must resist the urge to look at social media or the Journal's comments today!
€2 million additional funding for the Safe Routes to School programme
The Safe Routes to School Programme aims to create safer walking and cycling routes within communities, alleviate congestion at the school gates and increase the number of students who walk or cycle to school by providing improvements to walking and cycling facilities. The launch of the second round of the programme today will see over 37,000 students across Ireland benefit from safer infrastructure and encourage them to cycle, walk and wheel to school.
Full list of the 108 schools that will get funding
Some of the objections in East Galway to the greenway are the run of the mill but some are a bit special
That's partly the payment system. If it was a flat fee, tag on only (with leap/ card/ phone) dwell times would come down.
there's also an issue with staffing in county councils. Many are understaffed and do not have enough people available to develop projects that would use the available budgets. As I understand it, staffing budgets are not controlled by the local authorities directly, but by the Department of local government, although I admit i don't know all the details.
As someone pointed out… it’s quite revealing that the judge felt compelled to reveal she was a cyclist and ask if that was ok but presumably would not have felt so compelled if she was a motorist only
Tony Lally had the assault charges against him dropped I see.
i counted on the road i live on; 9 in a 3km stretch.
one of the stops beside me is served by five different bus routes; i don't know whether that has any bearing on spacing but i don't see why it should.
I was thinking the same thing. It really slows down some routes to quite a significant degree.
There are some that I see that can't be more than 200m apart. There's 3 each side just on the main street in Clongriffin which Google tells me is 650m long. They could probably take out every 2nd stop in the county and it would run better. Some of the routes through residential areas like in Malahide with no space for them too don't make sense to me. Straight through Seabury where for some reason there are parking spaces on the street despite there being 2-3 car driveways in every house.
I'm just shocked (not really) that the stated best practice is a bus stop every 400m. (and yes I know there are studies that show people won't walk more than 5 mins or so before deciding to drive instead) it's no wonder public transport is a shambles with stop start so often!
The UK is full of it, more so than here, just look at the bloody murder over the LTNs in London.
Paris to an extent, but the fact they managed to take over so much space during covid and didn’t give it back has worked in their favour
does this time of nonsense get printed in other countries that develop their streets and bus routes etc? it's absolutely unbelievable that they publish this nonsense
Google maps have Strandville Ave to the bridge as a 250m walk with a 5m incline
If pedestrians from Strandville Ave can't (or won't) walk up that bit of a rise then instead of turning left from Strandville Ave, can turn right to the next stop (~300m) which is flat all the way.
Some people will moan simply for the sake of it!
It’s a tiny slope up the bridge, no more than 2% and only about 100m if even.
That bus stop she mentions at Westwood, there’s another right down the road no more than 200m, if someone using the gym can’t walk that distance and choses instead to drive that says more about them than anything
It's also terrible hardship for the gym users who don't drive 🙄
The stop's only 200m walk. It's been a while since I lived in that neck of the woods, but Howth excepted, I don't remember many "substantial hills" around there - pancakes would spring more to mind
“Our bus stops have been taken away and it’s absolutely terrible, it’s permanent too, not temporary... and it’s all just to make room for cyclists,” she said.
Sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you meant that just this one was made up, because they were short of real help letters. Carry on
Pretty much what I was saying. A friend used to work in the Star during college and they'd have a call around the office to get stories in.
I have to confess that I had the same reaction when I saw them putting in these bike stands on Clareville Road in Harolds Cross, in the middle of the houses, a good bit away from the shops and the school. But as you can see on Google Streetview, the bike stands are well used - not sure by who, mind you. https://goo.gl/maps/CLb38bMPac7RGf5P6
i think the problem is that to effect real change takes longer than the budget allocations allowed. if the streets aren't already wide enough to put in kerb protected lanes, etc., all they can do is something superficial, as a complete remodelling will take too long to avail of the budget.
Same up my way, they are in some crazy places. At least those appear to have the nuts/bolts cemented over. They left them exposed here. I expect a few more in the coming weeks to get budget spent. Though traffic islands where nobody would ever think or want to cross a road appear to be flavour of the month for that these days.
And how much of it is wasted too? This type of thing seems to have cropped up in the last couple of years in Dublin, such as the bike parking below near me back home in Coolock
No one in their right mind would park a bike there and it is not convenient to anything. I know it's pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things but money and labour was actually wasted on this.
I'd be wary of how much of what is actually drawn down is for actual active travel.
I was over the past six months in detailed discussions with a roads engineer about land acquisition as part of regional road safety audit driven improvement along with a school car park.
From talking to other road engineers in other councils I knew Local Authorities don't pay for school car parks (I'm not sure of the sums for car park element but that alone was circa €250k in construction costs) so I asked him how he was going to get it funded. He said he was hopeful of getting it in under an active travel scheme.
Sure enough the final drawings had 10 bike stands included and zero chance of anyone using them.
Now the project won't go anywhere soon but I was a bit taken aback with the attitude to active travel funding as a means of getting a car park built
The funny thing is a relatively small investment in increasing buses along with speed reduction works on regional road would probably make the problem go away.
i keep saying - if you think your partner would not like knowing how much you're spending on your hobby, get them interested in horseriding.
my wife's spend is 6k a year just on livery fees. she spends more in a year than i've probably spent on cycling in ten years.
Also not 53, and not subbing to read the full article! If she knew how much I spent she'd probably be pissed off, but I generally do my share of parent cabs!
Are all those 'help' letter not made up?
52, but yeah, probably 🤣🤣
its an investment in yourself
think of the savings in medical bills as you age
but you do need a balance.
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