Why don't some cyclists use cycle lanes?

Chance would be a fine thing in most urban areas (including rural villages) with all the hover* cars parked on them!

*I assume hover cars, because anything else means the person driving was driving the car on the footpath.

:D

Sure, but you can't turn the M50 from three lanes to six just by painting a few lines.

Don’t be silly. Of course you can. If you paint a new lane within an existing lane, the cars and trucks will magically shrink to fit in the new one.

There is a new combined cycle lane/footpath between Ballinderreen and Kinvara in Galway (part of a road upgrade that probably cost 10s of millions). The new bike lane is probably in the region of 8km in length. If cycling on the road you get on the road and just cycle, and have zero stop signs, yield signs etc.

If you get on the bike lane beside the road you have to yield to every minor road entering the main road. In addition the cycle lane is only on one side of the road and switches sides twice, meaning you have to stop and then cycle across a busy road.

In addition there are, in the space of 8 or so km, 14 different chicanes consisting of 28 wooden barriers, perpendicular to the cycle path, forcing the cyclist to slow down to a crawl, on average, every 280 meters. 

If the bike stays on the road, it has zero stops or obstacles. 

This is the pinnacle of Irish bike lane design, it’s so new that it’s not even fully open yet. This is as good as it gets. The only people who will use it are young children on tricycles who are going to walk the dog with their parents. 

Ah, for the old days, when you could multiquote...

What you're suggesting happens all over the place - e.g., Amiens Street inbound. Two unequivocal lanes before the railway bridge at Connolly, mumble-something lanes under the bridge itself, two lanes again immediately after the bridge. Magic!

@irishgrover Again, why isn't there a cyclist's lobby group loudly going "Oi! Council! This is stupid!" And saying the same to the RSA and/or NTA, and getting a national minimum standard introduced?

@[Deleted User] I most certainly did not tell anyone to cycle on a footpath, ever. Don't put words in my mouth.

@AndrewJRenko Top speed for most of the M50 is 100km/h, so yep, no real problem with your suggestion - there are plenty of national roads with a 100km/h speed limit with nothing but a dashed line of paint separating one direction of travel from the other.

@Seth Brundle Yes, there are crashes on the M50. At 145,000 vehicles/day (2019 figure) and, say, 5 crashes (cos we're all hugely pessimistic) with 3 cars in each crash, that's one hundredth of one percent of all vehicles. They're pretty good odds!

Just to keep all figures straight, there was an average of just over 11 crashes a day 2019-2020 on the M50.

Doesn't hugely change the percentages you're talking about, but we might as well deal with the real numbers

It's not a footpath, it's a cycle path. So no, I'm not.

There seems to be an attitude that cyclists somehow belong with pedestrians.

Until someone realises that they are actually part of traffic and deserving of the same overtaking rules i will continue to stay on the road and assert my right to do so. I will only be safer on the road when drivers are educated as much.

Do you actually cycle?

Non cyclists seem to think that it's fine to yield at every junction like pedestrians do, you don't lose any momentum or energy when walking. It's crazy to associate the two, which seems to be the general attitude.

Personally, no, not in years, but looking to start again soon. Having to yield at every junction is crazy, but then I never advocated that, anywhere. Yielding at red lights, now - well, that's mandatory, even if there is a loss of momentum. Whether your momentum is pedal power, electric motor, ICE, or your feet.

@magicbastarder now don't you go putting words in my mouth, too! What I said is right there in black and white:

which is entirely different to what you're claiming I said. Case in point, the part of the M50 where they've removed the lanes to do realignment, or whatever it is they're doing the last few weeks.

I do a commute from Dundrum to Tallaght every day. I keep getting punctures at the M50/N81 over pass. Got 3 last week, so bought a new tire. Got another one this morning. So frustrating, there's fresh glass there every morning.

The stretch between Templeogue Village and the beginning of the duel carriageway is too narrow for the cycle lane and bike lane. If I'm in the cycle lane leaving the village and there's cars coming towards me, there isn't enough room for cars behind me to get past, so I've had many an angry driver try and squeeze past me. In the other direction going towards the village, I'm in a race to get ahead of the traffic before the road narrows, so I can take a position in the cycle lane where cars can't squeeze past me, but they still try.

I could go on about the rest of my commute, but most of the problems have already been covered in the thread.

I'd love to have safe cycle lanes to use, but we just don't have them.

thats actually a very good point, it does look good from a distance quite a lot of the time.