Grand Canal Cycle Path - Be Careful

columbus_66

I only cycled the canal in the morning times as I thought I would be safe!

tnegun

Same here but I regularly passed groups of 2/3 guys not looking to draw attention to themselves up near Grange Castle around 7am so was always wary. The same guys I suspect who organized the destruction of the CCTV last year. Its a great asset but you are very much on your own with no chance of help if needed for most of it any time of the day/night.

dermabrasion

That's it, I'm done with the canal. I just don't have time for this crap in my life.
I have used it in the early morning thinking that the b*#§€rds are in bed, and I use another (traffic heavy) route after dark / evening.

I am infuriated that regular people going about their business cannot use a brilliant facility which we all own and paid for, because of the criminality of failed humans

onmebike

dermabrasion wrote: »

That's it, I'm done with the canal. I just don't have time for this crap in my life.
I have used it in the early morning thinking that the b*#§€rds are in bed, and I use another (traffic heavy) route after dark / evening.

I am infuriated that regular people going about their business cannot use a brilliant facility which we all own and paid for, because of the criminality of failed humans

Sadly, I fully agree with this. When you have to contend with early-morning scrotes, things have reached the point of no return.

silverharp

side effect of the bug? not heard or seen of any problems in the morning before all the lockdowns

mloc123

silverharp wrote: »

side effect of the bug? not heard or seen of any problems in the morning before all the lockdowns

Nah, I gave up on the canal 2 years ago when two guys threatened somebody with a knife in front of me around 7.30am at bluebell

Nika Bolokov

Have no doubt there are still plenty of criminals waiting to rob people along here.

A real shame this great resource is ruined.

MojoMaker

Sadly, plenty of places to offload a nice bike or a decent phone, no questions asked.

As bike stock goes down I'm sure bike theft has become much more lucrative in the last year.

Pure scum.

irlirishkev

Christ.. I actually stopped carrying ATM cards to work in case this happened.. I kept using a cheap old bike, and didn't upgrade my phone for ages.

I also only used the canalway in the morning, unless the weather was abysmal, in which case I'd take it going home as scumbags don't seem to like the rain.

I suspect now, it's actually worse, with fewer commuters due to Covid. Safety in numbers and all that.

Nice to see some arrests but it's a long road to recovery sadly.

silverharp

mloc123 wrote: »

Nah, I gave up on the canal 2 years ago when two guys threatened somebody with a knife in front of me around 7.30am at bluebell

me and another guy cycled that way for work for about a year and a half before the bug, he would be ~7.15am and me around 8:30am , didnt saw anything remotely worrying in all that time. Not denying it happened but wasnt an ongoing issue as I saw it. in the evening, between 4pm and 6pm seemed to be a reasonable sweet spot, plenty of other people cycling etc.

Seth Brundle

I hadn't been along the canal in a while. Went home a few weeks that way and had forgotten about the feral youths who, without doing anything, put the fear of God into me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qZxA8TOqg

silverharp

Seth Brundle wrote: »

I hadn't been along the canal in a while. Went home a few weeks that way and had forgotten about the feral youths who, without doing anything, put the fear of God into me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qZxA8TOqg

you are being a bit judgmental there, local teenagers sitting by the canal that didnt interact with you dont deserve to be called feral

Seth Brundle

Maybe I'm being too judgemental and jumping to assumptions simply because of a bunch of hoodie lads hanging around the part of the canal where recently you had the drug house, etc.
Point taken nonetheless.

and still ricky villa

I used to run there during lunch but stopped at Halloween two years ago when rockets were being fired up the path.

piwyudo0fhn57b

Area could be more "active" now as well due to lockdown. Safe cycling!

Duckjob

This nearly makes me want to cry.

For contrast, here is a new video from BicycleDutch showing a nighttime ride over the newly built, now longest bridge in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSJkmduhNQ

Plenty of ordinary people out walking and enjoying it and not a feral scrote in sight. Leaving cycling aside, what are the dutch doing so right that we're getting so wrong in Ireland ?

Cyrus

Duckjob wrote: »

This nearly makes me want to cry.

For contrast, here is a new video from BicycleDutch showing a nighttime ride over the newly built, now longest bridge in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSJkmduhNQ

Plenty of ordinary people out walking and enjoying it and not a feral scrote in sight. Leaving cycling aside, what are the dutch doing so right that we're getting so wrong in Ireland ?

I’m sure the Dutch have plenty of hotspots is it not just related to the particular area ?

Duckjob

Cyrus wrote: »

I’m sure the Dutch have plenty of hotspots is it not just related to the particular area ?

I'm sure they do, it's just that in our case, most of Dublin seems to be a hotspot...Unfair maybe, but that's how it seems to me these days.

Also, I can't shake the idea that the dutch, having shelled out millions for a big infrastructure project, wouldn't be inclined to tolerate bad elements reigning free on it and making it unusable for the purpose for which it was built.

I say this because I've ridden in many parts of the Netherlands, including riding through plenty of so called "bad" areas and I never had so much as anyone say boo to me, let along try to push me off my bike / threaten me with a knife / etc / etc

FinnC

and still ricky villa wrote: »

I used to run there during lunch but stopped at Halloween two years ago when rockets were being fired up the path.

I went for a run there the other night and they were racing small motorbike type yokes up and down the path. None of them had so much as a light on the motorbikes also.
I’ve never been bothered by anyone on the canal as of yet but do feel a bit uneasy when I get nearer to the Clondalkin/Fonthill Rd end. There is always a group hanging around at that gate in the above video by Seth Brundle.
They don’t generally ever say or do anything but I always start running a bit faster when I approach them.

cletus

I think there's a a real risk of assuming that every teenager hanging around doing nothing is a feral-scrote-scum-knacker™

You have to be aware and assess the situation, obviously, and it would be understandable if you were on your own and you saw a group of teenagers on a dark path, that you might decide to take another route, but the general assumption that their all bad, is just as silly as the general assumption that all cyclists break red lights/cycle 72 abreast etc etc

The clothing can't even be used as an identifier. I teach some lovely kids, who all wear "scumbag-chic"

Nika Bolokov

Duckjob wrote: »

This nearly makes me want to cry.

For contrast, here is a new video from BicycleDutch showing a nighttime ride over the newly built, now longest bridge in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSJkmduhNQ

Plenty of ordinary people out walking and enjoying it and not a feral scrote in sight. Leaving cycling aside, what are the dutch doing so right that we're getting so wrong in Ireland ?

Very little investment and infrastructure ia put into poorer areas and there is a heavy police presence in high visibility urban areas. Same in France.

Its hidden but its there, but its not tolerated around key infrastructure.

BiggJim

Nika Bolokov wrote: »

Very little investment and infrastructure ia put into poorer areas and there is a heavy police presence in high visibility urban areas. Same in France.

Its hidden but its there, but its not tolerated around key infrastructure.

A similar approach should be adopted in this country, invest in the decent law abiding citizens and nevermind pissing away money into the likes of sheriff street, Jobstown (ha the irony) etc. Garda should be out in force in the city centre etc and let it be known that scum are not welcome and their behaviour will not be tolerated in these areas.

delboythedub

De Bhál wrote: »

If you're from the area you should complain to your local Councillor or TD.

Eamon Ryan TD should be asked to look into this problem, maybe he could take a spin down there on his bicycle

Bob24

Nika Bolokov wrote: »

Very little investment and infrastructure ia put into poorer areas and there is a heavy police presence in high visibility urban areas. Same in France.

Its hidden but its there, but its not tolerated around key infrastructure.

I am not familiar with the Netherlands, but the above doesn’t apply to France.

Tourist areas in Paris are more or less under control, but there are plenty of residential areas in the city (and in other French cities) which have widespread safety issues.

Also plenty of money thrown at public infrastructure which is subsequently damaged or rendered unusable due to safety concerns.

One exemple I find particularly telling is this Parisian public library which keeps closing and reopening for a while before closing again, either because the staff is scared of going to work due to violent crime occurring around the building or because the premises are simply raided by gangs and rendered unusable: https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/encore-degradee-la-bibliotheque-de-la-goutte-d-or-reste-fermee-a-paris_38143986.html
And while it’s isn’t the best neighbourhood, we are talking actual city of Paris (not one of the infamous banlieues).

I think we might be heading that way with our current policies, but I don’t think we have quite reached the stage whereby we can’t even keep a public library open because it is under constant siege.

a148pro

I think the reality is people are only scared of teenagers in hoodies because they're aware of problems with antisocial behaviour in the area. Its wrong to think a teenager in a hoodie in a working class area must be a scumbag. Occasionally, this will actually feed the problem because people realise they will be regarded as **** no matter what they do. But unfortunately, and I've run and cycled that route many times and felt the same, young people will arouse that fear because of what we know has happened there.

These things happen because our society tolerates it. We have tolerated the creation of an underclass, people who are incapable of or never will work, are incapable of rearing children yet will have multiple children and we facilitate it, financially primarily. Those kids don't get the right love and attention in their formative years, or diet for that matter, they have an absence of positive role models in their lives and they are exposed to negative role models in their areas which leads to behaviour like we see along the canal. Society's approach to this is to throw these people into ghettos, hope we never have to live with them and hope their negative behaviour then doesn't affect us. Only intervene once they've done something very nasty and you have evidence to prove it. This of course is too late, because the damage is done to the unfortunate third party who was in the wrong place at the right time.

The reality is you need to tackle it a lot earlier. Unpalatable though it may be, maybe it should be tackled pre-conception. Thereafter you actually need to clamp down on anti social behaviour early. If that means reducing social welfare or punishing people effectively for minor things we need to do that. There needs to be better community policing, including a direct role with local community leaders involved in policing, not just Gardai many of whom have lost the respect of people in those communities due to bad behaviour by their colleagues. If lads get away with littering, or acting the bollocks in public early on they're just going to push the envelope further in due course. Then when they do get caught doing more serious things they get punished lightly by the Courts on their first few outings. The net effect, again, is society waits until they do quite a lot of damage to other people to intervene.

We also need to integrate communities so people from different social classes live together and mix together, rather than ghettoising the poor. Most of these developments you see they put all the social housing off in one corner. Areas tend to be rich, poor, or a mix of the two while being "gentrified" only. Its madness.

And we need to make society either a lot more affordable, or fairer. Its hard to expect much better when the highest reasonable aspiration for a lot of these kids is working minimum wage jobs, or not much better paid ones when its simply impossible to live with dignity in Dublin at that income. Why would you bother trying?

By the way that's another unseen effect of Covid lockdowns. Educational disadvantage will be significantly exacerbated by it. Kids from houses with lesser supports, lesser educational achievement, less internet awareness among parents will suffer and fall behind more than kids with better educated parents. There's going to be a lot of borderline kids who could have gone either way in terms of education and career progress who are just going to fall on the wrong side of that divide now. Maybe not in the short term because the estimated leaving cert grades process in fact improved access to third level among disadvantaged areas, but in the coming years for sure. That don't feature on your nightly fear bulletins on RTE alas.

So there you go that's the solution to the world, a bit from the left and from the right. Kind of like a stiff light road bike but with super bumpy gravel tires. Tackles the canal easily.

BiggJim

Bob24 wrote: »

I am not familiar with the Netherlands, but the above doesn’t apply to France.

Tourist areas in Paris are more or less under control, but there are plenty of residential areas in the city (and in other French cities) which have widespread safety issues.

Also plenty of money thrown at public infrastructure which is subsequently damaged or rendered unusable due to safety concerns.

One exemple I find particularly telling is this Parisian public library which keeps closing and reopening for a while before closing again, either because the staff is scared of going to work due to violent crime occurring around the building or because the premises are simply raided by gangs and rendered unusable: [
And while it’s isn’t the best neighbourhood, we are talking actual city of Paris (not one of the infamous banlieues).

I think we might be heading that way with our current policies, but I don’t think we have quite reached the stage whereby we can’t even keep a public library open.

As I said above we are effectively rewarding them with more amenities etc in response to them destroying what they've already been given.

The irony being that none of them pay taxes ether which makes it all the more difficult to stomach. The social welfare class need a serious reality check in this country and I pray a serious political party will rise soon and give them one.

a148pro

BiggJim wrote: »

The social welfare class need a serious reality check in this country and I pray a serious political party will rise soon and give them one.

Eh - I think you might find on the strength of the last election it was the opposite!

BiggJim

a148pro wrote: »

Eh - I think you might find on the strength of the last election it was the opposite!

Hence the pray..

You're right though the likes of Sinn Fein would only make matters worse, no wonder all the scroungers in the country love them.

jmreire

a148pro wrote: »

Eh - I think you might find on the strength of the last election it was the opposite!

I'd say that the last election was an attempt to end the duopoly of FF/FG,,,,and nothing more. People were just sick to death of the Irish version of 2 party musical chairs, and wanted change. They did not have any specific political goals other than that. Just look at the result that Peter Casey got in the Presidential Election...330'000 votes. Talk about wanting political change..

buffalo

BiggJim wrote: »

The social welfare class need a serious reality check in this country and I pray a serious political party will rise soon and give them one.

A statement Big Jim would've been proud of.