Journalism and cycling

Chips Lovell

Yeah, the numbers certainly don't back up the case that Dublin is a car-centric city. I think the most recent studies had the number of people travelling to the city centre by public transport exceeding 50 percent, while car use (as Tomasrojo) pointed out is 30 percent and trending down, while cycling is trending up.

Rechuchote

Put it this way: the people of Dublin may not be carcentric; but the road-builders build streets for roads, and not for public transport or active transport.

tomasrojo

Rechuchote wrote: »

Put it this way: the people of Dublin may not be carcentric; but the road-builders build streets for roads, and not for public transport or active transport.

Yeah, they're overly fearful of the bad opinion of a minority.

CramCycle

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Certain parts of the city are absolutely packed with pedestrians while cars whizz by at dangerous speeds. Merrion Row, Baggot st, are my least favourite. Tiny little footpaths and people spilling onto the roads. Dame St, Nassau St, all of these are 100% in favour of the car. It's such a noisy clogged up city these days, it's horrible.

It is, never understood why that has two lanes there, it is crazy and unnecessary. Should be single lane up Merrion Row and onto Baggot St., make the footpath wider on both sides and restrict it to public transport and early morning deliveries only.

Rechuchote

And the driver is seen as the norm.

Thelonious Monk

CramCycle wrote: »

It is, never understood why that has two lanes there, it is crazy and unnecessary. Should be single lane up Merrion Row and onto Baggot St., make the footpath wider on both sides and restrict it to public transport and early morning deliveries only.

And have you seen the absolute state of the footpaths? They're so old and trodden upon, mostly by vans pulling up on them, that they're sunken into the earth and smashed to bits. Where the hell does our tax go? How hard is it to have decent pavements and room for walking, in Dublin f'n 2?!

AndrewJRenko

Rechuchote wrote: »

Put it this way: the people of Dublin may not be carcentric; but the road-builders build streets for roads, and not for public transport or active transport.

Check out Westland Row or Barrow St after a train arrives - people overflowing off the path onto the road in the desperate search for space.

Thelonious Monk

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Check out Westland Row or Barrow St after a train arrives - people overflowing off the path onto the road in the desperate search for space.

Yes I cycle down it every morning. Apart from the bike lane having vans parked in it every morning, people step out into the bike lane from the path as it's not wide enough and I have so very nearly had accidents because of this.
What on earth do our city council do? Funny how they lashed up a contraflow bike lane on lombard st and extended the one that starts at the bridge rather quickly because of the velo cycle nonsense that's going on.
I swear they just don't know what they're doing or are not even aware of what goes on in this city.

tomasrojo

I am picking up genuine embarrassment on the part of the authorities at the criticisms of their infrastructure coming from the Velo-City delegates. There's also open mocking going on on Twitter by the delegates. Maybe somebody who attended can comment.

Thelonious Monk

tomasrojo wrote: »

I am picking up genuine embarrassment on the part of the authorities at the criticisms of their infrastructure coming from the Velo-City delegates. There's also open mocking going on on Twitter by the delegates. Maybe somebody who attended can comment.

can you post some links?

tomasrojo

Some mocking:

https://twitter.com/lennartnout/status/1143532010234896385
https://twitter.com/herbert_tiemens/status/1143532428264443905


Not mocking as such, but not exactly complimentary:
https://twitter.com/mikaelvaneeck/status/1143273528701149184
https://twitter.com/SimonFessard/status/1143108200151035906
https://twitter.com/alan_downtown/status/1143174992114454529


The embarrassment whose existence I'm assuming is just based on reports of the hosts agreeing with the negative opinions, and saying they'll try harder. Maybe they're not embarrassed. I guess someone who attended might be able to confirm.

Thelonious Monk

ha yeah I actually saw those ones earlier. Coming off the ferry into that nonsense can't have been nice!

CramCycle

The funny thing is, in all those videos I could only think, if it was that good every day we'd be in a better place :eek:

Thelonious Monk

CramCycle wrote: »

The funny thing is, in all those videos I could only think, if it was that good every day we'd be in a better place :eek:

lol, I was thinking this too, they're the good parts of Dublin cycle infrastructure!

Check this out, the cheek of DCC liking the tweet, the only decent cycle lane in Dublin!

https://twitter.com/GRACQ/status/1143524570860834816

tomasrojo

I think there are a few ok-ish facilities around. Ones I don't mind using anyway. The one along the Slang is pleasant enough, out to Marlay Park, though kissing gates mean I have to depart from it and come back later on the route when I'm using the cargo bike. The one along the Dodder is ok, though it's incomplete, since one of the parks doesn't allow cycling. There's a stretch of the Grand Canal route that's pretty usable, albeit it breaks down in the middle at Leeson Street bridge. And the Clontarf route is fairly well liked.

tomasrojo

There's another not so complimentary tweet from a pretty prominent figure:
https://twitter.com/herbert_tiemens/status/1143445738518720512

Thelonious Monk

I have to say there's an absolutely crazy amount of cyclists out these days in Dublin, the most I've ever seen. Maybe lots of people are fair weather cyclists? Then again it seems to be wetter in summer than the rest of the year.

tomasrojo

That's the somewhat paradoxical thing: the authorities haven't done much in ages to facilitate cycling, but cycling has grown really a lot anyway, which is somewhat missed by that Guardian report. But it's pretty unpleasant in lots of places, and unnecessarily so. A lot of street redesign is needed, and quite a lot of on-street parking needs to go.

It's a nice irony that if Dublin City Council hadn't lost their nerve, a lot of the delegates would be at least concentrating on the Liffey Route, instead of wondering what the hell is going on on the quays.

Thelonious Monk

other cyclists are passing so close to me lately, like millimetres away from catching my handlebars. The roads on my route are at capacity for cyclists at rush hour these days.

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

I am picking up genuine embarrassment on the part of the authorities at the criticisms of their infrastructure coming from the Velo-City delegates. There's also open mocking going on on Twitter by the delegates. Maybe somebody who attended can comment.

i was at a DCC (dublin cycling campaign) meeting last year where someone from DCC (dublin city council) attended and begged people to mail their public representatives.
the message was that their hands are tied when the councillors are beholden to their constituents who balk very loudly at losing private car privileges, and i do get that; but even the low level stuff the road engineers don't need political support for, they frequently get wrong anyway.

tomasrojo

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

other cyclists are passing so close to me lately, like millimetres away from catching my handlebars. The roads on my route are at capacity for cyclists at rush hour these days.

One thing about using a cargo bike is that I'm pretty sick of people close passing me on bikes. One guy even temporarily coalesced with me when his close pass went awry (not a collision as such; more him ending up leaning on me as we carried on going forward together).

blackwhite

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

ha yeah I actually saw those ones earlier. Coming off the ferry into that nonsense can't have been nice!

To be honest - it looked a lot better than it usually is when Alexandra Rd is closed (which seems to be 2-3 times a week these days). Tolka Quay Rd is usually gridlock at ferry times when the alternative gets closed.

Dublin Port Co the culprits in this instance. Dublin City Council have no remit for the roads down there

Weepsie

My personal observation is that traffic yesterday and today is much worse than it ought to be around the city centre. As though people are driving more just to show VeloCity delegates how crap Dublin is.

I would guess there are some diversions in place too, to make it look like it's fine, but the traffic around Amiens Street, Seville Place and around Phibsboro this morning was awful.

Duckjob

Chips Lovell wrote: »

Yeah, the numbers certainly don't back up the case that Dublin is a car-centric city. I think the most recent studies had the number of people travelling to the city centre by public transport exceeding 50 percent, while car use (as Tomasrojo) pointed out is 30 percent and trending down, while cycling is trending up.

Rechuchote wrote:

Put it this way: the people of Dublin may not be carcentric; but the road-builders build streets for roads, and not for public transport or active transport.

Couldnt agree more, and the resulting sense of driver entitlement (which feeds into a general lack of patience and care with VRUs) is off the scale.

I was going down Grafton Street the other morning, and myself and a load of other pedestrians had to stop at the junction of Grafton and Wicklow St to let a constant stream of entitled arseholes turn and toddle down the middle of Grafton Street, some even beeping pedestrians out of their way. Zero apparent consequences. Zero f**ks given by anyone.

The roads of this country have turned into one big serious WTF for me.

Felexicon

Weepsie wrote: »

My personal observation is that traffic yesterday and today is much worse than it ought to be around the city centre. As though people are driving more just to show VeloCity delegates how crap Dublin is.

I would guess there are some diversions in place too, to make it look like it's fine, but the traffic around Amiens Street, Seville Place and around Phibsboro this morning was awful.

That is a massive stretch of the imagination. 99% of people wouldn't have a clue it is on.

Haven't been in Dublin in an age but since when was traffic allowed down Grafton St. off Wicklow St.

tomasrojo

Felexicon wrote: »

That is a massive stretch of the imagination. 99% of people wouldn't have a clue it is on.

I think that's "as though" followed by what in most languages would be the subjunctive.

check_six

Deleted User wrote: »

Haven't been in Dublin in an age but since when was traffic allowed down Grafton St. off Wicklow St.

Vehicular traffic is allowed on Grafton St. every morning up to 10 or 11.

Hurrache

Deleted User wrote: »

Haven't been in Dublin in an age but since when was traffic allowed down Grafton St. off Wicklow St.

Since it was pedestrianised traffic was always allowed very early in the morning for deliveries, I'm sure some dopes have caught on to the fact they could use it as a short cut to somewhere during that period?

Thelonious Monk

Deleted User wrote: »

Haven't been in Dublin in an age but since when was traffic allowed down Grafton St. off Wicklow St.

Think it might be very early in the morning