoshopped models in the architect's concept art).


There seems to be a constant push to delegitimise sports cyclists or anyone who wants to travel relatively far relatively quickly.

The S2S should be seen as a piece of transport infrastructure with leisure applications rather than wasting money on a pootle track for people going along at 10kph for a few kms at a time which will do nothing to get cars off the road/increase quality of life in the city.

RobertFoster

“may discourage use of the facility and create more hazards on the carriageway”

Keep those speedy bastards off the road... they're too slow!

Bristolscale7

AltAccount wrote: »

Any link?

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/dublin-city-council-rows-back-on-speed-bumps-for-cyclists-1.1801581

laraghrider

To be honest it's about bloody time someone said this:

The council’s traffic department now says that the solution might be for “appropriate personal responsibility” to be exercised

bambergbike

I almost feel a bit sorry for the council engineers on the speed bumps: they finally take the hints they've been given, open up the Dutch manual (well done on that!) and still find themselves a complete laughing stock because they picked the wrong page.

Bus aside from the speed bumps: different coloured materials and tactile paving are probably not going to be enough to keep pedestrians and cyclists apart in unless (A) the space for both groups is reasonably generous and (B) we have a cultural (legal?) shift in the way we see cyclists and specifically cyclist-pedestrian interactions. Pedestrians in Northern Europe make an effort to avoid conflict with cyclists, and can expect to be sued if they do something stupid that endangers cyclists and a cyclist comes to harm as a result. In Ireland, at the moment, cyclists ALWAYS seem to be depicted as the evil opressor in pedestrian-cyclist conflicts, with pedestrians invariably being seen as downtrodden people who have gotten caught up in nasty situations not of their own making. Sometimes that perception is perfectly accurate, but often it isn't. If I were knocked off my bike by a dog chasing a cat across a bike path, or went over the handlebars while trying to brake and avoid colliding with the dog and breaking its ribs, I would like to think that the pedestrian in charge of the out-of-control dog would have liability insurance and would be able to compensate me for the loss of earnings I would suffer until my fractured collar-bone healed. I wouldn't be looking for a massive compo windfall, but I wouldn't want to be out of pocket as a result of an accident I hadn't caused and couldn't have avoided without riding at walking pace.

I'm obviously not against cyclists exercising personal responsibility, but I think we need to make it plainer that pedestrians have some responsibilities, too. And, as rollingscone says, if this is serious transport infrastructure, it needs to facilitate a range of cycling speeds. Not necessarily the full range of cycling speeds, but if 30 km/h+ cyclists are seen as undesirables here, where they should go instead needs to be spelled out and sorted out.

NeedMoreGears

/rant/ Stupid things I have seen on the Clontarf cycle track

1 - Dogs on long leads
2 - Park benches where peoples feet stick out onto the track
3 - The new dog sh&t bins (block half the outbound track and force pedestrians to enter the cycle track to dispose of the mess) ; in terms of sheer idiocy, this is my current personal favourite
4 - Cyclists entering the track without looking (just yesterday)
5 - Cars crossing the track without looking (hell of a thump when we collided)
6 - Ten (or so) runners in a group (not for a oong time)
7 - Joggers/Walkers with headphones (all the time)
8 - Me travelling too quickly in spots (not any more I hope)
9 - Multiple crossing points
10 - Steps in the outbound lane (reduces the width to about 25cm)
11 - Cycle Track signs on big strong metal poles right in the centre line
12 - All sorts of broken bottles, debris etc (although recently cleared up)

Looks like speedbumps will be number 13. /rant

On a more serious note, would it be better to swap over the cycling area and the pedestrian area? It would mean extra care needed not to cycle off the edge, but it would eliminate the crossing points, the seat and dog sh£t problem.

I would also like to see a sign indicating that the track is for cyclists only. I suspect many pedestrians are not really aware that they are not permitted to use it.

Muahahaha

NeedMoreGears wrote: »

I would also like to see a sign indicating that the track is for cyclists only. I suspect many pedestrians are not really aware that they are not permitted to use it.

I think lack of signage is 50% of the problem. I got shouted at the other day by a pedestrian as I went by them on a footpath. The footpath is 50/50 bike pedestrian with one side coloured black, the other just plain concrete. However you would hardly know it as there is just one painted bicycle at the beginning of the track and then none to be seen thereafter. It was actually comical that yer one was shouting at me to get on the road when she herself was walking in the cycle lane and was totally oblivious to it. All that is really needed is road paint or signage every 150m saying 'Cyclists Only', surely it is not rocket science ?

Daroxtar

A couple of things-
Make jaywalking a punishable offence. Once pedestrians get fined for not paying proper heed to their surroundings then they will be less likely to wander in front of fast moving cyclists.
On the flip side, some cyclists need to stop racing like maniacs on narrow cycle paths. You don't have to have the KOM on Strava for every segment of road you travel.
The new path shouldn't be the preserve of guys doing 50km/h. What happens if a family want to take the kids out for a cycle? They going to get flattened by some high speed wannabe?

SilverLiningOK

People do need to take responsibility for themselves. If crossing the cycled tack look first. People cycling also need to display a little bit of cop on, slow down and be prepared to stop when encountering any obstacles. Anybody who has visited any Dutch city wouldn't last long without paying attention to where they are going.

Sometimes I get the impression that some cyclists have transferred their bad driving habits to the bicycle. I know many will dispute this but it's want I observe when traveling around the city be it by car, bicycle, public transport or walking. People don't to understand that different conditions need different behaviour. Speed is a very obvious issue on all wheeled modes. Many just want to go fast regardless of what they come accross.

This particular cycle route has been developed over many years with much having got into poor repair. The grass has crept in depriving it of original width in places. Between the Dart station and Fairview there is a very noticeable and dangerous gap that originally crossed the pavement joining up with the park one. This seems to have been deliberately left go out of use due to possibly private commercial pressures.

As many have said, the councils are not really taking the bicycle seriously as a mode of transport on the ground. Funny that, when I am led to believe that more people use bicycles in the city than the Luas. The infrastructure cost needed for one being a fraction of what's needed for the other. Money spent on fit for purpose cycling facilities will encourage more people to choose the bicycle.

Chips Lovell

While I don't think speed bumps are the solution, "exercising appropriate personal responsibility" hasn't really worked to date.

It ought to be a no-brainer that faster cyclists use the road, but you always see plenty of people cycling on the track at a speed inappropriate to the conditions.

bambergbike

Daroxtar wrote: »

Make jaywalking a punishable offence. Once pedestrians get fined for not paying proper heed to their surroundings then they will be less likely to wander in front of fast moving cyclists.

Pedestrians are always going to be a bit oblivious of their surroundings - that's the whole point of being a pedestrian. It's mainly when their surroundings are very badly designed that this causes trouble for cyclists. A grass buffer between pedestrian and cycle tracks would - to my mind - be a bit more confídence-inspiring than the snazzy colour scheme promised in the article. Genuinely separate facilities would take care of the cases where a pedestrian can completely unwittingly step into a cycle track.

In the cases where pedestrians are more obviously and deliberately careless or negligent, prosecuting them or giving out fixed penalty notices is still not much of an answer. Fining pedestrians doesn't teach them to be careful around cyclists, it teaches them to be careful around guards. And once you scale down traffic fines to the magnitude of the harm caused by pedestrians, you get five Euro fines, tops. Collecting those regularly enough for every pedestrian in town to at least hear the odd story about somebody getting one would be an almighty waste of garda time and potentially cost the force goodwill and support.

It would be more useful to raise the general awareness among pedestrians that knocking a cyclist off their bikes through carelessness can lead to expense and major hassle if the cyclist sues. (And vice-versa, of course.) Plus awareness that leaving the scene of an accident without exchanging details with the other party (and waiting for the guards, if somebody is injured) is likely to be taken seriously (i.e. investigated, prosecuted and harshly sanctioned) even when the person who does it is "only" a pedestrian or a cyclist or a mobility scooter user. Insurance for pedestrians and cyclists is ridiculously cheap because both groups cause very little harm to others. So when somebody does occasionally screw up, they shouldn't get away with a hit-and-run, or completely escape the consequences on the basis that there's no point chasing them because they won't be insured anyway.

Mercian Pro

Coming in from Howth the other night on the Dart (for a change). Got talking to three blind women and a partially sighted guy who got on at Bayside. They had been out for a walk along the sea-front from Clontarf and really enjoyed it. The only bit that spooked them was the shared path beyond the Causeway. On a number of occasions, cyclists had whized by them at speed and they naturally found this pretty threatening.
I hadn't really thought about this before but maybe I should next time I'm going for a PB from Sutton to Fairview!

mh_cork

Some have already mentioned this but I'll restate it. I find some cyclists behaviour on shared paths daft and dangerous. These areas are designed for all cyclists and not just the speedy ones. We often quote the Dutch model to emulate. Well, let me say that if I brought my Focus road bike and tried to commute at 30k+ in Amsterdam, it wouldnt be long before I collided with a pedestrian / cyclist / tram.

I went for a walk on the old rail line between Carrigaline and Crosshaven one Sunday morning. Its open to cyclists but is popular for dog walkers and families. I got a shout to get out of the way by a guy doing 35k+ on a TT bike in an aero tuck! The road was running parallel and was empty. He was dangerous and foolhardy and should have used the road.

Shared facilities should mean shared responsibility. If you cannot react to the dog / walker / child / slower cyclist, then the problem could lie with you going to fast for the circumstances.

hardCopy

NeedMoreGears wrote: »

/rant/ Stupid things I have seen on the Clontarf cycle track

1 - Dogs on long leads
2 - Park benches where peoples feet stick out onto the track
3 - The new dog sh&t bins (block half the outbound track and force pedestrians to enter the cycle track to dispose of the mess) ; in terms of sheer idiocy, this is my current personal favourite
4 - Cyclists entering the track without looking (just yesterday)
5 - Cars crossing the track without looking (hell of a thump when we collided)
6 - Ten (or so) runners in a group (not for a oong time)
7 - Joggers/Walkers with headphones (all the time)
8 - Me travelling too quickly in spots (not any more I hope)
9 - Multiple crossing points
10 - Steps in the outbound lane (reduces the width to about 25cm)
11 - Cycle Track signs on big strong metal poles right in the centre line
12 - All sorts of broken bottles, debris etc (although recently cleared up)

Looks like speedbumps will be number 13. /rant

On a more serious note, would it be better to swap over the cycling area and the pedestrian area? It would mean extra care needed not to cycle off the edge, but it would eliminate the crossing points, the seat and dog sh£t problem.

I would also like to see a sign indicating that the track is for cyclists only. I suspect many pedestrians are not really aware that they are not permitted to use it.

My favourite stupid pieces of the Clontarf track are:
Junction at the bottom of Castle Avenue, there is a wheelchair friendly 'dish' in the kerb at the pedestrian crossing with no gap in the wall to the cycle track, the nearest entry point is about 15 metres away. The only way to enter the cycle track is to dismount and carry or cycle on the path. One look at the many narrow tyre racks tells you what people choose.

Bottom of Vernon Avenue parking for about 20 cars adjacent to the track with zombie driver/pedestrians wandering across the low wall to the promenade.

BrianHenryIE

Do people commute by road (cycling!) from Sutton to Fairview?

I hate that the causeway road has right of way to get to the beach over a cycle-path that is a main artery into the city. And then just past the causeway (going into town), where the path rejoins to road should be seamless, not the double right angle junction it's designed as. And across from the Yacht Club, the "end of cycle lane" signs so the car park and slip get priority -- absurd.

I confess to cycling very fast along that stretch but I only shout at people who have children in the bike lane.

cdaly_

mh_cork wrote: »

I went for a walk on the old rail line between Carrigaline and Crosshaven one Sunday morning. Its open to cyclists but is popular for dog walkers and families. I got a shout to get out of the way by a guy doing 35k+ on a TT bike in an aero tuck! The road was running parallel and was empty. He was dangerous and foolhardy and should have used the road.

I reckon that's down to the 'roads are not for cyclists' attitude being fostered by the vested interests.

brian.henry wrote: »

Do people commute by road (cycling!) from Sutton to Fairview?

I use the road along there if the wind is too strong to safely use the cycle path but the path otherwise as I avoid a whole bunch of traffic lights that way.